Strangers in America; No American Friends
This article is so sad, and I have also seen it the other way around, hoardes of American students abroad, hanging out with other Americans, then other ex-pats, and lastly, the local inhabitants. It IS hard. The differences can seem overwhelming. (That is my very first blog entry, and it had to do with the risks you expose yourself to when you open yourself to a cross cultural relationship 🙂 ) Overcoming those differences makes life so much richer.
Thank you, Professor John Mueller, for forwarding this fascinating article:
Strangers in a Strange Land
March 4, 2013 – 3:00am
By
Elizabeth Redden
In interviews with 40 international students at four research universities, Chris R. Glass was struck by the relative absence of Americans from his subjects’ stories. The interviewees, half undergraduate and half graduate students, described close relationships with their international peers, including those coming from countries other than their own. But while they frequently characterized their American classmates as friendly or helpful, only rarely did they seem to play a significant role in their lives.
“Only one student has described a significant relationship with a U.S. peer and that student was from Western Europe and that peer was her boyfriend,” said Glass, an assistant professor of educational foundations and leadership at Old Dominion University. “That to me is a striking omission from the stories that they’re telling.”
As the number of international students at U.S. colleges continues to rise — and as the mix of international students has shifted in favor of undergraduates — there are increasing concerns as to how well they’re being integrated into campus life. There have been periodic reports of racist incidents and – overt discrimination aside – there is the question of disconnection raised by Glass’s research. Another study authored by Elisabeth Gareis, a communication studies scholar at Baruch College, found that nearly 40 percent of international students reported having no close American friends. In explanation, many of the students cited “internal factors” such as limited language proficiency or shyness, but they also described a perceived lack of interest on the part of American students.
At the recent Association of International Education Administrators annual conference, a roundtable session on the integration of international students (co-moderated by this Inside Higher Edreporter) drew a standing-room only crowd, as attendees discussed the difficulties they’ve encountered in encouraging and equipping American and international students to (productively) interact. Domestic students are not necessarily cross-culturally competent – a point made lucidly when one audience member described the tendency of American study abroad students to request compatriots as roommates. At the same time, international students may not always be interested in initiating contact. An audience member from a Midwestern institution shared his observation that a fair number of students from China – a rapidly growing and by far the biggest group of international undergraduates on U.S. campuses – seem to be more interested in interacting with one another than with their American classmates.
Yet, even those students who are interested may find social structures on campus to be exclusionary or mystifying or both. On American campuses dominated by fraternity and sorority life, or obsession over intercollegiate athletics, or where everyone seems to have gone to the same high school, international students may feel foreign in ways that go beyond their nationality. “The lack of interaction is as much due to individual attributes as it is to social context,” said Glass, who is conducting his qualitative research in collaboration with Rachawan Wongtrirat, the assistant director of Old Dominion’s international initiatives office. Given the natural tendency of people to gravitate toward others who are like them (what social psychologists call the “similarity-attraction effect”), “are universities creating contexts where these interactions can happen?” he asked.
In interviews with Inside Higher Ed, researchers and professionals in international education spoke about the challenges in this regard and their efforts to create opportunities for meaningful interactions between domestic and international students through programming. It seems that many universities have a long way to go in living up to the promise presented by increasing numbers of international undergraduates – the promise being increased opportunities for sustained and meaningful cross-cultural interactions in classrooms, dorm rooms, and so forth.
‘Encounters With Difference That Make a Difference’
“It’s a combination of factors that have made this issue so salient,” said Larry A. Braskamp, the president of the Global Perspective Institute and a professor emeritus at Loyola University Chicago. “One is there are just a lot more international students on campus now, particularly at institutions that have not historically had a lot. The second is that everybody is interested in global learning: we know we need to prepare students to be more globally competent. And the third is that these students represent on some campuses a fairly significant contribution to the bottom line. Most of these students pay full tuition and as a result a lot of institutions see them as one way to balance the budget. So they have to make sure that the retention rate is high; they have to develop a good reputation so that other students will come.”
In Braskamp’s research, he’s found that entering American freshmen do not tend to think complexly, are not comfortable amidst difference and do not typically have friends who are unlike them. “We’ve said, O.K., the implication of all this is we need to create ‘encounters with difference that make a difference,’ ” he said. “I’ve thought of it as students being on a journey: they start with rather simplistic views of themselves, of their social interactions and the ways in which they understand the world around them. So in some ways what we need to do in college is increasingly provide them opportunities for encounters to get them to rethink who they are, how they think, and how they relate to others. In many ways, international students coming on campus is an opportunity for students, faculty members, and international administrators to take advantage of that difference and that diversity. But it’s really hard work.”
