the ukes!

tonight we went to the united church for a canada world youth community dinner/fundraiser for the Tsawalk Partnership/West Coast Aquatic. WCA works with/under Tsawalk to work in partnership with/as community to do research and grassroots mobilization around environmental and cultural stewardship and coastal waters. Very cool. The dinner was a Ukranian-themed dinner (apple pierogies, cabbage rolls, beet root salad, borscht, that kind of stuff) and the food was OK but it was nice to be around a couple hundred people and food (and friends!).

It got me briefly thinking about Canada World Youth and "culture" esp. because one of the speakers said something about how the dinner gets us to learn more about "other cultures" (um, when everyone i was with including myself has some sort of ukranian background?) and having CWY in our community also brings us exposure. It's cool that kids from other countries come to Port to volunteer and learn about our community and share with us their lives and experiences, etc. What I think is interesting about CWY is the construction of cultural identity for these teenagers. They wore "traditional" outfits and danced "traditional" songs and sang "traditional" songs (and some pop songs too), and made us "traditional food", but were wearing skinny jeans and had facial piercings. It was amazing. I'm curious to know how much of CWY "focusing" on their "ukranian" culture actually negates their own specific experiences of culture, the culture they create, etc. Kind of a cultural diaspora. HM.

Tomorrow farmer's market, arroxvale farm market, and seedy saturday. YIP!