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Easter Internationally
Stories about Easter traditions, tasting of festive dishes and joint preparation of palms and decorations – this is how international students learned about Polish Easter customs. Integration meetings combined with an immersion into Polish culture were held at the Copernican Integration Centre.
Easter meetings of international students of the Erasmus Mundus GOALS and Erasmus+ programmes were held at the Copernican Integration Centre on 20th and 22nd March.
The first of these was attended by international students enrolled in the prestigious Governance & Administration of Leisure and Sports International Master programme under the Erasmus Mundus programme. They are spending their second semester at the NCU Faculty of Economic Sciences and Management as part of the specialisation track: leisure, sports and event management.
At the Copernican Integration Centre, students from the GOALS programme had the opportunity to learn about the most important traditions and customs associated with the Easter period, such as śmigus-dyngus (Water Fight Day), colouring eggs, preparing Easter eggs or decorating an Easter basket. They made colourful palms and Easter wishes with their own hands. The most exciting experience, however, was the food tasting: the students enjoyed the unique taste of horseradish and the characteristic smell of cress. They were also able to taste white sour rye soup and a traditional vegetable salad.
Two days later, also at the Copernican Integration Centre, there was a meeting of Erasmus+ students who are spending the summer semester at the Nicolau Copernicus University. The programme included an Easter breakfast, during which they could taste traditional festive dishes and hear about Easter customs and the symbolism associated with the holy sacrament, as told by ethnologist Renata Lesner-Szwarc.
Afterwards, students took part in workshops on making Easter palms and creating Easter eggs. The former was conducted by Justyna Permus-Sałańska, an artist and educator. Decorating wooden eggs, on the other hand, was handled by Aimable Mugabo, a Rwandan multidisciplinary artist known for his abstract paintings and paper works that are created from recycled materials.
The event ended with a hunt for chocolate Easter eggs, which were hidden in the grounds of the Copernican Integration Centre. Small gifts were prepared for those who found most of them.
