Global Village is a staple event in the RBHS social calendar and proves to be an explosion of culture each year. However, the work that goes into the festival should not go unnoticed.
For the entire week of Global Village there are different events each day that celebrate cultures across the world.
“Monday was the kick off of the whole event, volunteers in the main commons provided students with henna and origami. Tuesday was international poetry and music from around the world. Wednesday was one of my all time favorites, the international fashion show,” junior student council member RonTayza Hill said. “Thursday is the final performance of the Indian dance, but there’s also other dancing groups from [different] places. Friday is the grand finale of it all. People go all out setting up booths to teach about different countries.”
The booths of global village are especially tasking, often with many kids working together to bring the food, sounds and looks of a country to a student’s senses.
“Most of the work going into [our] booth is cooking. There is going to be a selection of cool foods and there has to be a lot of it,” junior China booth member Erica Garrison said. “We are having a bunch of different foods like fried rice and noodles. Also, people are bringing things they have from China which is going to be really cool. I’m excited to work the booth because I think it’s really fun to talk to everyone and teach them something new and also to learn myself.”
Aside from the booths, students planned extensively to set up cultural dances that performed at the February assembly and will perform the Thursday of Global Village. With weekly practices since the beginning of the year, dancers worked hard to make their performances immaculate.
“We would be at Devesh’s house for 3-7 hours depending on what we were doing. First we had to pick songs, then the choreography and then we had to try to teach it to ourselves. After that we worked on creating formations and then we had to actually teach it to other people,” senior and Indian dance coordinator Catherine Maring. “Once we taught the other people the moves it got easier, but as we got closer to the assembly and now global village, we have to nitpick a bit more.”
On top of school work, the idea of an everyday practice can be daunting to a lot of busy students. The amount of work that goes into committing to a global village event can be intimidating and steer kids away from the challenge.  
“It was hard for a lot of people to make practices as we all have our own lives, but we made the best of the time we had. We had two practices a week, one on Thursday after school and the other on Friday morning,” Maring said. “It took a lot of time. There were mornings I had to get up earlier to get homework done before practice and some mornings where I couldn’t dance because just I had too much to do.”
Some students, however, find the commitment can be worth the stress and provide different world perspectives they had never heard of.
“I think it’s so cool to learn about other countries and hear about people’s first hand experiences being in another country not just visiting but actually living there,” Garrison said. “I think it’s so interesting because I personally don’t have any variety of culture in my family.”
The added bonus of seeing the fruits of their labor come together to create a great project that helps others experience new things is appreciated by students.

“Even with the stress [global village] added [to school], the event also served as a stress reliever as I was able to hang out with friends and goof-off. We had a lot of fun and I’m really going to miss it once all of our dances are over,” Maring said. “I’m very proud of how the dance turned out. We all put a lot of effort into it and I’m very excited for our performances.”