STORY BY SATYARTH MISHRA
Odecca Ordonez says before she founded a campus international students group she didn’t eat Indian food.
“Please don’t laugh,“ she told students at the Sheridan International Student Association’s movie night on Friday at HMC. “This is how I learned about Indian culture.” Ordonez kicked off an event designed to connect visiting students to their new home with a movie called Canada, A Diverse Culture.
Attended by about 60 students, the event was organized by SISA to give knowledge about Canadian culture and diversity to international students. SISA, which started in December at Hazel McCallion Campus, meets each Friday. Past events have included a potluck, a sports bash, and an international night, which was very successful.
“This is a platform for us to know about many cultures and learn many things about them. This knowledge will help us in future, when we all will be applying for permanent residence,” Thanh Nguyen, 26, a student from Vietnam, said.
The movie was about 25 minutes with a lot of information about tourist attractions in Canada, the ethnic groups and diversity in Canada, popular sports and the well-known fishing and oil industries of Canada. Before the beginning of the movie, Samy Chemam, gave a short speech about his experience.
“There are a lot of things we still have to learn about other cultures,” Chemam, who is from the United States, began.
“I used the word ‘Indian language’ during a understanding global cultures class, while talking to my professor but thanks to my Indian friend, who told me Indian is not a language, Hindi is a language.”
After the movie, students separated into four teams called blue, orange, purple and green. Each team had five to six members to fill an answer sheet of questions that was related to the movie.
Antony Vadakkanchery, retention co-ordinator for the international centre at HMC, helps international students to organize their events and also encourages students to take part in SISA. “I always attend the events of SISA. It’s fun with a sense of education and knowledge,” said Vadakkanchery.
“These all students are very good. They have an ability to learn things fast.”
The question and answer session ended and students were given sheets to draw a picture of what they had seen in the movie. Every team had to draw something within 15 minutes and paste it on the wall.
“We are drawing a railway network and hockey team,” said Andrii Sadlak, 23, SISA president. “Drawing things is a good way to paint all things you have remembered while watching the movie, it is kind of brain-storming exercise,” he said.
“Everyone has a curiosity and team spirit to win the game, that’s why we do such activities and a lot of international students join it every Friday.”
Every team made a different drawing about what they understood from the movie. The orange team made native Indians; the green team followed them by creating a native Indian god, fishing, hockey and Canadian flag. The purple team drew hello in many different languages spoken in Canada and the blue team constructed a paper boat and drew different ethnic groups of Canada.
“Everyone did an amazing effort in drawing things. I am sure our team is going to win this game and get the surprise gift,” said Jitesh Thakur, 27.
Within a few minutes the result was announced; the green team won the first prize, the purple and the blue team tied to second and the orange team came in third.
“It is not important who won the game. What is important is how many things we have learned today by this event,” said Sadlak. “Students made this event successful.”
SISA has plans to expand their group in all three campuses by the end of this year. SISA has one president along with eight executives and 30 active members. The club is aiming to attract as many as international students as possible, because it is not only good for their personal development, but participation is also recorded on a student’s co-curricular record.