All Cultures Day at the School of Psychology
On December 21st Master's programme in Applied Social Psychology organized the 4th annual All Cultures Day at the School of Psychology. International students from many faculties and schools, including Preparatory year students, gathered to celebrate HSE’s multicultural environment and the Russian New Year.
Every year the international Master’s program in Applied Social Psychology tries to learn more about the culture of its students and also invites guests from all over HSE. All Cultures Day is an informal get-together where international students can present their culture to others in any way they like, and also have fun and socialize.
This year’s celebration started with a bang – one of the program’s students, Maria Zhuravleva, invited her choir to take part in the cultural programme. Chamber Choir “Pokroff”, being a professional ensemble of singers, is regularly touring Russia and Europe. At the All Cultures Day they performed German, Spanish, French, Russian and Ukrainian Christmas carols, captivating the audience with its cathedral-worthy sound.
During the break everyone had a chance to chat with each other, have fun with group photos and try some Russian and ethnic food brought by the guests. There were Slovak sweets, Ghanaian fufu with chicken sauce, Singapore durian cookies, lots of Russian pierogi etc. In the meantime, Vanessa Vormittag at the Germany stand organized a quiz about the German culture.
Every year the international master’s program “Applied Social Psychology” tries to learn more about the culture of its students and also invites guests from all over HSE. All Cultures Day is an informal get-together where international students can present their culture to others in any way they like, and also have fun and socialize.
This year’s celebration started with a bang – one of the program’s students, Maria Zhuravleva, invited her choir to take part in the cultural program. Chamber Choir “Pokroff”, being a professional ensemble of singers, is regularly touring Russia and Europe. At the All Cultures Day they performed German, Spanish, French, Russian and Ukrainian Christmas carols, captivating the audience with its cathedral-worthy sound.
After that Tomas Jurcik, Canadian-Slovak teacher at the ASP program told the guests about his original country of Slovakia. Next, Ali Maarouf, Sharef Hlal and Somar Bilal presented Syrian culture, and the audience even heard an awesome singing performance in Arabic by Somar. Vishmi Ranatunga gave a passionate overview about Sri Lankan culture, followed by Karl Etchue from Côte d'Ivoire and Juazlina Ali from Singapore. The first act ended with a beautiful and tender song by Quynh Pham Hoang Ngoc from Vietnam, who also played a ukulele.
During the break everyone had a chance to chat with each other, have fun with group photos and try some Russian and ethnic food brought by the guests. There were Slovak sweets, Ghanaian fufu with chicken sauce, Singapore durian cookies, lots of Russian pierogi etc. In the meantime, Vanessa Vormittag at the Germany stand organized a quiz about the German culture.
The 2nd act began with ASP students showing a video about Russian mentality – who doesn’t wonder about that? It was followed with a presentation by Anastasiya Grigorieva about Ryazan - very old and unique Russian city. After Ryazan’s mushrooms with eyes the guests heard about Armenian culture from Maria Bagdasaryan, which felt even more special knowing that the School of Psychology is located in the Armenian district. But the most lively presentations were probably by Saka Lukman from Nigeria and a group of Ghanaian students showing the traditions and dances of their culture.
The final act of the presentation was an elegant and uniting performance by a group of international students from HSE Preparatory year. With their teacher of Russian language, Vera Fesenko, they performed a song in Russian, “A sneg idet”, accompanied by a ukulele and a guitar.
From year to year All Cultures Day’s program becomes greater and more rich, as does HSE’s international community. “Applied Social Psychology” was happy to welcome its guests, and, as always, will invite them for the celebration next year.