The International Showcase was an event held at Larry Mack Junior Middle School.
Greg Heffley and his classmates were assigned the project in November and was due in January of the following calendar year, Each of the kids in Greg's grade were assigned to a different country and had to present a trifold featuring information on that country, along with wearing a traditional costume and presenting a traditional dish from whatever country they were assigned to do their project on.
Greg was hoping to do his project on Italy (partly because of how much he loves pizza), but so many of his classmates also wanted Italy that the teachers did a drawing of who would get to do it. The student who was able to do his project on Italy was a boy named Dennis Tracton, which Greg thinks is unfair because Dennis can't eat cheese as he is lactose intolerant. Greg was ultimately assigned to do his project on the country of Malta. Greg did his best to get a head start on his project, but in the end, he completely forgot about the project until the day it was due.
Greg didn't know anything about the country Malta other than assuming it was somewhere near Russia (it's actually in the Mediterranean, of the coast of the Italian-region of Sicily), so once he realized that he had completely forgotten about his project, he scrambled a bunch of random stuff together for it (such as getting clothes from the Lost & Found and buying random items from the cafeteria to make a "national dish").
When kids from the elementary school and parents of the middle schoolers came by to visit the International Showcase, Greg discovered that there's a kid in his grade whose parents happen to originally be from Malta -- and when the Maltese couple came by to see what Greg had done for his project, they clearly weren't happy to see how their home country had been represented.
During the course of the International Showcase-event at the middle school, the room was heated and the students presenting Brazil and Bulgaria got into big argument that ultimately erupted into what basically amounted to a riot between pretty much all the other students in the room. Greg was initially hoping that because of the distraction caused by the fight, he'd get away with his rushed project, but he was ultimately forced to redo it.[1]
Known Participants[]
- Greg Heffley - Malta
- Rowley Jefferson - England
- Dennis Tracton - Italy
- Unnamed boy - Brazil
- Unnamed boy - Bulgaria
- Unnamed girl - Burundi
- Unnamed boy - France
- Unnamed student - Mali
- Unnamed student - Mauritania
- Unnamed boy - Mexico
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ The Meltdown, pages 10-19