Country presentations

The last two days at the Festival were packed with activities. The groups had their country presentations. Two groups from the Netherlands; the Beveland group and the Tholen group created two different presentations.

Let's start with the Beveland group. Each of  them (Laura, Elise, Jesse, Christian and Josephien) showed a picture of their homes, described where they live and told a little something about themselves. They then focused on some stereotypes people usually connect with people from the Netherlands. This was very funny and they even called some people on stage to help them with this part of the presentation.

The last part of the presentation was about Dutch celebrities and the Beveland group made a quiz out of it. For example, we had to guess who the Dutch prime minister is; Afrojack or Mark Rutte.

The Tholen group started with introducing themselves as well. They presented the island of Tholen and Bergen op Zoom since two of them are from this city. They spoke about traditional food and drinks, but also had to say something about the most common stereotypes. They mentioned people from their Bridgebuilders Club who couldn't be there with them.

One part of their presentation was also about the water service project the Tholen Bridgebuilders Club did on their island. I was actively involved in it so I wanted them to include even more of it in the presentation because we visited many water facilites and learned a lot about water management in the region. 

After the Dutch groups, we were introduced to something completely different - the Hungarian presentation.

They made it very professional and interactive. They covered each aspect of their nation; food, drinks, geography, history, famous people (they showed a video with all of thier country's greatest inventors).

And then, they decided to make it difficult for the rest of us. They invited two representatives of each country to join them onstage to try and say some of their tongue twisters. I don't know how familiar you are with Hungarian, but this language is nothing you have ever heard before, and you can only imagine how impossibly difficult their tongue twisters are.

The Czechs and Americans presented their countries the following evening. The team from our host country taught us a lot about the Czech Republic; they spoke about food, drinks and some very strange traditions. One of them happens every Easter when boys hit girls with sticks made of willow branches. For the end of their presentation we danced the traditional Czech dance mazurka. Our Czech EVSers already taught us this dance before but it's fun every time.

And then....show time.

The Americans really put their best into this presentation. It was a mix of history and tradition, music and drama. And, all of them can sing, dance and act!!! That was truly amazing.
First, they played a video they made about their home town in Pennsylvania, then presented important people in their history by quoting their famous speeches. After that they sang and ended their presentation with a Broadways style number.

Later that night we all met once again to hear Jesse from the Netherlands perform and the part of  the American team also did a song.