North Central fest provides international flavor at home

You didn't have to be at the Winter Olympics on Sunday to experience an international gathering of cultures, people and ideas.

North Central College's 22nd annual "Around the Corner, Around the World" International Festival provided a nice sampling of activities, foods and learning opportunities from across the globe, right in downtown Naperville.

Visitors could check out martial arts from Korea and Japan, watch flamenco dancers, see a classical Indian dance performance, enjoy Irish and German dance troupes and basically feel like they were on one of those Rick Steves trips.

Over the past two decades the festival has become something of a tradition that has grown to include more educational opportunities while continuing to showcase groups such as the Nartan Indian Dancers, who have been eager to share their culture since the festival began.

Visitors, for example, could take mini language-immersion classes to pick up a few words and phrases in German, Spanish, Japanese or Arabic.

The festival is a fundraiser for scholarships that help fund trips abroad for North Central students and help bring foreign students to campus to study, organizers said.

Last year, proceeds helped finance two North Central students' study abroad trips to Chile and Japan and brought a student from Honduras, another from the Philippines and a third from Vietnam to campus.