New Friends

This past Friday, Mark and I had some Chinese students from UTD over for an American dinner of Hamburgers and Hotdogs. Mark's group from one of his Cross-cultural classes came as well to get to know the students better. It was such a neat experience to talk to these students about cultural differences and many, many cultural similarities. Before Mark's assignment with Alan, I had never even once thought about getting to know an international student. This experience with Alan has really blessed my life this semester.I will be really sad to see him go home. He leaves to go back to Shanghai in January We really hope we can continue to get to know other international students like him. Our World is BIG. Life is short.

Alan and His wife (who lives in Shanghai) read this blog...so, Hi Alan and Alan's Wife!I wish we could have known you too.

Interesting Fact: Most of these students have "American" names like Alan, Xavier, Bill, Audrey, etc. When they came to America, they just chose a name that they liked or was close to their Chinese name. Audrey told me she has changed her name several times to different names that she just liked. How fun would that be? She said she has settled on Audrey. I asked her if she was an Audrey Hepburn fan like I am....She looked puzzled and said "no...I like Audrey Raines from Season 4 of the TV show,
'24'." I agreed with her and told her that I thought that that Audrey was indeed really pretty. Good choice, Audrey.

Here is Mark's group from his class and our new Chinese friends


In the following picture, Mark is with a traveling Chinese Calligraphy professor that is currently teaching at UTD. He brought us two beautiful Calligraphy pieces. One is a Chinese saying and the other says, "The Lamb Family" We cannot wait to get them framed and put them in our living room.


Christmas miracle: Everyone fit around one "table" (okay, one dining room table and 2 card tables plus a high chair)