Fun time with students

We started a new session on Thursday with our international students. I met my students in class, and we had so much fun that day. They kept me laughing the entire class time. Several of them were Hispanic students, and one of them is about 18 years old, and he is very excited about being in the U.S. He's definitely one of the most enthusiastic students I've ever had. When we were going around the room telling about ourselves, he said that he spoke Chinese also, and he turns to the three older Chinese men in the class and starts speaking fake Chinese to them. The Chinese guys really thought he was speaking a Chinese dialect that they couldn't understand, and they started getting out their dictionaries and putting their heads together trying to figure out what he was saying. It was one of the funniest things.

On Friday, we had a picnic for the International Student department at UNO celebrating our 10 year anniversary two years after our 10 year anniversary. Katrina kind of threw a lot of things off schedule. We had a lot of visitors at the party, mostly people who had supported the program at one point or another. I was sitting next to an older man probably in his late 60's who had very strong political viewpoints. He tried to get one of my Chinese students to tell him her opinion about American government and Bush. Then after he found out I was from North Louisiana, he asked how conservative it was. I told him that in the last election, my hometown which is very conservative went almost 50/50 in the Presidetial election. He commented "So there's still hope after all." This, in turn, led us into a very unique discussion on my beliefs. I began to explain to him that I am a conservative, and I told him that I have very strong religious convictions as well. You could tell his opinion of me immediately lessened, but I wanted him to understand something. I've encountered a lot of postmodern beliefs during my time in higher level education. My beliefs are as far-fetched to them as some of theirs are to me. But most of them have a strong misconception of Christians. I wanted him to understand that yes, I am a Christian, but I love being in an environment where my faith is challenged because if it's not challenged then it's not worth very much. I do have my beliefs, but I will not force those beliefs on others. I will tell anyone anything he wants to know about what I believe, but among postmoders, you cannot forcefeed religion; they will simply throw it back up into your face.