Ethnic Arts Festival

I had no idea that we had international students from such a variety of places in the world! I thought it was amazing to be able to go to one place (the CFL) and be able to experience the culture firsthand from say 30 different countries. I was especially surprised to hear students speak about the group dynamics in their countries. A student from South Africa explained to me that there are three religions that are predominant in her country, Islam, Christianity and Traditional. I was astonished to hear that they have a black Muslim as President and a white Christian as vice president. The student said that there is a great deal of religious tolerance in her country and that national holidays are observed for all three religions without much conflict. The importance of tolerance became clear to me when I visited the Somalia booth. The student explained that Islam accounted for 99% of religion but there is still great conflict in her country. She said that there is much fighting between different tribes even though they are united by a common religion. I think this experience of learning about varying levels of tolerance and conflict was quite interesting and it increased my breadth of knowledge of the actual situations of the world. I hope that as an educator I can share this knowledge of diversity to help people better understand differences and their implications.