Such encounters can be curricular, co-curricular or informal: in fact, Braskamp’s research suggests that informal encounters such as discussion of current events with other students may be the most impactful. Still, he emphasized that there’s much more that can be done in the classroom to facilitate such encounters. In a sample of about 48,000 undergraduates at more than 140 four-year colleges, he found that about one-third report never having taken a course that “focuses on significant global/international issues or problems” or that “included opportunities for intensive dialogue among students with different backgrounds and beliefs.”
As one audience member at the AIEA conference said, unless faculty members are on board, all the student services programs in the world won’t be enough: “Students really look to their professors to give them direction and advice and deepen their conversations, so if faculty were taught to embrace these conversations about ‘difference’ and ‘other’ and ‘cross-cultural competencies’ and international challenges in engineering, then those conversations would take on meaning for the students,” she said. Participants in the session described the value of professional development programs such as Duke University’s Intercultural Skills Development Program for faculty and staff.
Case Western Reserve University is another institution that has begun to offer training designed to help professors better serve international students and integrate them into the classroom: according to Molly Watkins, the university’s director of international affairs, the first two trainings focused on Chinese students and attracted 60 to 70 faculty members each. “There’s obviously a need,” Watkins said.
Opportunities for Meaningful Interaction
At the AIEA session, audience members discussed co-curricular strategies such as peer mentoring or “buddy” programs, living-learning communities and other residence life initiatives, and more robust orientations for international students. Many universities have some iteration of one or all of the above: Mount Holyoke College, for example, has a new “Global Partners” program that pairs returning study abroad students with new international students and holds “re-orientation” events for international students during the academic year. The University of Iowa is launching a new required online orientation program that will begin in the summer before the students arrive and continue with five to eight small-group sessions throughout the fall semester.
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, which had 611 international undergraduates last fall, has a host of programs with alliterative names like Campus Cousins, Friendship Families and Global Greeks, which pair international students with American students, local families and fraternity or sorority members, respectively. Wesleyan University is “trying to capitalize on the idea of roommates,” hosting a dinner for first-year international students and their roommates at the beginning of the fall semester, according to Alice Hadler, the associate dean for international student affairs and an instructor of English. St. Norbert College, a Roman Catholic institution in Wisconsin, has a living-learning community with 25 international and domestic students (international students are the resident advisers) and a 10-member interfaith group consisting of Muslim students from Saudi Arabia and domestic Christian students. Initiatives such as these reach only a small number of students, concedes Marcy O’Malley, St. Norbert’s director of international programming, but, she said, “What I’ve seen work is one-on-one.”
“Instead of superficial contact with a lot of people, do more meaningful contact with a smaller number, and let them be your ambassadors to the larger student body,” she said.
Christopher J. Viers, the associate vice president for international services at Indiana University at Bloomington, has used theInternational Student Barometer to survey students about their experiences, and cited the surprising finding that international students rate their relationships with American students as those that are most important to them (as compared to relationships with other students from their home country or international students in general). “In looking at the feedback that came in we thought very critically about what we could do to help facilitate opportunities for international and domestic students to interact in meaningful ways to hopefully have conversations and potentially build relationships,” Viers said.
In talking with colleagues across the country, Viers said he’s come to the conclusion that “too often our programming is limited to the one-time, big, annual event.” This event, which often takes the form of an international student fair or show, can be good in celebrating international students’ contributions to campus and perhaps can help a domestic student learn a bit about another culture or cultures, but, he said, “opportunities for meaningful transformative learning are pretty limited.” As such, he continued, “We work hard to provide the big annual event that helps to showcase the contributions of our students and the diversity of the population with the excitement and food and entertainment, but not a week goes by when we’re not putting together, hand-in-hand with students, small, highly interactive opportunities for domestic and international students to get together. We run a weekly noon concert series, for example, where students from our Jacobs School of Music perform classical music or folk music from their home country and then there’s a free lunch that’s provided. That regularly gets people who have an interest in music together.”
“It’s absolutely essential as colleges are putting in place plans to actively grow international enrollment that appropriate levels of service and support are put in place, and then the students have responsibilities as well,” Viers said. “So much of just about anything in life in terms of what you gain from an experience has much to do with what you put into it yourself. This is where at times perhaps those of us in the field of international education are not vocal about some of the very real, very significant additional hurdles and challenges that students from other countries face while they’re here: the enormous pressures that they’re under to succeed academically and to move as quickly as possible though a program. It’s very expensive to come to the U.S. to pursue an undergraduate degree. There are often major expectations from family members and others; there’s a lot of pressure to succeed and do well.” And then there are the extra academic challenges inherent in pursuing a degree in a non-native language. Is it any wonder that not every student will want to come out for mixers and “cultural coffee hours”?
