Lesson Plan

What did I teach today? I brought my laptop to school, connected it to a TV, and showed pictures of America to the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. We talked a lot about culture. I have lots of pictures from Weddings so I explained to them the whole concept of a wedding ring. Like how you can tell if someone is married by a ring, or lack thereof, on their ring finger. There is no obvious factor like that for Thais. Thats why one of the first questions I get from new aquaintances is "Are you married?"

They were REALLY interested in pictures of snow. Thais pretty much think it snows all over America year round. It's really hard to explain the size of America to people from a country the size of Texas. They certainly don't believe that it doesn't snow everywhere. Even with Walmat and McDonalds everywhere there are a lot of differences across america.

When I get asked what Americans think on a certain subject it is so hard to answer because there are so many different views on subjects.

Recently two friends at totally different times asked why/if all white Americans hate black Americans? It was hard to impress upon them that truly some whites hate blacks, but not everyone by ANY means. They got this impression of USA from two sources. One being that there is a Volunteer in our Peace Corps group who is not the most pleasant of souls to be around. He is really opinionated, long-winded, and does not even stop to listen to the opinion of others. He also happens to be about 20 years older than the average aged person in our group, and does not have many common interests with most people in our group. There are certainly a few people in our group of 50 who do not mesh with our group, for one reason or another; it hardly matters as we no longer interacte with our PC Group except out of our own motivation, since we are all at our seperate towns, often hours away from each other. Anyway, this one person in particular stands out as he has black skin.

So since most of us as a group don't hang out w this one person the Thais who have come with me to some group events, assumed all whites hate all blacks. It is frustrating since I clearly don't want to give this impression of the States, and one of our other Volunteers who is right in the thick of everything is also black.

Anyway, the question from my Thai friend also came up because she was watching the news about Hurricane Katrina and the theory that help was slow in coming because due to racism.

After I tried to explain the racial views of All Americans with my limited Thai skills [regretfully 'stereotype' is not part of my thai vocabulary- but I had a dictionary on hand], I was asked how are blacks and whites different. Wow.

Of course I started to say, we're all the same. No difference. But what they were asking about wasn't totally about innate differences, but rather about differences of life style in America. And unarguably the general population of White in America does not live the same was as the general population of blacks in America.

So hard to explain. I want to give an honest explination of Americans. But I also want that description to be positive. It's not always one and the same. This is a subject matter I don't feel comfortable being the American authority on.