This week's miscellanea

My regard for the copyright and intellectual properties laws of the States fought a losing battle the other day against my penchant for the political intrigue in Westeros. That is, I bought a bootleg DVD of the Game of Thrones first season for less than $5. Any misgivings or guilt I had for the fact that my money did not go into the pockets of the right people was quickly washed away when I popped in the first episode. Sword play and political intrigue are apparently my Xanax.

There was an interesting in class experience in two of my freshmen courses this week. I broke the students up into groups of four, within each group there were two pairs. The groups of four would choose a topic that the two pairs would debate, than the pairs would separately write their arguments. That was the idea. In practice what happened, with every single group in both classes mind you, is that the group of four would create the two sides of the debate together. When they got up in front of the class to present their arguments, their debates were no less spirited than if they had written the arguments separately. I recommended to both classes that they write their debates separately (which would have been the automatic assumption of most US university students), but I did not prevent them from working in the groups of four as it didn’t ultimately negatively impact the goal of the lesson: get them speaking in front of class. This experience reminded me of a quote in an article I read earlier in the week stating that amongst Chinese students, “ individualism is anathema”. I’m not meaning to denigrate the students’ methods, only comment on the distinct classroom behavior between what I am used to, and what I see before me every day as a teacher here.

In my American Culture classes with third year students we had great discussions on the American family. We covered a range of topics, including: the nuclear family, divorce, single parenting, same sex marriage, interracial marriage, etc. The students handle the topics maturely (sometimes a challenge for students here, especially the lads), and we had some great conversation. When told them how most of the topics we were discussing in class were present in my family (don’t worry fam, most of the skeletons are still in the closet), they all did their “waaaaa!!!!!” (translation: “Wooooowwwwww!!!”) sound. An interjection I hear quite often when I say, what to myself and most of the people I know, are seemingly mundane things. Always fun to have glimpses into what is unusual or amazing to someone with a vastly different set of life experiences.

Was my first burger in two months as good as a juicy lucy? Hardly. To me, was it still a welcome experience, akin to putting on one’s favorite sweater in the fall after its summer in the closet or seeing an old friend after a few years apart? Yes. But one must understand, I love cheeseburgers more than the average man. Pictured below: fleeting bliss.