“I think that sometimes we underestimate that pressure, and apply a different kind of meaning to the experience that we perceive a student is having,” Viers said.
Seafood Platter Deli AKA Gulf Coast Seafood Deli on 9 Mile Road
“We’re going to drive ‘all the way’ out there,” AdventureMan tells me and we laugh, because ‘all the way’ is such a relative term. When we lived in Kuwait and in Qatar, we would drive a minimum 30 minutes to get to a restaurant, any restaurant, not only because of distances but also because of traffic, horrendous traffic, in the evenings. While the Seafood Platter Deli is 13 miles away, it takes us less than 20 minutes to get there. Welcome to Pensacola 🙂
This is a very unusual restaurant. It is so old-timey Gulf Seacoast, and at the same time, I thought as we entered “My Moslem friends would love this!”
Many of my Moslem friends think Americans are unbelievers. They think we don’t talk about God. They don’t know we pray – sometimes without ceasing. Just as I was astounded as I learned things about Islam and Moslem culture living in the Middle East, they were also astounded learning things about us, like that we take care of our families. Think about it – most of what many people in the world know about Americans comes from the impact of cable TV. They watch American TV and they think they understand American culture. Horrifying thought, isn’t it?
So how amazing is it to walk into a restaurant where, as you stand at the counter to order, and you look at the big menu on the wall, there is a stand, with a bible on it. And there is paper, and a pencil, and a sign saying “Prayer requests.” I don’t know about your restaurant experiences, but this is unique in my experience – in America. In the Middle East, there are all kinds of restaurants with Qu’ranic verses on the walls, and the sounds of religious services piped into the restaurant. People talk about God all the time. It’s a whole different world; and my Moslem friends would feel right at home in the Seafood Platter Deli.
Of course, in Saudi Arabia, we would rush to buy our pre-sunset felafels, and then sit and munch, listening to all the souk grates coming down as shops closed for the Mahgrib prayer. Everything closed, five times a day, in Saudi Arabia, for prayer.
At the Gulf Coast Seafood Deli / Seafood Platter Deli (I don’t know what the real name is, and both names appear when you Google it) there are scriptures on the wall. When you sit down, the little basket holding condiments tells you to “count your blessings.”
The interior dining room (as opposed to the deli section, and the counter where you order food when you come in) is wall-to-wall sea mural, family friendly, Fish and sea life everywhere. There are also families who pray when their meal is delivered to the table, before they eat. The wait-staff is patient, and personal. You get the impression they truly want you to have a good experience at this restaurant.
We were hungry. We are mildly disgruntled to see piping hot food delivered to tables around us who arrived after we did, but not very. Even though we are hungry, we know that our ordering our food grilled or blackened slows things up in the kitchen, where the majority of the meals are fried. It is really really hard for people like us to watch other customers thoroughly enjoying their fried shrimp, fried catfish, fried grouper, fried scallops, etc. They look SO delicious. Every now and then, maybe once every couple months, we slip up and eat something deep fried, just because yes, yes, it tastes so good, and we know it is like the WORST thing for us. What a pity that deliciousness can be so lethal.
Ah! There it is! Our meals! We tuck right in and then I remember “Oh no! I haven’t taken any pictures!” AdventureMan is used to this, and bless his heart, he stops eating so I can shoot what is left of his grilled scallops, so tasty and delicious, so fresh!
I had so much salmon on my platter that I had salmon and steamed vegetables for dinner, too! The salmon was copious, lightly blackened, seared on the outside, moist on the inside, just the way I love it. It was some of the best salmon I have had in Pensacola (not exactly salmon country, but that little Alaska girl still lives in my heart and I can’t resist salmon when I see it on the menu.)
There’s another thing we loved about the Seafood Platter Deli – remember Dembo’s Smokehouse? We love restaurants that honor their heritage, and the Seafood Platter Deli has this wonderful wall:
Last, but not least, the food was so good, and so plentiful, that we couldn’t eat it all and ended up taking some home. We also took home some dessert, one dessert, $1.99 for a goodly portion of Vanilla Wafer pudding, that old-fashioned kind, maybe Banana pudding. It was so GOOD, we wish we’d gotten two. 🙂
Gulf Coast Seafood Deli / Seafood Platter Deli
Address: 2250 W Nine Mile Rd, Pensacola, FL 32534
Phone:(850) 969-3299
We love this place, and look forward to driving ‘all the way out there’ for more fabulous Gulf seafood.
START with Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh
I recently wrote a book review on River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh, which held me spellbound, so riveting that I had to order Sea of Poppies, which is actually the first volume of the trilogy. I had heard a review of River of Smoke on NPR and although it was written as the second volume in a trilogy, it can be read as a stand-alond.
