Our topic for next week's class is going to be "Diversity." Your Blog topic for this week will be in preparation for that class:
Blog about something you have learned from another student who comes from a different racial, ethnic, or cultural background. And you may interpret "cultural background" in whatever way seems fit.
FYI, we had last year's class do this same blog topic, and we got some really interesting responses. I did a blog on the same topic along with them, and you might find it a bit entertaining, so here it is for you folks:
I had a stroke of wonderful luck when I was in college--I got to spend two summers touring Europe with the American Wind Symphony. We traveled all over Europe by bus--went through Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. We stayed with host families wherever we went, and our performances were on the Point Counterpoint II--a barge that our conductor navigated from port to port for our concerts. (He was actually a much better captain than a conductor, but oh well....). I learned so much from those trips that, even years later, it's hard for me to appreciate just how the eight months I spent with the AWS changed my outlook on life and my understanding of others and myself.
In trying to decide what to blog about here I unearthed the journal that I kept in fits and starts throughout the trips. One of the most eye-opening stops of the journey was our week in Leningrad, the year before the Berlin Wall fell. The USSR was still the biggest Communist country in the world, and life there was very different from life in Waco, Texas, where I was in college. Here's an excerpt from my journal--it kind of makes me smile and laugh at myself a little.
"July 29, 1989; Leningrad
"My, my--what a day. First thing this morning I used the communal bathtub--to brush my teeth in! I still haven't found the sink. It took an hour for my host Olga and I to get to the October Hall for rehearsal. We rehearsed for several hours with a Russian army band. These bilingual rehearsals are incredible. The big story of my day was one of the Russian oboists, Ilya. After rehearsal, of course, all of us oboists had to compare reeds, oboes, etc. I stayed and talked with Ilya for awhile about oboes, music, Russia, life, and everything. For a present he gave me a little bag with some WW II bullets and a piece of wood from a Russian ship in it. And I think I may have a date with him Wednesday night. Wow--I have a date with a Russian soldier! He keeps talking about "promenade"--I'll have to ask Olga about that in the morning.
"After rehearsal we had lunch time. The organized restaurant lunch was 4 rubles, so quite a few of us just bummed it. I found a large bread-bagel thing for .07 rubles, so that was lunch. A few of us walked around for awhile, and then we all had a bus tour of the city. We saw tons of monuments, and one of the other guys had a good comment: 'Yeah, the monuments are great, but what good are they when the people are all dirt poor?' And another thing--we saw lots of cathedrals, but all but one of them had been turned into museums. The Russian people we see seem to live in such poverty, and yet they are all wonderful, wonderful people--kind and generous and thoughtful.
Some random thought. Olga says her religion is "music." I have no idea what I ate tonight for supper--some kind of meat. One of our flutists has learned that there are such things as bedbugs. Russian oboists buy their reeds, as they can't get supplies to make their own. There doesn't seem to be any toilet paper in Russia. I did see "Santa Claus" in the Russian/English dictionary. I figure I'll get sleep after we leave Russia and move onto Finland--too much to take in here."
In trying to decide what to blog about here I unearthed the journal that I kept in fits and starts throughout the trips. One of the most eye-opening stops of the journey was our week in Leningrad, the year before the Berlin Wall fell. The USSR was still the biggest Communist country in the world, and life there was very different from life in Waco, Texas, where I was in college. Here's an excerpt from my journal--it kind of makes me smile and laugh at myself a little.
"July 29, 1989; Leningrad
"My, my--what a day. First thing this morning I used the communal bathtub--to brush my teeth in! I still haven't found the sink. It took an hour for my host Olga and I to get to the October Hall for rehearsal. We rehearsed for several hours with a Russian army band. These bilingual rehearsals are incredible. The big story of my day was one of the Russian oboists, Ilya. After rehearsal, of course, all of us oboists had to compare reeds, oboes, etc. I stayed and talked with Ilya for awhile about oboes, music, Russia, life, and everything. For a present he gave me a little bag with some WW II bullets and a piece of wood from a Russian ship in it. And I think I may have a date with him Wednesday night. Wow--I have a date with a Russian soldier! He keeps talking about "promenade"--I'll have to ask Olga about that in the morning.
"After rehearsal we had lunch time. The organized restaurant lunch was 4 rubles, so quite a few of us just bummed it. I found a large bread-bagel thing for .07 rubles, so that was lunch. A few of us walked around for awhile, and then we all had a bus tour of the city. We saw tons of monuments, and one of the other guys had a good comment: 'Yeah, the monuments are great, but what good are they when the people are all dirt poor?' And another thing--we saw lots of cathedrals, but all but one of them had been turned into museums. The Russian people we see seem to live in such poverty, and yet they are all wonderful, wonderful people--kind and generous and thoughtful.
Some random thought. Olga says her religion is "music." I have no idea what I ate tonight for supper--some kind of meat. One of our flutists has learned that there are such things as bedbugs. Russian oboists buy their reeds, as they can't get supplies to make their own. There doesn't seem to be any toilet paper in Russia. I did see "Santa Claus" in the Russian/English dictionary. I figure I'll get sleep after we leave Russia and move onto Finland--too much to take in here."
You can check out the American Wind Symphony here, should you be interested. You can't actually make me out, but I'm there, just to the conductors left.
