Today I planed to spend the day on the side of a mountain hiking with one of my friends. Unfortunately, the government shut down means all national parks are closed, which put a little bit of a damper on our plans. Thankfully however, Barnet Park in downtown Spartanburg hosted the International Festival today, so we spent the day there instead.
It always surprises me how many different festivals and other cultural events Spartanburg has, but it seems like almost every weekend there is something going on. Just this past week the Chapman Cultural Center hosted a group of Tibetan Monks that created a really cool and really complicated sand art masterpiece. TONS of Wofford students were there all week going to the different ceremonies they did and watching them make the work of art.
Anyways, the International Fair was really cool (and really hot). Basically they had 4 different areas, a food area (definitely my favorite), an area where you could learn about the different cultures of a bunch of different countries, an area for kids where they could make different crafts, and then there was an amphitheater where different groups put on different shows (often different cultural dances).
In order to get any of the food you had to “exchange currency” and get a set of tickets that you could use to purchase food from all the venders. Hallie and I got apple beignets, crawfish Kettle chips, turtle cheese cake, and some type of French sweet bread roll. It was SO GOOD. We also walked through all of the cultural area where we got to hang out with Uncle Sam, Abe, and the Pope, got a free t-shirt from Italy and got some really cool henna from Bangladesh. Over all it was a total success of an afternoon (minus my super sunburnt shoulders).
Here are some pictures we took at the festival!