Yes. Yes, it can be read as a stand-alone, but it is so much easier, I can state with authority, if you read them in order. Once I started Sea of Poppies, I also discovered an extensive glossary in the back, several pages, a list of the words, annotated with suggested origins, and it adds so much color to an already brilliantly colored novel. Much of both novels uses words from many cultures, and words that have been formed by another culture’s understanding of the words (some hilarious). If you like Captain Jack Sparrow, you’re going to love the polyglot language spoken by ship’s crews from many nations trying to communicate with one another. It can be intimidating, but if you sort of say the words out loud the way they are written at the beginning, you begin to find the rhythm and the gist of the communication, just as if you were a new recruit to the sea-going vessels of the early 1800’s. I loved it because it captured the difficulties encountered trying to say the simplest things, and the clever ways people in all cultures manage to get around it, and make themselves understood.
Sea of Poppies starts in a small Indian village, with one of the very small poppy gardens, planted on an advance from an opium factory representative, thrust upon the small farmer, with the result that most small Indian farmers converted their entire allotment from subsistence foods to poppies. Ghosh walks us through an opium processing factory, which is a little like walking through the circles of hell. We meet many of the characters we will follow in River of Smoke, and learn how this diverse group bonded into one sort of super-family through their adventures – and misadventures – together.
It is an entirely engrossing work. Sea of Poppies was short listed for the Man Booker award, and was listed as a “Best Book of the Year” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and The Economist. The theme is the opium trade, leading to the Opium Wars, with China, and is a chilling indictment of how business interests manipulate a population’s perceptions of national interests to justify . . . well, just about anything, in the name of profit.
The theme is woven through human stories so interesting, so textured, so compelling, that you hardly realize you are reading history and learning about the trade, cultures, travel, clothing, traditions, religions, food, and motivations as you avidly turn the pages.
I can hardly wait for the third volume. Get started now, so you’ll be ready for it when it comes out!
Kuwait Independence / Kuwait Liberation Congratulations
LOL, I actually congratulated Kuwaitis about a month ago when I thought I had missed the date and . . . I did! I missed it by a month! I was too soon!
So now it is really here – February 25 – 26. Congratulations, and we wish you well. We wish you resolution to your challenges of leadership and infrastructure issues. If you’ve noticed; it’s not like these are challenges unique to Kuwait; the flip-side of democracy can be logjams and stalemates, and then, suddenly, it can all shift and flow. We wish you some shift and flow after years of logjam.
Al Qaeda in Maghreb Spends Last Night in Timbuktu Destroying Ancient Manuscripts
Ignorant militants destroy ancient Islamic documents and writings; from yesterday’s BBC News:
A group of jihadis came knocking at the gate late on Wednesday night last week. But the Ahmed Baba centre in the Malian city of Timbuktu is not the kind of library that would accept visitors after dark.
The Islamist militants tricked the guard and said they were coming to secure the place. But once inside, they ransacked the centre’s reading room.
When historian Abdoulaye Cisse arrived early in the morning, the pile of ashes was still warm.
“They probably spent most of the night in there,” he said.
Dozens of empty handcrafted boxes still litter the floor of the hallway. Ashes haven’t been removed yet either.
A few people come in and out surveying the irreparable damage and lament the remains of a cultural trove kept in Timbuktu for centuries.
Treasure trove of African history
At least 2,000 manuscripts were stored in this centre that was opened in 2009, funded by the South African government.
The project was meant to catalogue and preserve the city’s historical documents, many of which continue to be held by families or smaller libraries.
Another 28,000 were due to be transferred to the Ahmed Baba premises but were instead sent to the capital after al-Qaeda militants arrived in the city last year.
Each box is tagged with a reference number and if the search is properly done, these tags should reveal the full extent of the damage.
It could also reveal how many were simply stolen.
“These fighters know too well how much these papers are valued, it’s a huge wealth that will be impossible to replace,” Mr Cisse told the BBC.
The Institute’s manuscripts date back to the 13th century (file image)
“When I surveyed the reading room, I found about 30 left so I brought them home to secure them,” he said.
The offending texts ranged from history to geography and astronomy, medicine and Islamic law; writings dating back in some cases as far as the 13th Century.
In the reading room, shelves were emptied and the desk equipped with a magnifying glass vandalised.
Named after a saint of the ancient city who wrote many manuscripts himself, the Ahmed Baba centre stands out for its modernity but was designed to echo the famous Timbuktu style of dry-mud walls.
The Islamist militants prepared to flee last week knowing that an assault by the French-led forces on their positions here was imminent.
