The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. I was sad that I wasn’t going to see fireworks or listen to the big bands play all of the national songs. I wanted to eat the baked beans served at the BBQs. We had resolved to go to the Shamrock (a western bar) that evening for a consolation western meal. However, we were in for quite the surprise. After meeting with Dean Ma for a short meeting about how things were going in
They took us up the stairs of the old Public Health School Building and into a conference room. Immediately tears came to my eyes as I looked at the table and the realization came to me that they were throwing us a surprise 4th of July party! I’ve never had a surprise 4th of July party. On the table they had gotten “American” food plus some of the Chinese food that we liked. There were about 7 professors invited and about 4 grad students. After Dean Ma made all of the introductions we stood in a circle to start the party. Each of us were handed a cup of wine. They toasted to our
We had to work for our party though! Before they would start we were instructed to sing something from our country. I was totally up for singing “It’s a Grand Old Flag” because 1. It’s short and 2. It’s a fast song…but Amy didn’t know that one so we ended up singing the National Anthem. It is a very hard song to sing. In the middle of the table was a little stand with the Chinese flag on one side and the American flag on the other side! So we put our hands over our hearts, set our gaze on our flag and sang our National Anthem from the bottom of our hearts! It was followed by many compliments and clapping and then their national anthem! It was such an incredible picture of the exchange of respect. What better way to celebrate our 4th of July?
The rest of the hour we spent talking with different professors and students as we ate potato chips and peanuts with our chopsticks! And we still got to the Shamrock around 9!
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