Postcard Exchange Comments

COMMENTS

Why I Exchange Postcards
by Kim Yang

I'm an oversea teacher, born in America, had moved to Germany, landed in Taipei. I'm a quarter American, a quarter German, and half Asian.

During my high-school and university time I had friends and neighbors. Some of them had weird opinions about other people from different countries.

If one did not behave well, that would mean "typical all of them from this country". In fact that is not about the Germans only. When I had visited the other European Countries, some people have the same habit to say: "Pah, typical the [country] people". Don't misunderstand me wrong, from all countries there are also very good and well behaved people.

When I had moved to Taipei. There was a small group of visitors from XXX. Their behavior as visitors was far below the average manner. Again some Taiwanese had judged them with the same "typical" sentence. -Once Again ~ many Taiwanese are very nice and don't judge this way.~

Again - Just some weeks later another TV news about some bad behaved visitors from another country. -Once Again ~ it was a coincidence. We have very well behaved visitors, too.~

Since that day I have tried my best to teach my students to think before action. Once we had a selfmade mascot exchange with another country. We had spent a lot of money and energy to finish our mascot. But in exchange we got a bad quality one. I was disappointed, BUT not my students, they loved the mascot very much. I told them probably the students there are not rich and they did not have good equipments. To my surprise my students had wanted to donate toys and something else to them, I smiled a while (our partners are from a wealthy country). But then I started to understand, they had done things by heart and had received it by heart and had cared about their new friends.

SHAME ON ME!!!!!!!

I want to protect this healthy concept. I do not want them to change or forget who they were when they were kids, when they grow up.

For several months I have been trading and exchanging postcards from all over the world. We have a big globe hanging on our wall. Each time we receive a postcard, we locate the country/state/area and do some research. They also draw a picture of a child in its traditional clothes adding to the other children around the globe.

I told my students:
We are all different living our own ways. Yet the desire having a better future for our planet is one wish from all children around the world.

We shall never judge people for who they are, but we shall judge them for what they have done.

I'm very exhausted, but my kids ask me every day if a new postcard has arrived, that keep me going on.

I want to share his story with teachers and thank postcardcafe to make my work easier.

I still hope on more postcards.

Kim