By Qianyu (Margaret) Cheng
After a whole week of relaxing spring break, we finally embrace the second half of the spring semester. Finally the snow disappears and sunshine comes out, indicating the arrival of spring. In the meantime, this is a special time on campus. The international week, as well as other cultural events right after the spring break, brought us a brand new experience of the global world.
From March 31 to April 6, 2014, UIUC celebrates international weeks. First time that I knew about this special week was from an e-mail sent from ISSS. At the time when I clicked the calendar online, I was surprised that the international week comprised of so many different events and fun stuff. Not only do they have exotic menu like Asian, Finnish Menu and etc. in Bevier Café and Beckman café, but also they have plenty of cultural and educational events that helps the campus to know more about the global community. For instance, an event called from Pupil to Professor gives students a chance to know more about the experience of international faculty when they were a student. Also Writing across Borders introduces the way to work with multilingual students in classrooms. All those events help students and stuff get a more globalized perspective and point of view.
Moreover, they also presented a movie that is made by a Chinese student movie making club. One of my friend is a photographer and also an actor of that movie, and he said that it was his first time playing a role in the movie, which was a challenge and also an exciting experience for himself. All of the club members participated in the movie making process and they had a great time. It was a movie in English made by all Chinese actors and actresses, they all showed their values and passions of their own as international students through the movie.
Furthermore, there are also many specific weeks and events going on. Like Korean week from April 7th to April 14th, also the Voice of China on April 6th. The Voice of China is almost the same as the Voice show in America, except it is in Chinese. I attended the latter one because my friend asked me to help out in the show since they were lack of staff. Although it was a completely new experience for me, I really wanted to give her a hand and as a result I accepted the challenge. Basically what I needed to do was holding a box of lotteries on the stage for 10 minutes. That sounds easy but when I was actually walking towards the stage, it was quite nervous for me to face to two hundred students, not to mention that I was dressed in cheongsam, one of the Chinese dress for woman. Nevertheless, I stayed calm and carried on. Overall I enjoyed this events both as an audient as well as a stuff. All the participates of the Voice took lots of efforts in the show and although their voices were quite different, since some of them are specifically music trained but some of them are just singing for fun, but all of them are passionate about singing and express themselves by singing their heart aloud. For all the time I did not notice, but besides the actors on the stage, the staff also prepared a lot and dedicated to do everything behind the scenes and served for audiences’ enjoyment.
Just like in the Voice, different people have different voices. These voices can be various, but they all have a common factor: that they serve for human being to express themselves. I remember back when I was in LeaderShape, one of the programs that’s held by Leadership Center on campus, the stuff asked each of us to make whatever sound we liked. In the end, 60 of participates were all singing or whispering or whistling or laughing or clapping, and we made a voice that was so unique that no one can ever replicate. During international weeks, all of the students and stuff, although they are from different countries, have different background and experiences, they all are one of the voices, and we come together and share our voice together in UIUC. We can make any voice possible.