Last Saturday, I had a pivotal moment sitting at a table with total strangers at Crossroads Mall.

I had received an email earlier in the week, telling me about an “international gathering” that would be held at the mall on Saturday, Jan. 7. The theme of the event was “How is New Year celebrated in your culture? “Being that I’m the go-to diversity reporter, I figured I would swing by to check it out.

I’m not sure what I was expecting – a huge crowd watching a dragon puppet in honor of the Chinese New year tradition? Perhaps.

When I arrived at the mall, I actually walked right past the small group at the table with the “International Gathering” sign. It was only four individuals who hailed from places including Hong Kong/Panama, Russia, China and India.

I felt almost bashful when “Seattle” was all I had to bring to this roster of hometowns.

Quickly, I realized that this was inspiration for a column, rather than event coverage; because as I sat there for several hours, I couldn’t stop myself from joining in the conversation, as opposed to observing like a reporter. I heard about the Hindu Ugadi celebration in a region of India, and 14 days of New Year, which includes Orthodox Christmas, in Russia.

While there were many ways in which we differed, (I don’t think anything can compare to the traffic jams and multitudes of people who flood the streets for Chinese New Year) our traditions drew parallels and had similarities, too. Oranges and satsumas were an auspicious, “lucky” holiday food for many of us from the U.S. and Asia.

We also compared notes on other holidays. One woman and I discovered that we both honor females in March. In Russia, where she’s from, International Women’s Day is celebrated on the eighth, and in my Japanese American community, we celebrate Girl’s Day on the third.

Despite that all our native languages were different, and that we sometimes struggled to understand one another, all of us listened, asked questions and tried our best to learn when someone was talking.

It wasn’t tolerance – none of us simply “tolerated” our heavy accents, our Mandarin instead of Cantonese, or our monolingual limitations. To me, it felt a lot more like deep understanding, like acceptance.

Just a week before Martin Luther King Jr. Day Jan. 16, I was inspired.

I’m proud to report, from the trenches of the diversity beat, that the dream is alive in Bellevue. What we sometimes lack in socioeconomic diversity, we make up for in the 85 languages our children speak in schools, our 30 percent foreign-born population and the commitment that many of us share, of seeing each other for who we are, before a skin color or stereotype.

For more information about the national MLK Day of Service, go to http://mlkday.gov/. For more information about Bellevue’s MLK Day Celebration at Crossroads, go to http://www.bellevuewa.gov/.

Gabrielle Nomura can be reached at 425-453-4270.