Opinions .... count ??

I have been attending orientation upon orientation ...today was GATO = graduate assistant teaching orientation. It is meant for all the TAs or teaching assistants, that is the graduate students who will be teaching american under-grad students. The entire program was based on a set of do's and dont's in class. We cannot discriminate, we have to give space, how should you capture the student's interest ...how to introduce new ways of making the class involved.
In some ways, I think it applies to American community as well and not only to the students. Space is something very important to them , so is not speaking out about your political reservations. But the point was, so many of us from different countries were sitting there and learning how we should treat American students, how they could come in chewing gum, or wearing night suits or keep their legs on the tables and we were not allowed to question. As to why this is amazing to me, is because we come from quite a different culture , where we do believe in independence, but we do also believe in respect. However informal everything is, and however much freedom is given to the students, it does seem to me that this is on the border line or over it.

I was contacted by my international friend. International friends is a group which pairs up students with American families so that there can be an intermixing of cultures. I found out my international friend is LuAnn Harley, a judge in Tucson. She already has some other international friends in the campus itself and she is arranging a get-together for all of us on Sunday which is very sweet of her.

Today was also the first time I was able to show my parents the house and me typing away at the computer using the webcam. And when I spoke to Maa later, I learnt how surprised and happy they all had been on being able to cross oceans and continents in a matter of seconds and see me like that....... And I was grateful to the same technology which has always seemed mechanical and robotic to me, for once.
I have been waiting for my brother to logon for ages and he has finally come online, so its back to harnessing the advances of technology for me again :) .......bye goodnight all for today.