Another professor and I went to the Wuhan University cultural event today and we loved it.  Had we known how awesome this event would be we would have required our students to attend.  I would have gotten a bus from campus to take us all.  The only down side to the event is that many people walked around to take picture with the students in their traditional clothing like they were tourist attractions and not people.

We were thinking that if we ever did something like this at our university, we would require the students to interact more with the international representatives because it should be more about cultural exchange.  We spoke with some of the students who were representing their countries and found that many of them felt that their cultural exchanges were spent dispelling popular misconceptions and/or sterotypes.

For example, the Ukranian girls were often told that they were the prettiest on campus.  It is true Ukranian girls are really pretty but they are more than pretty.  My Ukranian friend from law school was often told that she was pretty by the Chinese students but she was also nice, friendly, hard working, and a really good contracts person which seems to have been lost in translation…

We spoke to a really nice student from Afghanistan who told us that people often tell him that he could not possibly be from Afghanistan because he is not wearing Taliban clothes.  I think those students were thinking of Osama Bin Laden’s garb but he was not from Afghanistan – he is actually a disowned prince from Saudi Arabia.

Now these are the comments these international students are getting from people at Wuhan University which is a very international university.  There are so many international exchanges and collaborative opportunities there, lord knows what the staff and students in our institution think about students and citizens from those countries.

Our institution does not have as many foreign collaborations which we are currently working on changing.  Got to work on three MOUs so far with different countries in Africa so hopefully by the end of my year term, there will be more.  I want to be able to achieve my cultural exchange goal at the largest scale possible.

Look at all these cool ideas and things from the Wuhan University Cultural Event.  They have had 11 years to make this good so my friend and I are going to pilfer 😀