Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Full Red, White, and Blue American Experience

My German foreign exchange student was chosen as Elks Club Student of the Month for our school this month and I got to escort him to the Elks Lodge today for the luncheon.

The Student of the Month from a nearby school was also a foreign exchange student, from Spain, and--I don't remember how it came up actually, or who brought it up, but somehow the subject was broached and the two Europeans were asked if they'd ever fired a rifle.  I got the impression that neither of them had ever touched or perhaps even seen a firearm, so I asked if they'd like to go to the rifle range some time.  Eyes got wide with excitement.

I'll check with my student's host family, and the other teacher will check with his student's host family.  If the adults agree to it we'll take the two students to a nearby rifle range and let them put some rounds downrange.

And afterwards we'll go have some apple pie and sing God Bless America :-)

2 comments:

allen (in Michigan) said...

You ought to see if you can scout up a couple of Garands.

With the success of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers" bang-bang-bang-ting is a much more widely recognized sound clip then before. That'd give them hands-on, bump-you-shoulder experience with history.

Ellen K said...

I have a lovely student from the Czech Republic in my drawing class. I had hoped her host family would immerse her in the Texas USA experience. I had hoped they would make sure she got to go to a homecoming dance or the State Fair of Texas or at least to experience barbecue in Austin. So what did her host family do to introduce America? They flew to San Diego and went to the beach. Nice, but not particularly in keeping with a typical American experience.