Two events will unite for a school-wide celebration next Saturday, December 7. Parent Involvement’s Culture Day celebration – this year a German Christmas Market – and the Eucalyptus Holiday Fair are combining together. The party will encompass both the Grove and Forest campuses. The collaboration between parents and teens in coordinating the festivities has been a profound community-building experience.
Eucalyptus Holiday Fair
The middle school event in the Grove campus is organized and run by our adolescents and will be running for a second straight year. They will be selling their student-designed and crafted merchandise, bounties from the Grove Rooftop Garden, and treats from their kitchen. Our teens will also be offering games, face painting and craft corners. Normally held on a school day, having it on the weekend will give more people a chance to enjoy the creativity and fun-loving energy of the Eucalyptus community.
German Christmas Market
The Culture Day event has been a longstanding school tradition organized by parents. This year’s German Christmas market theme follows last year’s scrumptious Icelandic day and the magical Diwali festival of lights the year before that.
Past years have Celebrated Italian, Korean, and Chinese cultures. Dutch parents organized Rembrandts’ birthday. British day included a maypole dance. The Canadian celebration was interrupted by the Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011. The Filipino festival included the memorable tinikling, a dance with long bamboo sticks. And in the year before the covid era, the lively Brazilian carnival featured an Olympic torch from the Rio games.
In our continuing partnership with Bidii Yetu, the refugee support organization, 80% of the profits from the German Christmas Market will go towards their projects. So far, our community has been able to fulfill two of their goals: providing meals for their students and funding to build latrines.
–Wind Edward Kim