The Foreign Language Week will kick off today (May 9th) with a series of traditional dances from various countries at the foyer in front of the Carrie Chang Music Hall at 12 noon today. Spectators are able to enjoy Japanese traditional dance with folding fans, French court dance, Spanish Flamingo, American Hip-hop, and Russian folks dance. They can also vote for their favorite three dances, which will be shown again in a bigger celebration, on May 13th.

In this action-packed week, there will be theaters, a variety show and exhibitions of photography, food, artifacts, books and wine from France, Germany, Spain, Russia, the US, the UK and Japan. For example, from this Monday to Thursday between 10 am to 5 pm, there is wine and cultural life of Europe, Japan and Americas on display at the Exhibition Hall in the Business Management Building. For those who are hungry, various traditional cuisines of these countries are on offer on the Poster Street. You can, of course, decide in what order you would like to savor these feasts of food and drinks.

Furthermore, there will be two open-air movies, one German and the other Spanish, shown at 7 pm on 10th and 11th on the Ching-sheng Square. Entrance is free. Movies aside, theater performances are also abundant. Monday night is for “Adios, Havana” in Spanish, Tuesday “Bald Soprano”, a play of Absurdism in French, “Wozzeck” on Wednesday in German, and “Mysterious Man” on Thursday in Russian.

Finally, such an eventful week will be wrapped up by a variety show, in which a mock TV language-teaching program will be staged, demonstrating funny ways of learning foreign languages. A play, which is a concerted effort of the six foreign languages departments, entitled “The Curse”, will be shown as well. (~ Ying-hsueh Hu )