Finally, Europe Day has arrived! This means playing on home turf for me. Except that it’s basically looking at Europe from an American perspective since as the only European around, I’m just a tiny minority! So, I’m never really sure whether I should be amused or annoyed at all the medieval artifacts my American colleagues dig up to represent Europe. It’s not quite what Europe is like, and it’s certainly not the way the Chinese perceive Europe, in whose eyes the European continent is highly developed, modern and sophisticated. But I’ve given up hope trying to convince my American colleagues to point out some of Europe’s modern accomplishments (such as soccer, European cars, developments in renewable energies/environmental protection, tourism, etc. to mention just a few). And so I’m puttering around between medieval castles, Viking ships, and the guillotine, thinking to myself: “I’m sure I’ve ran into one of those Vikings in Europe before … just can’t quite remember where exactly … but certainly, they must be out there somewhere …!”
Anyways, I still had fun doing my annual M&M competition again, for which the students have to guess how many M&Ms are in a jar. The winner gets to keep the jar with the M&Ms, and this year, it was one of the foreign faculty kids who was the lucky winner!
Here are the latest pics from today:
And I did have a favorite after all: I loved the Dutch windmill that one of my colleagues had put together! I think it really was one of the best contributions to this year’s exhibition, period!
Saying Thanks …
Last but not least, it’s the 3rd day of my 30 days of thanks, and today I’m thankful for having had a fun afternoon with my students at the Europe Day Fair.