International Day 2015

Lucas has been grumpy all week over the fact that we had to go to school on the weekend this week - reason being 'International day'. Since the school wanted it to be a family event and have all the parents who normally work being able to join in as well, they chose to do it this Saturday.
And what a great event it was!

I had super high expectations, as 'International Day' always was my absolute favourite day of the school year at JIS. Of course I signed up early on to do a stall for Sweden, together with some other eager parents; and we had so much fun!

It truly was a great day! Can you believe there are 75 different nationalities at our school! Seventy-five!

Even though it was an official school day, it wasn't too much hard work for the kids. They only had an assembly for an hour in the morning, and then they were allowed to come walk through the 'Global Village' (= all the different country stalls) with their families, before it was time for their special performances - grade by grade, and then they were done.

I took a quick walk around all the stalls, before the kids were let loose, to take some photos of some of them. There were so many stalls, I didn't manage to snap all of them. Here's Korea and Holland:

Spain, India and the USA.

New Zealand!

Canada, Indonesia and Finland:

Malaysia, Pakistan and Mexico:

The kids got lolly bags from the NZ stall!

Here I am with my friend Katrin, from Austria. Her and her family looked like they came straight out of "The Sound of Music"! What a commitment!

A lady from Ukraine stopped up when she saw me and came over to talk. She too had flowers in her hair, and the colours of their flag are blue and yellow as well, so she felt we were somewhat related!

All of us Swedes doing our stall were new to RIS this year, so none of us really knew what was expected from us. We were very proud over how our stall turned out though! We did great!
We decided early on not to sell any food, but just to offer lingondricka (= lingonberry drink) and pepparkakor (= gingerbread thins) for free. Especially the drink was extremely popular! I think next year we should try to get it sponsored from IKEA, we sure sent a lot of customers their way!
Susanne, Petra, Yvonne, Nikolas and I:

Lucas and his friend Maria, from Brazil, came to see us:

So did Linnea and her Scottish friend Grace:

We were so busy at our stall! Not only serving up lingonberry drink, but also answering questions and talking about Sweden. A lot of people stopped up and had a good look at our display and flicked through our books, even the students. It was great fun.

We had Denmark just next to us. They had fastelavnsboller and a "Guess-the-amount-of-Lego-bricks-in-the-jar"-game which attracted a lot of people.

All the countries had fantastic stalls, and some of the countries that have a bigger representation at school, had huge ones! Especially the Asian countries offered a lot of different food for sale, the South Africans sold hot dogs, there were sweets for sale at the Aussie stall and lamb buns at the Kiwi stall amongst many other things. The Fins offered coffee and Fazer chocolates and the Germans pretzels; and much much much more... Have a look here, Australia and England:

Egypt, Philippines, Ireland, Brazil, Turkey and Argentina:

Here's Linnea and the Grade 3s, performing a song from Annie, and "It's a small world" on the recorders. Linnea in yellow smack bang in the middle:

And here is Lucas and the Grade 5s, performing two FIFA songs; Lucas in black just in front of the guy with the neck scarf:

Love, love, LOVE 'International Day'!

Foodie neighbours

In Brunei, being invited for pizza nights at 'Saaporinos' was a regular and very popular event. Jeremy absolutely perfected his pizza recipe and cooking routines, and his pizzas were the best pizzas ever! It was great to have neighbours that could cook. We couldn't have lived in a better place there between the Saaps and Misuzu, our supplier of yummy Japanese food and other delicacies!

Our neighbours here aren't too shabby at cooking either, and have invited us over for several exciting meals on different occasions, remember the deep-fried turkey for Thanksgiving?
Well yesterday, it was time for pizza night! I had high expectations of course, used to being spoiled with amazing homemade pizzas - and Chad even has his own pizza oven in the garden, so this had to be good!

Well, let's just say, from the moment the last pizza was cooked and ended up on this table to get sliced, until it looked liked this..:

... it was about 3 minutes!
Pizzas approved!

Sushi love

Sushi is a firm favourite in our family, we all love sushi. We've only had it a very few times since we got here, both because not many places measure up to our favourite 'Excapade Sushi' in Brunei but also because it's simply too expensive.
The other day I found myself stopping up in front of the "Eastern food" shelf in the supermarket and thought, it's about time we try making our own!

So today the kids and I made our own maki rolls for dinner, filled with salmon, crab sticks, cucumber and avocado. Apart from the preparing of the rice, which next time I'll do in advance - it's pretty much fast food, it was quickly done.

I must say, even though we all have to work on our rolling technique, all our rolls turned out pretty yum! Well done us!

Lucas Sports Day

Yesterday it was Lucas' turn to have Sports Day at school. The Grade 4 and 5 Sports Day lasted all day, from 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. Nathan was there to cheer him on most of that time.

Lucas had had lots of fun. He was running, jumping, throwing... they did lots of different sports. He ended up being the 2nd best in his grade at the javelin! Excellent!