Week of June 19 - World Refugee Day

PLEASE NOTE: I have not had the chance to watermark all of my photos, and it will take me a great deal of time, as I published this and my other blogs between 2010-2017. I ask you to respect my property. Feel free to use them as long as you credit me as follows: Photo by Jody McBrien, learningtheworld.org. Thank you.


This has been a very busy week for me. Starting with last Friday (the 16th), we went out to dinner with a nice couple from Virginia that lives a couple floors above our apartment. Paul is also a visiting professor (in Japanese Buddhism) and Cindy is a retired ethno-musicologist. They know of a small restaurant about a 10-15 minute walk from our digs but had not found it opened yet. The day before, Dick and I took a walk and it was open, so we stopped and made reservations for Friday. It was great fun - no menu. But what a meal, and about 6 courses (not US size, of course!) Just delicious and the company was great. The restaurant is called SunRise and I would love to recommend it on TripAdvisor, but I don't know the full address, so I can't post it in (it would be a first review, so the site needs to verify it).

On to this week. World Refugee Day was June 20. I gave two talks on refugees the next day - one to students in the Faculty of Education and one at the Global Square. Between the two, I'd say I talked to nearly 200 students. I sure wish conference attendance were as large as that when I present! The students have no experience of refugees and had so many questions. I love a chance to dispel the bad stereotypes people pick up from the media.

the Lecture Hall

Patrick McClue introducing me

On Wednesday I received an email from USFSM asking if I could Skype in to campus on Thursday for a position I applied for there, Administrative Faculty Research Fellow, so I spent most of yesterday creating a PowerPoint presentation, which I gave last night at 9:30-10:30pm here, 8:30-9:30 am Sarasota time. All three of us up for the job are highly qualified. I can just hope!

I've also been spending many hours on my Fulbright proposal for the 70th anniversary Fulbright-Schuman Award for Migrant Research that would take me to Belgium, Greece, Italy, and France from Nov 2018 - June 2019. I've been Skyping with colleagues at the Open University of Brussels (such nice people!) and have one planned with a woman in Greece for next week. I am so hopeful. That would give me research background with the situations in Europe, N America, New Zealand/Australia, Africa, and Japan.

I think back to my first 1-3 years in this profession when I would take any research opportunity that came my way. I was so afraid of not having enough. Now I have to turn things down, and exciting new opportunities continue to come my way. Of course, I don't get them all, but I seem to have enough to always have something to look forward to. I am very privileged.

NOTE: June 2018 date on post is republish date, not date of the event.