But in their haste, they took the time to commit one last act of vengeance.
They had sparked worldwide condemnation last year when they destroyed sacred tombs and shrines designated as Unesco World Heritage sites on the pretext that they violated principles of Islamic law.
Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th Centuries
700,000 manuscripts had survived in public libraries and private collections
Books on religion, law, literature and science
Elhadj Djitteye, who used to guide visitors in town, reckons that the fighters linked to al-Qaeda carried out the attack on the library in response to the French military intervention ordered earlier in January by President Francois Hollande.
Noting that the jihadis hadn’t touched the manuscripts in 10 months of occupation, Mr Djitteye sadly comments that they “hit Timbuktu straight at its heart”.
The militants’ destructive parting gesture left many residents feeling that another part of their celebrated city’s history had just been erased.
The people of Timbuktu have been anxious to return to some kind of normal life since the French and Malian troops entered they city and were hailed as “liberators”.
Reminders of the extremists, like the black banners proclaiming sharia at the city gates, are being removed.
But in just under a year, the Islamist militants have inflicted lasting damage on Mali’s most renowned cultural centre. The scars left by Timbuktu’s occupation are likely to take much longer to heal.
• Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th Centuries
700,000 manuscripts survive in public libraries and private collections, books on religion, law, literature and science
• Added to Unesco world heritage list in 1988 for its three mosques and 16 cemeteries and mausoleums
• They played a major role in spreading Islam in West Africa; the oldest dates from 1329
• Islamists destroyed mausoleums after seizing the city
Ansar Din Runs Away From Mali in Disarray After French Air Strikes
Last year, we were honored to have a member of the Algerian Seal team at our table for dinner. Together with the French, they got the job done clearing the rats out of Mali in short time.
From today’s BBC News:
:
Three weeks of French targeted air strikes in northern Mali have left Islamist militants “in disarray”, France’s defence minister has said.
Jean-Yves Le Drian said the jihadists had now scattered, marking a “turning-point” in France’s intervention.
His comments come as the French troops continue to secure Kidal, the last town occupied by militants.
France is preparing to hand over towns it has captured to an African force, which has begun to deploy to Mali.
So far about 2,000 African soldiers, mainly from Chad and Niger, are thought to be on the ground.
It will be the job of the African Union-backed force, the International Support Mission to Mali (Afisma), to root out the al-Qaeda-linked insurgents that have fled into the desert and mountains further north.
Meanwhile, at least two Malian soldiers have been killed when their vehicle hit a landmine south-west of Gao.
‘Tactical withdrawal’
Mr Le Drian said that some militants in Mali and been on a “military adventure and have returned home”.
Others had made a “tactical withdrawal to the Adrar des Ifoghas”, the mountainous region east of Kidal covering some 250,000 sq km (96,525 sq miles), he said.
Although this was now a turning-point for France, he said it did not mean that “the military risks and the fighting has ended”.
He also said he backed the idea of sending a UN peacekeeping force to Mali.
The BBC’s Christian Fraser in Paris says the UN Security Council had previously been uncomfortable about deploying a force under a UN mandate, but support is growing.
Envoys believe it would easier to monitor and prevent human rights abuses if the UN could pick and choose which national contingents to use, he says.
A French army spokesman in Bamako, Lieutenant-Colonel Emmanuel Dosseur, told the BBC French Service that France’s special forces were in Kidal, but the majority of troops were still at the airport.
A heavy sandstorm that had hampered operations on Wednesday was starting to clear, and troops may soon be able to continue their deployment, he said.
Haminy Maiga, who heads the regional assembly in Kidal, said he had witnessed no fighting as French forces entered and two helicopters were patrolling overhead.
Correspondents say the bigger problem is how to manage the concerns of the separatist Tuareg fighters in Kidal – the only city in the north to have a majority ethnic Tuareg population.
Chad’s army is full of experienced desert fighters needed to fight the militants
The secular National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) said its fighters would support the French but would not allow the return of the Malian army, which it accused of “crimes against the civilian population”.
Human rights groups have accused the Malian army of targeting ethnic Tuareg and Arab civilians.
The Tuareg rebels launched the insurgency in October 2011 before falling out with the Islamist militants.
The Islamist fighters extended their control of the vast north of Mali in April 2012, in the wake of a military coup.
An MNLA spokesman told the BBC that its fighters had entered Kidal on Saturday and found no Islamist militants there.
Kidal was until recently under the control of the Ansar Dine Islamist group, which has strong ties to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
The Islamic Movement of Azawad (IMA), which recently split from Ansar Dine, had said that it was in control of Kidal.
The IMA, which has Tuareg fighters amongst its members, has also said it rejects “extremism and terrorism” and wants a peaceful solution.
