Upcoming Houston Area Festivals

Here are some upcoming Houston area festivals that we are hoping to attend! (photo from Sam Houston Festival in 2006.)

Houston Children's Festival. Dates: April 4th & 5th. We've been to this festival many times since Alexandra was a toddler, but I've never blogged about it! If we get to go this year, I'll post some photos!

Houston International Festival. The focus country this year is Ireland . Dates: April 18th & 19th/25th & 26th. Through their website you can buy tickets half price through the end of March! We've attended this festival only once, in 2006, when the focus country was Jamaica. IFest offers EXTENSIVE Teacher's Guides online. Unfortunately, it looks like you can only access this years and the past 3 years guides, but those include Ireland (183 pages!), Africa, China, and Jamaica. These guides would be helpful for anyone studying those countries. The guides include things like environment, geography, culture and history.

Houston Japan Festival. Dates: April 25th & 26th. We've never been to this festival, but we hope to try it out this year!

Sam Houston Folk Festival . Dates: May 1st - 3rd. We've also been to this only once, in 2006. There are lots of wonderful demonstrations at this festival! I highly recommend it! It's about an hour north of Houston.

Dragon Boat Festival. Date: May 2nd. We've also never been to this one but we learned about dragon boat racing while studying Canada. Then, we found out that Houston has a dragon boat race!!! So, we're really looking forward to this event. Since dragon boat racing originated in Asia, there is also a "celebration of Asian culture" that takes place on the day of the race with dancing, music, and taiko drumming.

Jamaica & the Houston International Festival

Jamaica was the spotlight country at the Houston International Festival this year. I thought the best part was watching the dancers from Jamaica (we watched 3 different groups) & trying some food from Jamaica.

While we watched one group, they were doing dances with a European influence. I'd never seen anything like it. The dance above (blue dresses) was very slow and the girls were constantly using their fans. They also curtsied and bowed quite a bit.


This next dance was also very different from what I've seen before. The girls wore dresses that had lots of pleats. For the first half of the dance, they sat in chairs & "waved" their skirts. Then, they stood up & moved a little, but the dance was still mainly about waving their dresses. It was neat to watch!

Since pirates were a major part of Jamaica's history, we saw some pirates. One came up behind Alexandra & I thought she was going to be scared, but instead she reached out her hand to shake his hand! He took her to his treasure chest & gave her the biggest "treasure" (necklace) I've ever seen! He must have thought she was special, because it was the largest necklace in the treasure box.


They also had a ship (well, a front of a ship) that Alexandra climbed aboard & pretended to steer. She was fascinated by the skeleton hanging from the front of the ship.

The last group of dancers from Jamaica pretended they were slaves, as that is another large part of Jamaican history. Their singing and dancing was wonderful - unfortunately, my pictures weren't so wonderful.
Here are the Jamaican foods I tried for the first time:

• chicken curry - so-so
• tamarind - I loved it, but very strong - they are related to the date - kind of in a nut shell that they cracked for me & then the fruit is around a large pit
• Guava Jelly - very good (Alexandra didn't think so - she prefered the crackers) - I even bought a jar
• Solomon Gundy (mixed with cream cheese) - I liked this & bought some - Alexandra said she liked it, too, but later changed her mind - very strong & I could only eat a few bites at a time - here is a description I found online: "Solomon Gundy is a smoked red herring made into a spicy fish paste with Scotch bonnet peppers and other seasonings."

Resources:

• Anansi (a Rabbit Ears video)
• Jamaica (a True Book)
• The Houston International Festival has teacher resources available for Jamaica at http://www.ifest.org/ifest2006/education/pdf/exercisesforweb.pdf - we read a lot of stories about Anansi & a few other things about Jamaica