All Cultures Day at the Department of Psychology
On December 20th, the Master's programme “Applied Social Psychology” and the International Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research held the 5th “All Cultures Day”. It is an annual holiday for the whole multinational community of students and teachers of the HSE.
International students from different faculties of the HSE and other Moscow universities came to celebrate the end of the semester and the year 2018, to get to know each other and to share their culture. In addition, foreign professors from other programs and departments attended the event.
This year, the geography of the participants of the All Cultures Day turned out to be truly extensive. Australia, Iceland, Morocco, Japan, Norway, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Canada, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Jordan, India, Iran, USA, Zimbabwe, Germany - this is not a complete list of countries whose representatives took part on the All Cultures Day in 2018.
This year, an incredibly exciting concert with songs, dances and competitions, national dishes, an ethnic fair where everyone could make a real Afghan mehendi, learn how to make Japanese origami or play backgammon, were prepared for the guests.
The evening was opened by the inspirational words of the presenters - students of the Master's programme “Applied Social Psychology”, Dunya-Lin El Masri and Athalla Mashakbeh. In their speech, they expressed the hope that this event could contribute to the establishment of intercultural dialogue. Then the participants of the Day of Cultures were warmly greeted by the academic supervisor of the Program, Professor Nadezhda Lebedeva.
The concert program started with a surprisingly beautiful Tatar song performed by Svetlana Zaremba-Pike, accompanied on the drum by Delilah Shaymardanova.
Then foreign students had to evaluate how well they know Russia. Russian-speaking students of the Master's program "Applied Social Psychology" prepared a test about Russia with "insidious" questions about Russian salad and “Herring under a Fur Coat”.
Specially for the guests of the All Cultures Day, the Youth Choreographic Ensemble of the Folk Dance “Assa” performed two national Caucasian dances, and not leaving anyone present indifferent with their fiery performance.
And during the next performance by Claudia and Alejandra Santoliva from Colombia, everyone danced - both students and professors. Under the rhythms of Latin American melodies, it turned out to be a real dancing flash mob.
In the second part of the event, Srikanth Janardanan from India accompanied by the violin of Marina Suvorkina soulfully sang the song “Moscow Nights” in Russian.
Students from Ghana also sang several popular songs with a guitar, and then, along with second-year students of the Master’s program “Applied Social Psychology”, performed a dance entitled “African Culture through Dance” which the guests of the festival also gladly joined.
The Indian student Parv Agarwal sang a colorful ethnic song, and the Australian student Daniel Kavanah, together with his Russian partner, performed a beautiful and fast salsa. Also, the guests of the festival were pleased to learn about the peculiarities of Armenian culture from the presentation of Seda Vardikyan.
The All Cultures Day ended truly touching: all the guests and participants sang together the song “Imagine” by John Lennon, dreaming about peace and prosperity for all. The All Cultures Day has already become a good tradition for international students of the Higher School of Economics, and next year it will certainly open its doors to the whole multinational community of our university.