[Oe List ...] Christmas letter

[William Alerding]

  Bill & Barbara Alerding
    1967 Oldfields Circle
   Indianapolis, IN 46228
     Tel: 317-290-1876
Email: walerding at igc.org
									         December, 2004

Dear Colleagues:

	Seasons greetings from the Alerdings; we are enjoying our 36th journey 
around the sun together. This year Bill entered his 7th decade and 
Barbara her 8th. If we are supposed to be wiser as we grow older, we 
don’t feel it yet. Our energy continues to remain high and we still 
think and act like children. We absolutely refuse to act our age.

	The year 2004 has been an up and down one for us. Bill’s Spanish/ESL 
courses are finally picking up at year’s end while his EcoQuest home 
business is moving along quite rapidly.  He enjoys helping people but 
really loves all the great support he is receiving from his team. It’s 
like being back in the ICA community again with caring corporate help. 
It’s amazing how much assistance people give each other. Another joy in 
his life is the Saturday writing classes with his high school Chinese 
students. Bill is learning more from them than he is teaching. Some of 
them arrived from China  only three years ago yet they write the 
Queen’s English better than most of his former American students

Barb has done an occasional stint of substitute teaching while the 
universities have cut their adjunct teachers due to financial 
difficulties. She also worked with McGraw-Hill scoring junior high 
students in English and math ISTEP tests. The main question in her mind 
  from this experience was the purpose of these examinations. What do 
they really tell us about what students are learning and what is the 
value? There was a comment in the local paper  that the federal program 
“Leave no Child Behind” depends on skewing the school curriculum so 
heavily toward testing that it should be called “No Teacher Left 
Standing.”

             We did manage to get away for a few long jaunts this year. 
The first was to Boston to celebrate Bill’s sister’s 50th anniversary. 
It was a festive occasion and everyone brought back many enjoyable 
memories. The second trip was a 900 mile drive to our nephew Johnny 
Alerding’s wedding in Gainsville, Florida. Johnny and his bride will 
continue to live in Virginia, both teaching school. His wife, Anne, 
hopes to be a research plant biologist. We were pleased at how 
obviously they were made for each other, the perfect match after years 
of searching for one another.

                This is our twelfth year back in the United States, so 
our reflections on this crazy year are still influenced by our 25 
years’ experience in other countries.  We find ourselves still thankful 
that we were able to have the opportunity of experiencing a global 
vision versus a national one. When we look at the picture of the earth 
taken from the moon, we notice that there are no national lines drawn 
on it. Nations are just a creation of human minds. They are such 
territorial images and are taken so seriously that people feel 
obligated to defend this human creation.  People salute flags and sing 
national anthems to keep this concept alive. What would happen to our 
human relationships across the globe if we saw each other as fellow 
human beings and not members of a certain country? Would we need wars 
to prove one national group is stronger and better than another? Would 
we worry about “weapons of mass destruction”? If we thought globally, 
would our idea of government radically change?

               What about the economy? Would we allow so many people in 
the world to live in such dire poverty or die by the millions with 
AIDS? Would we share our global resources rather than hoard them for 
people within national boundaries? How would we take care of our 
environment if we thought that it belonged to everyone and not just to 
the economic plunderers?

               These are just some “what if” questions that come to 
mind. Living with so many other peoples and cultures is still a strong 
highlight in our lives. As Americans, we wonder what if our country 
decided to put money not into the military but into something like the 
Peace Corps and sent millions of people around the globe living and 
working with other cultures everywhere. Wouldn’t this make us think and 
act globally? What would happen to us if the majority of our citizens 
had such an experience?

              Just some thoughts this Christmas season.

	
Bill and Barbara