France – the former colonial power in Mali – launched a military operation this month after the Islamist militants appeared to be threatening the south.
Amitav Ghosh and River of Smoke
The National Public Radio website recommended this book as one of the best historical fiction reads, and I had never heard of it, so I ordered it. I ordered it in spite of the little voice I had in my head reminding me that this was the second in a trilogy, that the first is Sea of Poppies. I was too eager. I wanted to jump right in, and the review said it could be read stand-alone. I had read Ghosh’s Glass Palace a couple years ago for book club, loved it, and was eager to read this one.
With a raging cold and no possible way I can be around humanity, it was a good time to start. Just picking up the book, it has a dense feel. Once you start, it is like being suddenly in a whirlpool, drowning in new words, characters who have more than one name and more than one identity, whirling between England, Mauritius, Hindustan, Gujerat, Hong Kong, Macau and China, whirling between cultures and professions and trades, but oh, what a ride.
It would have been helpful to be reading River of Smoke on an iPad, where I could poke at a new word and it would give me the meaning, but in truth, you can guess a lot of the meaning of the vocabulary from the context. The seafarers all speak a language sort of like Jack Sparrow, a pidgen language filled with simplified grammar and with words from many nations and cultures. It forces you to slow down. It’s worth it. It would also be nice if you could poke on a place-name and have Google Earth show you where it is. There used to be a website called Google Books, and you could put in a book and it would show you the places in which actions in the book took place; that would be particularly handy reading this book, provide context in place-relations.
But reading slowly is it’s own reward. This book has depth, depth of character, depth of textures and senses, and depth of morality. I love a book like this where you can smell the smoke drifting over the water, where you can smell the sewer and bloated animal corpses floating outside the foreign hongs of the Canton traders, you can feel the textures of the textiles and see their colors, you can taste the exquisiteness of Macau cuisine and you can hike in a Hong Kong not yet settled by anyone, Chinese or foreign.
The scope of time covered by the major part of the story is short, although there are years of back-stories for several characters. The period is 1837-8, during which the Chinese Emperor decides to put teeth in the long established edict against opium trade to China. The edict had been in place, but not enforced, and China watched her citizens sink into opium addiction and lowered productivity. The traders were making fortunes – shiploads of money. Opium was grown in India and shipped from there to China.
When the ban against shipping opium into China is announced, many traders believe it is just another attempt to attain greater bribes on the part of the mandarins, and decline to obey. There is great debate, and while it is lively in the book, it is based on documents from that era, many of the arguments word for word. Traders stood to loose a great deal of money, in truth, it would ruin most of them to lose their shipments.
There is a side story I also like, that of the botanical trade between China and England, and the importation of many of the garden plants we take for granted today, which were unknown until sent from China. Camellia – one of which is the plant for tea, did you know that? Roses, azaleas, orchids – many many familiar plants would be missing from our gardens were it not for their introduction during this period.
Ghosh gives us disparate characters of many cultures and upbringings, and slowly weaves them together, each one tangential to all the others, some closely interwoven. It is a fascinating read, and I can’t wait for the next volume. I may have to go back and read Sea of Poppies while I am waiting.
Pensacola Saturday, January 19th
This was a busy and fun Saturday, starting off with a productive and satisfying meeting for AdventureMan, followed by a chat in my office, during which he drifted off and snoozed for an hour while I culled my iPhoto program. Then we headed for the Fill a Bowl for Manna event, where you pay your $30 entry, pick a hand crafted bowl and proceed to eat soups from a great variety of generous Pensacola supporters. Such a wonderful variety of soups, and also – such a great support from the Pensacola community:
The lines were long, even if you had tickets in advance, but everyone was patient and good humored about waiting their turn.
From soup, we headed downtown to visit the African Art collection on display at the Pensacola Art Museum. First, we had to dodge all the colorful walkers in the Mardi Gras Run, Walk, DRAG with Color, people colored green, gold, and/or purple like the folk in the festival in India, then we had to find a parking place, dodging the police and fire people busy cleaning the streets from the chalk. The water was running green!
The African Art exhibit was a collection from a family who had lived in Western Africa and brought back fabulous pieces. Truly, the detail and artistry we were able to see close-up just blew us away:
These were so different from the other masks presented, clearly a different tribal group, different aesthetics. I called them the zombie masks for their very grey, formless, chaotic nature, and the black circle eyes:
The textiles on the walls were not identified, but we immediately recognized this sizzling textile as identical to a bedspread we had on our bed at the Grumeti Camp when we were there on the Following the Great Migration trip we took with CC Africa, now called And Beyond:
(This is not in the Pensacola Art Museum; this is our bed in the Grumeti Camp, where you can see the bedcover folded at the end; same amazing cloth:)
Late lunch at our favorite go-to local deli, the East Hill Market, and home – a very satisfying day altogether.
