We went to the KC Ethnic Enrichment Festival today. I took a wrong turn and had to go into Swope Park thru the main entrance instead of on Gregory. That would normally be okay, but a lot of people showed up and we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic for about 20 minutes as we tried to get into the park. It was a beautiful day and I overheard one guy saying that he had never seen so many people at the festival: “Usually it’s 100° or raining.”

The festival was a lot of fun. As we walked in the kids picked up “passports” and each country with a booth had a stamp. The kids loved going from country to county getting their passports stamped. At the Chinese booth, they wrote the kids name in the passports in Chinese. (I assume mandarin, but I don’t know.)

After visiting all the booths we ended at Tanzania and spent a long time looking at pictures a teacher had taken while visiting sponsored schools in Tanzania. Kansas City has a sister city in Tanzania and we have a particular interest since on of our Compassion kids is in Tanzania.

At one booth they had belly dancing outfits for sale. I encouraged Enid to buy one, but she settled for a few pictures:

Then we ate. Every booth had ethnic food, but no samples. So if you wanted to try something you would have to spend $1-3 at each booth. Times 47 booths and that’s a lot of green. We each picked out what we wanted to eat: Ora 5 had Vietnamese chicken kabobs. I took the vegetables off for him. Aspen and Ewan weren’t hungry for supper so they had baklava. Enid had trouble choosing between German and Israeli and chose a sample platter from Israel. I had a gyro from Greece.

Then the kids wanted souvenirs: Ora and Ewan got marionettes from the Mexico booth:

Aspen got a Hello Kitty spoon from the Japanese booth. Enid got a purse, but I don’t remember where from.