Last week, the director of the school where I teach invited me to lunch. He said that “The Americans” would be coming and that I should come along. Err, OK, who are they? “They’re some Americans that come around and… you should come to lunch with us!” Ok, It didn’t seem as though I would be getting much info from him. A couple of days later, the principle asked if I was going to the lunch. “You should go, the Americans will be there.” Once again, who are they? “They come from the United States and do some things, I’m glad that you’ll get to meet them…”
I was mighty curious about who these people were, well yesterday I had lunch with them. It turns out that there’s an American here that runs some sort of aid/development company. Every so often, he goes home and organizes a trip for people that are interested in coming over here. This time it was a group of 10 or so from South Carolina. Most of them were between mid 50’s and mid 70’s I’d guess. It’s actually a good arrangement for everyone. They come and see the country a little bit, and then they go over to the school and they talk to the students. Of course the students enjoy talking to the Americans as well. Both sides get to learn about the other and the students get a real workout with their conversational abilities. Some of them had pretty strong South Carolina accents, I wonder how well the students coped with that…
One of the ladies belongs to a quilting club and she brought along a quilt to give to the director of the school for being so hospitable. I was really jealous, it was a beautiful quilt, and I’m not sure the director knew what to do with it or even what the significance of it was. I should try to explain to him what quilts like that are all about. If he still seems nonplussed, I’ll try to buy it from him:-)
Anyway, we were taken to the Green Land restaurant and we stuffed ourselves. It was a good time and they were really nice folks. Once again, if these people can come over here, I am positive that some of you can come over here. If this sort of thing (talking with the students) seems interesting, I can certainly arrange it along with seeing the sights. C’mon, it would be fun!