That's why I haven't been able to take, let alone post, pictures.
Pictures that you'll see below were taken by D.
But before that, let me tell you a bit about something that made me frown this last week. It happened in the meeting for the Friendship Program that was organized by the International Office here.
In this Friendship program, International students (especially new students) have an opportunity to be matched with an American person or family - all of whom are volunteers. Before I (along with the other students) will be matched with these volunteers, I had to attend a session. Turned out that in the session, we were basically told about what the "friendship" was not about, that we could not expect our American friend(s) to become our academic advisor, financial guarantor, immigration counselor, etc. We were also told about all the "rules" to make friends with the Americans: that you should be punctual, thoughtful (don't stay at their homes until late), and many other rules.
I was so wanting to just raise my hands and say:
Excuse me... but, a friendship is reciprocal. It is a two-way relationship.
Why didn't you explain about OUR rules that the Americans should know?
You didn't even ask us if there are rules that they (i.e. the Americans) should know!
But of course I remained silent.
I was just glad that outside of that meeting, I met an American family that did not tell me about all these rules I should follow in trying to make friends with them. They asked about what I liked, but also said about their preferences. They offered me to go to the state fair with them. We just laughed together. We talked. For a moment, the boundaries between Americans vs internationals were gone. There were only humans. And as humans, it turned out we spoke the same language.
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Pictures taken at the Indiana State Fair, Indianapolis, 2010, by DK
It's annoying to hear how Americans can be so arrogant and think that they are the very top of human society in the world. I guess they need to open their mind and heart to find out how small their world is. :)
ReplyDeletenice pictures :)
Thanks V. What annoyed me was it got to the point where friendship was so institutionalized that all the rules influenced the way we think about our "Ameican friends" and about ourselves. Of course all the rules were obviously based on past experiences, but the meeting could have been done differently. For instance, they could have a couple people told about what they did in and got out of the past friendship programs. I think it would give a nice "voice" from the international students. Besides, we would be able to learn something at least from two different stories. What was absent from the meeting was an agency from the side of the international students.
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