Farewell Party for Students and Colleagues

The final exam for my American Philosophy course was actually back on June 12. While I had as many as 25-30 people attending at the height of the semester, there were only a handful of students actually registered for the course - only a handful of students brave enough to risk being graded on their English abilities as well as their philosophy.

Here you can see how seriously they are approaching this test.

The following Sunday we had invited the students and faculty from the year to one of our favorite restaurants - a Buddhist vegetarian place called Da Fang that used to be on Siming Nan Lu but moved during construction to Nan Hua Lu, still very close to campus and the temple. In their new location they have also given themselves the English name: Generous Vegetarian Museum [!!!].

While there were no wax statues of Gandhi inside, there were these three philosophy professors - next to me Zhou Jianzhang, Chen Jiaming, and Cao Jianbo. They are the "foreign philosophy" or "western philosophy" faculty members of the department.

Besides the faculty and family table, there were two tables of students. This was the quiet table posing with me.

And this was the loud table.

Here we see the quiet table in action. They didn't eat as much. The loud table cleaned all the plates and ordered more beer.

Of course Sophia was a big hit. Here she is with her dinner partner Chen Jin Dong. He is actually a Finance student but sat in on the classes all year.

And here she is on the lap of Yuan Xueyan - the only student who was registered for all the courses that I offered at Xiamen University.

Here is the group photo - about 30 people in all.

It was a very lovely evening. I received several presents, including a traditional fan, Fujian tea, Yunnan tea, a scarf, postcards in a handmade paper booklet, and two stamp books - one of which took six years for the student to collect all the stamps!

Well, that's it. The classroom is empty and the teacher is leaving for America.