Yesterday evening from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. I helped host International Day 2014!
Myself, my roommate Keeghan and Austin all volunteered to help host this annual event under the direction of Simone, Stefano and Luisa. They are our USAC Advisors here in Viterbo.
As a host my duties included welcoming the students to the event and passing out name tags, along with taking photos at the photo booth!
The purpose of International Day is for students studying abroad within the programs USAC, Erasmus and ESN to meet and interact with each other because there are several students studying in Viterbo from all around the world. It was a fantastic way for students to immerse themselves amongst other cultures and create new friendships.
- International Trivia
- A face painting booth (where you got your country’s flag painted on your face)
- Photo Booth (complete with goofy props)
- An International Potluck (students brought dishes from their home country to share)
We were also going to have International Karaoke but the system wasn't working so unfortunately that event didn't take place!
The night started out with International Trivia. This was a great way for all the students to get to know each other and work as a team because everyone was mixed with students that weren’t in their same study abroad group.
In order to ensure that students would not be on the same team as their friends we had five different colors of name tags and randomly wrote their names on them. Before International Trivia actually began, Stefano announced to the students that they needed to find the students wearing the same color name tag; this is how we formed the teams for trivia.
Trivia consisted of two rounds:
1) Name the Monument and Country it’s in
2) Name the Food and what Country it’s from
Teams got competitive but it was a great way for all the students to bond with one another. Afterwards, everyone was free to enjoy the potluck and take photos at the photo booth, get their face painted or even chat with the local radio station.
Throughout the night I took photos for the photo booth and the event itself and it was really exciting to see students mingling with one another and having a great time.