EVERETT — Sandro Rivadeneyra was looking at crayon-colored pictures of a traditional Russian doll when Natalia Tretiakova spotted him.
She invited the Colombian man to a table to see the real thing: several colorfully painted wooden dolls that the Russian woman had brought to teach others about her homeland.
Tretiakova told him that the dolls —"matryoshkas" — are mostly just for tourists who enjoy opening up one doll after another and discovering a smaller doll inside.
But Tretiakova’s mother played with the dolls as a kid, as did millions of other Russian children.
Tretiakova was one of several people who brought in crafts or other objects from their homelands to a celebration of cultural heritage Monday at the offices if the South Everett Neighborhood Center and the Hispanic group Familias Unidas. More than three dozen people — most of them participants in the two groups’ programs — attended the second annual event.
The idea was not only for people to learn more about other cultures. It was also to learn more about their homelands or, in the case of U.S.-born participants, their ethnic backgrounds.
Alla Geychenko is from the Ukraine, but she and her husband speak Russian in their Everett home because he comes from a part of the Ukraine near Russia. That causes confusion — even in her family, she said.
"Even our children don’t know the difference between Russian and Ukrainian," said Geychenko, a Slavic outreach worker for the South Everett Neighborhood Center.
Geychenko brought in the traditional Ukrainian shirts that her grandmother knitted for her parents’ wedding, a colorful pillowcase and a map of the Ukraine.
"I want to show my kids their roots, so they can appreciate them," Geychenko said.
Nine-year-old daughter Allison said she likes learning about the Ukraine and wants to visit the country one day.
"I want to see where my mom’s from," she said.
Rivadeneyra said he enjoyed Tretiakova’s lesson about the matryoshkas.
"It’s a culture so different from my culture" he said. "I thought it was probably just some handicraft, but she told me it’s a toy."
Maria Burgess has to go back to the end of the 19th century to find an ancestor who was born in Ireland. But she enjoyed collecting photos and pictures from Ireland and writing historical tidbits for a poster on Ireland that she prepared for the cultural celebration.
She explained on the poster what the colors of the Irish flag signify, what "Erin go Bragh" means — it’s Gaelic for "Ireland Forever" — and how 4.5 million Irish people emigrated to the United States between 1820 and 1920.
"Except for Native Americans, we’re all of immigrant ancestry," Burgess said. "People risked their lives to come over here, and it’s important to remember that. If it weren’t for my immigrant ancestors, I wouldn’t be here."
Reporter David Olson:
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