Notes from Montreal

I went to the Annual Anthropological Meeting in Montreal, Canada last week where I presented my working paper on an Indonesian megachurch and how it works with Christian institutions in the United States. I loved this conference! Every second, I saw acts of generosity reflected in people's sharing their important work, commenting and giving input to others' presentations. I was really fortunate to meet some important people in Anthropology of Religion, a subfield that I am most interested in. One of them was Simon Coleman whose work is on the Anthropology of Christianity. Dr. Coleman served as the commentator for our session and presented an eight-page commentary paper that was beautifully written. He encouraged me to keep in touch with him, and I absolutely will! In fact, I am thinking of making my dearest mentor Merlyna Lim and Simon Coleman as the outside readers for my next semester's class called Research Project (I haven't asked them though).

Anyway, conferences like this always remind me why I am in school and why I want to be a teacher. It is all about sharing knowledge, helping people to understand things that are happening around them in all their complexities, and possibly inviting them to make their own contribution. If this is the least I can do to make this world a better place, so be it.

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Town Hall? I forgot what building this was.



Notre-Dame Basilica



From outside of Palais de Congres (Convention Center), place of the annual meeting



Haunted House in Montreal