The International Day of Friendship

Today’s session of the Gabfest Club (at Window on America center Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) was dedicated to the topic “The International Day of Friendship”. The United Nations (UN) observes this day since 2011 in order to promote the role that friendship plays in promoting peace in many cultures.
This year we focused our attention on the popular soviet term “The friendship of nations”. We tried to render the definition of this ideological principle into English and discussed the artifacts that symbolized this phenomenon in the Soviet times – the soviet order, one of the Moscow Universities, the “Nations’ Friendship” fountain at the Moscow Expo Center and “Nations’ Friendship” Arch in Kyiv. The tasks of describing these artifacts without preparation was very challenging, and only collective efforts of the group allowed us to work out acceptable descriptions.
 
The second part of the session was dedicated to a less complicated activity – we tried to describe and comment upon several editorial cartoons about the friendship between Russia and Ukraine. The group succeeded in explaining the symbolism of the cartoons in decent English. The bottom line of the discussion was – the reconciliation between the two nations will not happen soon.
The final part of the session was dedicated to the introductions of the new comers. The session caused heated debate and was quite educational for the younger generation.
Number of participants – 22 persons.

Have a look at more pictures, please