13 July 2009

Mid Winter Christmas Dinner at IPC

The First Year Students' Effort to Warm Up Winter

By Shirley Ghozalli. Edited by Moira Blake.

Mayra Brandao (right) acting as the MC for the night, accompanied by Tomoya Honda as the tree!

In contrast to the countries in the northern hemisphere, winter arrives in the middle of the year in New Zealand with midwinter falling in July. This means that Christmas is usually celebrated in hot weather rather than in the cold as seen in American movies. For this reason, and because many New Zealanders have memories of winter Christmases in Europe, New Zealanders came up with an unofficial festival called Mid Winter Christmas - to warm up the winter season and also to compensate for the hot Christmas time. Mid Winter Christmas is celebrated just like a real Christmas celebration with a Christmas tree and decorations, Christmas treats and winter gifts.

So the first year Foundation students took on the responsibility of organizing a Mid Winter Christmas Dinner at IPC on Friday, 3rd July and they invited the home stay families, yearbook sponsors, and IPC staff members and their families.

The students took about a month to prepare for the event. According to the event leader Kaname Hiyori, organizing the event with other students, not only those from Japan, was a challenge because he had to talk using English more often. “The SA Event Committee also helped us to determine what was important and what each next step was.”

Acting as the MC was Mayra Brandao from Brazil. When asked whether she was nervous, she answered, “Sure. This is my third month here and I knew that all the students would be present, so I was afraid to make some mistakes.” She also commented, “It was a great opportunity for the Foundation Students to get involved with the college.”

As Dean (ESOL) Faculty of International Studies Takahiro Kojima explained, the idea came from some of the first-year Foundation students who wanted to do something special for IPC but didn’t quite know what until they learned that there was something called "Mid-winter Christmas" in New Zealand.

This idea was then developed by a small number of the first-year students from Japan, who wanted this to be an event organised by all the students in Foundation programme. The students formed sub groups responsible for the decoration, entertainment, food and overall management of the event. After a month of hard work brainstorming the ideas, talking to many different people, having a series of meetings late at night and over some weekends, and the last minute mad rush to finish all the unfinished tasks in time, they pulled off a great evening for IPC students, staff and many host families of our students.

There was a huge Christmas tree in the centre of the dining hall and impressive Christmas decorations all around it, including a nativity display. The evening started with a delicious Christmas meal, typical of cold-weather countries. There were musical performances and games for both children and adults. Spider-man and Iron Man were running around, much to the delight of all the children. There were also scrumptious desserts from 10 of the many different countries around the world that students studying at IPC come from (including New Zealand).

Many students, staff and the guests complimented the Foundation students who organised the event, which made them pleasingly embarrassed. There is no doubt that this experience has given the first-year students a great deal of confidence and more motivation to improve their English.

One of the students decorating the Christmas tree in readiness for the party	Santa Claus is always the favourite of the children	Spider-man and Iron Man adding extra excitement to the occasion
Delicious desserts from various countries	The guests having difficulty choosing which dessert to have	A game session with the prizes on display

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