Chole (Chickpea Curry
It’s amazing how much more energy I have when the weather cools; yesterday was nearly 80°F and I had to force myself to work through my list of to-do’s, but as the temperatures dropped once again, we slept well, we awoke rested and energetic, and I ended up adding things to my list, for the sheer joy of feeling like doing things.
A new recipe – for me, for us – Chole – is bubbling in our crock pot. It sounded so good! I found the recipe – I think on allrecipes.com – several months ago, but today is the perfect day to put it all together. It has so many things in it which are good for us, but especially chick peas, tomatoes, ginger and turmeric.
I had no idea what it would look like, but it looks like things we used to eat at the vegetarian restaurant Greenland, down in Souk Mubarakiyya, in Kuwait. I think it is missing a few spices, probably things we have a hard time getting here. It wasn’t even easy just finding mustard seeds, if I had needed those dried lemons or other spices exotic to Pensacola, I couldn’t have attempted it. This Chole won’t be the same as the delicious, spicy, complex dishes our Indian quilters would bring to the weekly stitch meetings, but it will be a good tasty dinner on a rainy night. I wish we had the fried Indian breads that Wikipedia says are traditionally served with it.
Chole (Chickpea Stew)
• 2 cups of chickpeas soaked overnight
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 large onion, minced
• 1 red bell pepper, minced
• 2 14 oz can of diced tomatoes
• 1-inch piece ginger, minced
• 1 14 oz can of coconut milk
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp coriander powder
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1.5 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp salt
DIRECTIONS:
Blend all the ingredients but chickpeas in a food processor or a blender until liquid. Wash and drain chickpeas, place them in a slow cooker, pour the blended mixture over and cook on low for 6-7 hours or on high for 4-5.
Make ahead: we usually make double or triple of this recipe, since we love it. Let it cool, and store chole in freezer-safe zip-lock bags in the freezer for up to 6 months.
Just for fun, I am going to share with you the Wikipedia version. I laugh to think how intimidated I would be –
Preparation
preparation time=45mins cooking time=1hour serves=4
Ingredients For the chole 1 cup kabuli chana (white chick peas), soaked overnight 1 tea bag or tsp tea leaves, tied in a muslin cloth (optional) 1/2 tsp cumin seeds (jeera) 1 onion, finely chopped 12 mm (1/2″) piece of ginger (adrak), grated 2 cloves of garlic (lehsun), grated 2 tsp chole masala 2 tsp chilli powder 2 tsp dried mango powder (amchur) 1/4 tsp turmeric powder (haldi) 1 tbsp coriander (dhania) powder 1 tsp cumin seeds (jeera) powder 2 tbsp oil salt to taste
For the bhature 1/2 cup plain flour (maida) 1/2 cup potatoes, boiled and grated 1 1/2 tsp oil salt to taste oil for deep-frying
For serving 1 onion, sliced 4 lemon wedge
Recipe For the chole Pressure cook the Kabuli chana with the tea bag for 3 whistles until they are soft . Drain and keep aside. Discard the tea bag. Heat the oil in a pan, add the cumin seeds. When the seeds crackle, add the onion, ginger and garlic and sauté till the onion is golden brown. Add the chole masala, chilli powder, amchur, turmeric powder, coriander powder, cumin seed powder and salt and sauté for another minute. Add the Kabuli chana and 1 cup of water and mix well. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Keep aside
For the bhature Combine the flour, potato, 1½ teaspoons of oil and salt and knead into a firm dough without using any water. Knead the dough very well till it is smooth Cover with a wet muslin cloth and rest the dough for 10 minutes Divide the dough into 4 equal parts and roll out into circles of 125 mm. (5″) diameter. Deep fry in hot oil till the bhaturas puff up and both sides are golden brown. Serve hot with the chole, sliced onion and lemon wedges. Tips While frying the bhature, press the centre lightly with a frying spoon so as to help it to puff up. Chole masala is a blend of spices which is readily available at most grocery stores. [2]
LOL, cook with a tea bag for three whistles??? I am already way out of my league! And “Chole masala is a blend of spices which is readily available at most grocery stores” does not apply to Pensacola, Florida!
Saudi Students Flock to US Universities
When I was student teaching in EFL/ESL, my Arab Gulf students often complained that they couldn’t go directly to US universities, that they had to take English classes first.
“How did you do on the TOEFL?” I would ask, and their response would be a combination of anger and sheepishness.
