On a beautiful, sunny day-- May 5th, 2012, from 11AM to 5PM, there was an international event called the “4th Together Day Festival,” which took place at Daejeon’s Expo Park. The purpose of this event was to bring together local citizens and foreigners.
There were a number of booths for each of the countries. Each booth provided amusing and creative activities for visitors. In the Korean booth, people could try pounding rice cake dough with a traditional giant hammer-like tool. In the USA booth, there were many beautiful pictures that portrayed nature in the United States, which were quite different from that of Korean ones. In the Indonesian booth, we could play the angklung, a traditional musical instrument made out of bamboo.
In addition, there were many varieties of foods that could make anybody salivate. A desire to eat some international delicacies such as Turkish ice cream, lamb chops, French crepes, Vietnamese coconut, or even spicy ttokbokki, was easily served at this event. The most popular food was bratwurst from the Germany booth. There was a very long line, not only due to the price being cheap (only 3,000KRW), but the taste of well-roasted sausage covered with mustard, was just beyond expectation! Yum!
Furthermore, you could also make a free phone call to your family and send them postcards-- as many as you wanted. This service was offered by the Daejeon Municipal Government to facilitate foreigners who wanted to share news with their friends and family.
The official event started when the Governor of Daejeon, Hong Cherl Yum, gave a special award, which was called the “Daejeon City Government Award,” for foreigner and local citizens who lived in and dedicated their life to Daejeon. One of the awardees was one of Woosong’s family members, Mr. Ony Avrianto Jamhari, International Relations Regional Manager at the Global Center, Woosong Educational Foundation. He was conferred the “Outstanding Foreigner in Daejeon” award.
Following the award-granting, the event program continued with a fashion show, a K-Pop performance, and flower dancing (inspired by the movement of blossom flowers).
The main event was a performance competition between the representatives of the different countries. Some countries performed traditional dancing, while others performed singing or modern art related performances. The competition was really intense because all performing groups were doing really well. In the end, India came in as the first place winner, followed by China and Mongolia.
Last but not least, the most awaited things were the door prizes. The first winner got the big prize: 5 airplane tickets to Jeju Island. Other prizes included bicycles, 5 kilogram bags of rice, and boxes of instant noodles. I was lucky enough to win one of the door prizes, but it was just two dozen rolls of toilet paper.
It was a fun time with Daejeon citizens and fellow foreigners. I hope there will be another event like this soon.
Staff writer Alexandra Hana is currently a SolBridge University student majoring in Accounting.
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