International Day 2012

My favourite day of the school year today - International Day! Yay!
I don't know who's been most excited this week, the kids or I! Especially Lucas has been waiting and waiting for this day to arrive, and this morning he was finally allowed to put on his costume:

Can you guess/see who he is?
He is, the inventor of Minecraft, Markus Persson aka "Notch"! We realized this when googling Minecraft recently! So then the Björn Borg-plan got ditched really quickly and we concentrated on making this happen!

I had a special t-shirt made, with Minecraft things on it and I made a tag for him to wear to clarify who he was. Some face paint and he was ready to go! We couldn't find that trademark black feodora hat Mr Persson always seems to wear, not one small enough anyway. In the end it didn't really matter.
Linnea is wearing my Mum's dress, as I've already written about:

It was nice coming up with some new outfits for this year.
Lucas wore a Swedish football outfit back in 2007, then he was a viking three years in a row (the last one with the twist of a big beard!) and last year he was a NZ World Champion rugby player!
Linnea was Pippi Longstocking on her first International Day in 2008, then she's worn the Swedish National Folk Dress both for 2009, 2010 and last year. So it was time for something else!

Tash and Kim both were dressed up too, as they work at school:

Linnea with Jamie (Australia) and Mallory (Canada):

Beenal and Sebbie, looking amazing:

Mrs Saap and little Ms Saap to the right, plus one extra koala baby, Chloe - to the left. Very cute!

This year they held the big Junior School parade inside the new Auditorium. Whereas it was very cool (well, cold actually!) and comfortable - I found it not as nice as previous years when we've been outside watching it, and us parents were able to get closer, and feel more involved. It was really hard getting good pictures, parents weren't allowed to move around, plus taking photos inside in not so good light is always tricky. Anyway - the kids were all excited and loved cheering on each other during their parading around.
Linnea's class arriving:

Lucas' class arriving:

Hannah, wearing the same outfit Ben had on when he was in Nursery! :) Still fits!

The morning started with all the kids singing 'We are the world'. I know I'm a sucker, but it's always a bit of a tear jerker..! :)

Then they paraded year group by year group on and off the stage and up to the parents and back. I just love watching the children and all their amazing, colourful, beautiful (and sometimes very inventive) costumes on this day. The children always wear their costumes and dress-ups with such pride, and everybody just loves this day.

I've always really enjoyed (even though it used to take forever, yes...) to hear the kids themselves tell where they're from. This year the MCs purely listed the different nationalities of each year group, and as the kids are registered at school on their NZ passports - Sweden didn't get mentioned at all... Boo. Lucky at least they proudly waved the Swedish flag, as there are no other Swedish children in Junior School.

After the parade in the Auditorium, we moved outside and all the kids continued to parade, around the whole school to show themselves off to the older kids.

Linnea with her friends Khushi, Hasna and Izzah - from India, Myanmar and Pakistan. I just love the amazing mix of children at school!

And off they went!

I spotted this little girl at one stage - in a Swedish outfit?! A mystery to me there is another child at school with a Swedish connection..? Hm, I must investigate further! :D

(Edit 8th November: Mystery solved, social media is wonderful! A friend of this girl's Mum saw my blog post, let the Mum know and she twittered about it! I saw the tweet and got in touch with the Mum! No Swedish connection other than the Grandma had been on a work trip to Sweden and bought the girl this outfit, and she insisted on wearing it! Well, she sure was pretty!)

My beautiful Spanish friends, Lucia and Isabel:

And, here are the Swedes! I was sporting yellow shoes, a blue belt and my little Dalecarlian horse around my neck - subtle, but Swedish!
Another great International Day experience!