The final presentation

We gave a presentation on the last day of the class. Yurie, my partner, and I spent whole day preparing the presentation yesterday and still we had something to do at night. It was surely the biggest assignment of this course. Yurie is such a nice lady as she became interested in religion and arranged the interview to her friend's host family for me. She never says "Oh, it is such a hassle, I don't feel like doing that." She prepared both oral and visual ones very well.

Presentations of other students were also very interesting. They talked about Holidays in the US, Gender roles, Baseball, Marriage and divorce, Health care, Environmental issues, and Economic crisis. What they found on each topic was so deep that made me think a lot. Surprisingly, divorce rate in the US is 50%, the world highest. My classmates' interviewees think that it is because American people get married too early, and they do not hesitate to do what they think is right.

Michell, our teacher, gave us an important advice; When you are very nervous at the presentation, tell them "I am so nervous." It makes people laugh and helps you to relax.
Yurie and I were nervous before we start, so I tried saying that "We are very nervous." It did make our classmates laugh and I felt easier. Yurie talked about Hindu and Christianity, then I told them about Islam and Judaism. The contents were; the building they pray, the holy book, how they pray, important rituals or holidays etc. The other day, one of my classmates told me that he didn't know anything about Hindu or Judaism, so he was looking forward to learn something from our presentation. I guess our presentation met his expectition.

What was difficult is that we had a Muslim classmate from Saudi Arabia, the "Mecca" of Islam. When I was explaining what I heard from my former-Muslim interviewee to the class, he sometimes frowned. I had to make sure that that was not a general information of Islam but what I heard from the interviewee who is from Bangradish. Anyway, we finished our work and it was a meaningful activity.

Thanks Yurie.