Tonight was the Cultural Event for the conference, so lots of delicious
food and entertainment. (As a side note, it reminds me of school - we
didn't have parties, we had cultural events!) There were face painters and lots of music, even a drum circle. I've a few pictures here in the atrium and hall areas (which were still very much part of the event), but my pictures from inside the main room were too dark. You'll just have to check out the official IFLA FB and Flickr pages to get the full idea.
The main entertainment for the
evening was good, but it's still a large, crowded dance floor, and I
can only take so much before I need to slip away (introvert, remember). So as I was taking a moment in a side room, enjoying the calm for a
moment, three girls a little younger than me sat down on the couches
around where I was sitting. And I kid you not, one of them opened her
bag and pulled out knitting supplies for them!! I just started laughing, "Mine's in my room!"
The girls turned out to be
staff members for the conference, working for the company organizing the volunteers. They
were on duty tonight to manage the volunteers during the cultural evening, and had brought the knitting to help pass the time. The knitting is for a charity project going on
during the conference, and as I was sitting and chatting with them, one
ran into the Exhibition Hall to get another set of needles from the
charity's booth. So I, too, sat and knit a blanket square! Probably not what some would think of as an exciting Cultural Evening, but I had a great time!
I had a great time chatting with the girls, who were all South African, and just as much fun listening to them. It seems it's a matter of routine to shift from English to Afrikaans and back, like Spanglish. So we talked about languages for a little while, which I found very interesting. There are 11 official languages in South Africa, and it's not uncommon to know 2 or 3, plus a smattering of words from others. I was told that those speaking the African languages likely know even more, since the tribal dialects can be pretty similar. Then English is the business language, and Afrikaans is still very much in common use. Even the ATM I visited gave you 4 language choices - English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu. Apparently the younger generation (like the girls I was chatting with) are more prone to mushing the languages together, while their parents tell them to 'keep it pure', and hold consistent in language choice at least until completing the sentence. It reminded me of the movie Tortilla Soup, where the father is constantly fussing at his daughters to pick one language and stick to it.
And my final thought for the night is that I didn't look for knitters, and hadn't tried to go yarn shopping, but the knitters still found me :)
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