Thanks, Gracias, Danke,
धन्यवाद, 谢谢, Merci

Thank you to our beautiful Madera community for making International Night a fabulous, food-filled evening!

A special thank you to the Dad’s Club, Veronica Medina-Ross and Gaurav & Leura Mathur,for help with set-up and clean-up. Thank you to Titania Buchholdt and her son, Rocco Ray, for performing, and to Ms. Wu and Lloyd Lee-Lim for their crazy Bizarre Food Challenge (we’ll see if anyone can top that next year!). Christine Blanchet Aitkins provided a wonderful playlist of music from around the world and Steve Aitkins did a top-notch job of MC-ing the event; thank you both for making the tone of the evening warm and fun! Thank you to Krisha Patel for collecting recipes for the International Cookbook.

And last but definitely not least, thanks to the many, many families who brought a dish to share. The food was amazing and plentiful; a bounty of generosity truly reflective of the spirit of Madera!

PS: If you’d still like to submit a recipe for the cookbook, please email it to heymaiabee@yahoo.com or meike.visel@gmail.com

PPS: There were a few dishes left behind at the event; they will be placed in the lost and found.

Bizarre Food Challenge at International Night

We handed out a total of 33 buttons: 11 people survived the Beginner level by eating the jellyfish, 6 people survived the Intermediate level by also eating the century egg, and 16 people survived the Expert level by also eating the stinky tofu.

There were about a half dozen kids who couldn’t finish the jellyfish. There were also a couple kids who ran away in the middle of the challenge, before we could give them a button.

Principal Makela was awesome. She and her daughter were the first people to take the challenge. Principal Makela successfully ate everything!

First grader Kai Mathur was the most determined. He kept nibbling at his stinky tofu for about a half hour, but he never gave up and he finished!

If you have any feedback for next year, please let us know. We definitely have to recruit another helper for next year. We were steadily busy throughout the night and Ms. Wu and I weren’t able to eat dinner.

Thanks again Maia and Meike for doing a great job this year!

Lloyd