Spectacular dancing and scrumptious food from across the globe will be at the Pearson College UWC Student Cultural Event on Friday (Nov. 17.)
Hosted at the Metchosin Community House, the annual event will feature students from the college who will represent a country by sharing traditional dishes, garments, dances, stories, etc.
“I was born and raised in New York from the U.S., but my family immigrated from all over Eastern Europe, and I am very connected to my Ukrainian culture,” said Michelle Chernobelsky, a first-year student at the college. “I’m going to be creating a Ukrainian dish.”
The first-year student plans on making a hallmark dish of Ukraine, varenyky. She describes it as “like a dumpling, but they’re a little bit unique, and it’s like a sweet dumpling with a cherry filling, and it’s very, very common sweet that we eat in Ukraine.”
Chernobelsky’s classmate, Michelle Jiang is representing Canada and China at the cultural event by making bubble tea. She will also be performing a traditional Chinese dance.
“Basically, it is a Chinese breathing exercise,” said Jiang. “So a lot of the Chinese cultural dances we have like a lot of different ways to train our bodies, and one of the main ways of doing it is through different ways of breathing with your body to sort of enhance our performances.”
At Pearson, Chernobelsky and Jiang are two of 200 students enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma program. Jiang believes events like these are necessary to learn about international world views. “We have students from all over the world, so we’re able to share our different cultures and our different perspectives from the world, which is super helpful for being able to show different cultures at the Metchosin event,” added Jiang.
The Pearson College Student Cultural Event will be on Nov. 17 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Metchosin Community House.
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