“They all think we are rich. They just want our money. They make us take classes we don’t need, just to make money on us,” they would bitterly complain.
Most of these guys could speak passable English. Their writing skills were almost non-existent. They weren’t ready for real universities, with standards and accountability. The very first thing – and this is cultural, not something that is “right” is being ON TIME.
We don’t even realize what a priority it is in our own culture to be where we are supposed to be at the time we are supposed to be there. To be habitually late is to be morally inferior in some undefined way, lazy, a slacker. It’s custom, it’s cultural, it’s not a universal. But if you’re going to go to school in the United States, you need to respect the need to be on time – especially for things like exams, boarding a flight, when a paper is due, paying a bill by the due date.
We all learn when we confront our own assumptions by knocking up against another culture. I learned a lot about my own erroneous assumptions living in Saudi Arabia. I hope they are learning as much here. I wish these students well. I hope some of the students are Saudi girls; I hope they are driving around Pensacola having a good old time.
Saudi students flood U.S. colleges for English lessons
Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — That University of South Carolina cap on Meshari Albishi’s head? Just for looks, he says. Its colors match the red of his vest, where a metallic pin displays flags for the United States and Saudi Arabia, his homeland.
For now, his allegiance is to the University of Mary Washington, which Albishi says “is like my second home.”
Technically, Albishi is not a student here, but he has made “a lot of friends,” and has access to the library, workout rooms and other campus facilities. The university has offered him admission, on one condition: Before he can enroll, he must complete a non-credit program, called English for Academic Purposes.
Albishi, 25, is one of thousands of international students arriving each year in the United States to study English as the first step toward a college degree. They come from all over the world, but Saudi Arabia, where the government has poured billions of dollars into a generous scholarship program, is driving the recent surge.
In just seven years, Saudi student enrollments have skyrocketed from 11,116 in 2006, to 71,026 last year, according to the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission to the United States, the Virginia-based agency that administers the scholarship. Nearly all recipients (95%) start with language training, which can take anywhere from a month to a year or more, officials say.
The infusion of full-paying international students has been a boon for cash-strapped U.S. colleges.
For instance, Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, which founded its Center for English Language and Culture for International Students 38 years ago, enrolled a record 267 international students last semester, nearly half from Saudi Arabia, says center director Diana Vreeland. The University of Dayton’s language center, established in 2006 with eight students, now enrolls 400.
The Saudi scholarship grew out of a meeting in 2005 between Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah, and President George W. Bush as a way to strengthen ties — and ease tensions — between the two countries in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Saudi scholarship students can receive up to a five-year visa. The scholarship covers full tuition, housing and health benefits for students and family members. All that, plus round-trip tickets home once a year. After language training, business and engineering are the top fields of study.
When students are finished, “they come back with a collective experience that can help move the country forward,” says Mody Alkhalaf, the Saudi Arabian mission’s assistant attaché for cultural and social affairs.
Even so, the arrangement doesn’t sit well with skeptics, who argue for stricter visa policies. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia; and several had entered the USA with student visas.
In 2011, after a Saudi engineering student was charged in a failed plot to bomb U.S. targets, Investor’s Business Daily repeated its concern that a new initiative for Saudi students opened the door for terrorist attacks. “How many will overstay their visas and become sleeper agents?”
Programs for international students have recently come under greater federal scrutiny. In 2010, Congress tightened rules for English-language programs after an investigation found that a for-profit language school in Florida served as a front for the sale of fraudulent student visa applications. Last year, a federal report urged U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to strengthen oversight of the Homeland Security program that oversees compliance with a student-visa system. Recently, immigration officials have raised concerns that some colleges might be mishandling documentation for students accepted into an academic program on the condition that they first complete language studies.
Some schools mention only the academic degree program on federal forms, a practice that is “essentially defrauding the immigration requirements” and potentially “defeating the purpose” of a student tracking system, says Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ELS Educational Services, a for-profit company that operates the center housed at the University of Mary Washington, lists language study on its paperwork, says communications director John Nicholson, based in Princeton, N.J.
No language students have continued their academic studies at the University of Mary Washington. But officials say they value the diversity such students bring to campus. Last semester, Arabic studies professor Maysoon Al-Sayed Ahmad organized a regular coffee hour for Saudi and U.S. students. “I wanted American students to change their idea about what they think about the Arab people, so they can become friends,” she says.
Saudi students have similarly had their eyes opened. Until he arrived on campus, “I thought all (Americans) had guns,” says Abdullah Khalid Maghrabi, 19. He stayed indoors for a week before he thought it was safe to go outside. Now, he says, weather is a more pressing concern.
“I don’t know what to wear every morning. In my country, all the seasons are the same — it’s hot.”
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