Festival of Nations

Today I took Kanin to the Festival of Nations here in St. Louis. 

I thought that Kanin would really enjoy this event because there were so many countries represented with their food, dances, music, and crafts.

When we first arrived there was a Jewish band playing a church song that I recognized from my church camp days-"Sanctuary".  It was really beautiful as the singer went back and forth between singing the lyrics in English and Hebrew.

There were tons and tons of food booths with all different cuisines:  Bosnian, Thai, Japanese, Bangladesh, Senegalese, Chinese, Cajun, German, Polish, Peruvian . . . I could go and on.  Everything we tasted was great and the portions were big enough that we shared it all.

The first booth that we came to was a German booth and Kanin was so happy. 

Next, we walked over to the main stage to watch some of the ethnic dancers. First up was South Africa:

We walked around for a bit and ran into this guy.  Kanin just had to have his picture taken with him.

There were Polynesian dancers.  We were pretty far away from the stage at this point.

There were a lot of crafts and local organizations that support diversity and multi-culturalism.  This little tent had a couple of really cool country puzzles and some dress up items.

As we walked along we came up on a Reggae band singing "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley.  This is one of our family songs so we stuck around and danced a bit.

When we left the Jamaica event, we came up on Scotland.  This one was really cool.  There was a demonstration where they were throwing a telephone pool.  It was really cool and really impressive.

 

There were these swords that Kanin got to hold.

 

Right after the poll throwing and swords, there were some monks (I think that is what they were).  Apparently, this was the leader of their group.

Finally we went back to the main stage to see a couple more dances.  First, there were Russian dancers.

The finale on the Main Stage was a Japanese, all-girl troupe from New York called Cobu.  (You can watch them HERE).

 

This was such a fun and informative event.  Kanin and I had a great time together.  I love that we both love these types of things.  He kept referring to our time together as Mommy-Son time and it was fantastic.