International tastes flavor CultureFest

While CultureFest aimed to bring together students and highlight the diversity of the student body, it also allowed people to experience several ethnic foods.\n"Food, music and people -- that's all you really need," said Gerald Mitchell, graduate assistant at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, yesterday evening outside the IU Auditorium.\nMitchell was referring to the very popular "welcome back" event geared at incoming freshman called CultureFest, which provided students with not only a fabulous guest speaker, but a wide variety of information booths that featured foods from various cultural centers and organizations. \nMitchell represented only one of several organizations at the event. Also on hand was La Casa Latino Cultural Center, the Asian Culture Center, the Campus Religious Leaders Association, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Student Support Center, the Leo R. Dowling International Center and many others.\nAs Mitchell filled the snow cone maker at the Neal-Marshall booth, he sbluntly noted the benefits of having food at an event such as CultureFest.\n"Everybody's hungry ... and freshmen don't have any money," he said.\nThis may have been a contributing factor to the large student body turnout at the event. In addition to snow cones, the Neal-Marshall Center had catered food from Black Skillet, a Terre Haute-based catering company, which provided food like pork, chicken, sweet potato pie and red rice and beans.\nStanding in line at the Asian Culture Center, Tanzanian-born freshman Mustafa Shariff described his views on the food.\n"(I am) open-minded to try other food, particularly Latin food because it has spice," he said.\nHe also commented on experiencing crab rangoon and a vegetarian egg roll off the center's menu.\n"It's definitely different, but I like it. The egg roll tasted like donuts. They were good." \nDenise Boo, a volunteer at the Asian Student Union, said that it had mostly "Asian finger food" to offer and added a large part of cultural differences can be found in the contrasts of food. \nOn the other side of Showalter Fountain, La Casa served raspados (Spanish for ice cone with flavored syrup) and rice and chicken, catered by local restaurant Legacy of the Incas. Zelideh Martinez, a graduate assistant at La Casa, was working with students and staff to serve students from the menu.\n"Food kind of gets people in here -- then we can talk to them about more than what food we have ... talk to them about the calendar for Hispanic events and about the services we provide," she said.\nThe Indiana Memorial Union provided attendees with hamburgers and veggie burgers.\n"We've always done burgers ... IMU catering represents American food at the festival," said head chef Victor Sturm.\nWho can imagine American food without envisioning a good box of pizza? \n"Pizza is a pretty popular food," said Adam Cohen, the student president of Hillel, which affiliates with CARLA. \nCohen explained why his organization was serving food at the festival.\n"We're pretty much here to serve pizza -- everyone just wants free food … but if we can put something with free food, maybe people can get a little more out of it than a full stomach," he said.\nNear the CARLA booth, freshman Sierra Stridel explained more than an empty stomach guided her to the food. The lecture influenced her adventurous tastes.\n"After the lecture, I felt so inspired to try some international food," she said.