It's About Time

Photo Credit: Gerald Herbert, AP

It's nice to see my country's president warmly embracing Muslim culture instead of vilifying it. To this I say: "What took so long?"

I'm not a particularly political animal, but I have been pleased with many things Obama has done since taking office earlier this year.

It's pretty funny when I'm teaching and the subject of the American president comes up; I keep thinking it's Bush and I start to elicit negative adjectives on the whiteboard. I quickly put on the brakes and remember, "Oh yeah, other countries LIKE our president now!"

On another note, I see Obama's tentative steps to build bridges with Middle Eastern countries as extremely positive and long overdue. Based on my contact with students from this region over the past two years, their countries seem ready to meet "the West" on a common ground. Why, you ask?

About 90% of students I've taught from ME countries, whether from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, etc. are here on a FULL SCHOLARSHIP from their respective governments for the sole purpose of learning English and English-speaking culture. What a fast-forward way of thinking.

It's about time for America to do the same and eliminate our collective tunnel vision that the US has been, is and always will be the mightiest nation in the land.

Where are our scholarships to go study Mandarin?!