With our incredibly diverse school community comes a whole host of opportunities, including the chance to celebrate festivals from around the world!
Our brave international students presented an insightful morning talk to the whole school last week to teach us about celebrations in their own countries. We learnt about the magnificent Chinese Dragon Boat Festival which was at the end of June, about San Juan – a night of fireworks and fun on the streets of Catalonia on 23 June, and about the Japanese star festival called Tanabata which is coming on 7 July. As we will all be on our LSP trips, we decided that we simply had to celebrate it early!
Tanabata is based on an ancient Japanese myth where two lovers overcome obstacles in order to reach other on a special day (7 July) each year. Typically, it is celebrated in Japan by writing wishes on colourful slips of paper which are then tied to trees. This is why you’ll see the tree in our courtyard blossoming in hopes, wishes and dreams… waiting to come true!
The wishes varied from “I’d like a pet dragon”, to “I’d love to go to Japan” to “I wish that everyone would start looking after our earth”. What would you wish for? Whatever you choose, please don’t wish for rain on the 7 July. This means the two lovers in the story can’t meet and will have to wait another year. Fingers crossed for sunshine!
Emma Bennett-Jones
Head of EAL
