What does America mean to you? The English students at Sebasa had a chance to show off their answer to this question during the school's multicultural celebration last week. Each language class (English, French, Mandarin, and Arabic) had to create a booth and a presentation representing their language and the culture(s) within that language.
I contributed what I could - a small flag, an Obama shirt, and some photos of boy scouts - but mostly they were on their own. Nailing down a visual American culture is a tough one. We don't really have a national food (rather a national portion size), and we don't really have a national dress. The latter took a very long time to explain. Indonesia is big on textiles. Every island and province has its own batik (traditional fabric hand-painted and dyed using wax), and those batiks are still worn with great national pride on a daily basis. The students knew about American cowboys and Native Americans from the movies. Yes, we
do still have those, but not every American has a pair of spurs or feather headdress in their closet; in fact, very, very few do. It took a great deal of effort to convince them that neither I nor the US embassy had a full buckskin suit ready and waiting. They settled on flannels and cowboy hats. And as you can see, they also chose to represent America with: Santa Clause, Coca Cola, McDonald's french fries, and alcohol (not pictured) - which is more or less a pretty accurate depiction.
There performance was another beast altogether. They decided to go with the always safe, cross-dressing routine. Who doesn't want to see men in authority dress up in a dress and heels? Unfortunately, I can't show you the whole skit, but here's a taste:
My cup runneth over.
Three months have come and gone quickly. Time to say good bye to another group of students.
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