I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to hear a high-level U.S. politician speak of our need as Americans to learn a second language. If you didn’t catch the clip of Obama’s speech that many people are talking about, watch it and see a man who understands how important it is for us to think beyond our borders and realize our world is much bigger than our one great nation. He gets it.

Immediately following his speech, a large group of people twisted his words and claimed that Obama thinks Americans should learn Spanish instead of immigrants living in our country learning English. They say how wrong he is and use it as political propaganda. He gets it again.

Today our country has walls on our borders, fingerprint machines in our airports, and people who still believe 9/11 was an attack by Iraq. The higher we build our fences, the further we distance ourselves from the other 6.3 billion people who share our planet. We’ve been fortunate to have a prosperous 200 or so years, but that won’t continue without joining the global party, something a number of other countries seem to understand so much better than we do.

Of course immigrants should learn English if they are living in the U.S. During my three years living in Japan I would have never assumed that people should be speaking my language. Obama is simply saying that the bigger issue here is that we should be learning languages ourselves.

While English, baby! won’t necessarily help Americans learn English, we hope it helps people see the importance of connecting with other cultures. Watching the millions of young people from around the world come to our site with their open minds and enthusiasm for a second, third or fourth language is inspiring. Their attitude is what will bring us together as a planet for a bright global future. They get it.

Coverage of the Olympics this year seems to be divided into two categories. There’s news about the athletes, which is, of course, generally up beat. And then there’s news about the Olympics overall and China, which has been largely skeptical and often negative.

But, as we’ve been planning our trip to the Olympics, I keep thinking about the games are still an international gathering representative of a lot of what English, baby! stands for. Luckily, Mariah Summers at the Portland Tribune agrees. She wrote an article that came out today about our trip. She did a great job of capturing the spirit of the trip and the nature of the website.

When she was interviewing John, she mentioned trying to find other Portland-based companies sending people to Beijing. I wonder how many American companies that aren’t traditional media outlets are going to the games. I’m sure our team would love to compare notes with them.

The more time I spend interacting with the English, baby! community, the more I feel like a global citizen instead of American. I had a lot of fun on the 4th of July this year, but maybe someday there will be a holiday to celebrate global patriotism.

I took a few minutes to think about that idea–global patriotism–when I filled out a questionnaire for this feature on OPB.

Q: What does Patriotism mean to you?
A: When you have the sense that a complete stranger is your brother, that’s patriotism. When you take pride in the place that you live and want to make it better, that’s patriotism. As the word itself suggests, it’s the sense that those around are of the same paternity or fatherland.

But when I think of a fatherland, I don’t think of my country. I think of my planet. I guess you could say I’m a global patriot. I’m proud to be a citizen of the world and when I travel and meet other pilgrims, I feel a kinship with them. I also see pride for a global community emanating from every country in the work I do on English, baby! (englishbaby.com) a website where nearly a million people of all nationalities are learning English.

Q: Tell us about a time when you’ve felt patriotic, and why.
A: Last fall a Turkish man and Ukrainian woman who met on English, baby! got married in Istanbul and I got to make a video about the wedding.

Traveling with the bride and groom’s family members, many of whom don’t speak a common language, there was a sense that beyond culture, there are things that bind us: dancing, love, humor. It struck me that just as an interracial marriage is an American story, an homage to our melting pot and act of American patriotism, an international marriage between people who met online while learning English is a global story, a step towards forgetting borders and an act of global patriotism.

Q: Tell us about when you’ve felt LEAST patriotic, and why.
A: I think that the Iraq war is an example of provincialism and flies in the face of global patriotism. The decision to fight was made unilaterally by the US government without regard for the opinions of the world. If a state in the United States were to act so recklessly and illegally, it would be treason.

A similar example is the failure of the US to ratify the Kyoto protocol. As a state on this Earth, it’s our duty to keep it clean and assume responsibility for our use of recourses. That would be the patriotic thing to do, anyway. And on a global community like English, baby! it’s not uncommon to hear complaints when a nation fails to pull its own weight or justify its actions to the world.

Q: If you have lived in another country, how has this affected your ideas of patriotism and national identity.
A: As a student, I spent a semester studying in Spain in 2003. I met a lot of other young travelers from all over the world and felt that I had more in common with them than a lot of people in my own country. Our shared respect for other cultures and search for hunger to know about them was my first experience with global patriotism. As the Internet exploded in the years since then, I’ve seen this sort of community replicated online, sometimes on a massive scale as in the case of English, baby! They didn’t end up using any of my material, but it was fun to think all that stuff out, since global patriotism has been a concept in the back of my mind throughout my entire life. Apparently I’m not the only one with it on the brain, either. A man interviewed for this similar NPR story said, “I think we have to think more in terms of being earthlings than from one country or another.”

And if you make it all the way to the end of the OPB piece (which I recommend if you have time), there’s a little discussion about the Olympics, which was of great interest to me since we’re heading there in a month. A couple of sources on the program say they feel particularly patriotic at sporting events. But this episode’s co-host, history professor and author Matthew Dennis, replies, “I’m more fascinated with the internationalism of [the games] than the nationalism.” Hopefully Beijing will be a fine moment for global patriotism.

Do you ever wonder how your students are grading you? Or what they really want from you? To begin the new term, we made posters of what it meant to be a good student, a good group member and a good teacher. To me, the most interesting poster was what it meant to be a good teacher. Look at their poster!

A good teacher:

• is on time
• respects students
• helps students
• makes students happy
• has good behavior
• is a friend to students
• teaches well
• explains the work
• makes students do group work
• is happy

Some of these qualities were exactly the same as the qualities they listed for a good student. They thought both good students and teachers should be “on time,” “respect” one another, and have “good behavior.” To me these answers were the least thought out and the most generic. (Although they are true.)

I was more excited by how important students thought happiness was. They said a good teacher was happy, that a teacher should make students happy and that students and teachers should be friends. I guess, I am pretty lucky that I love my job and my students because my students think that is a big part of being a good teacher. And sometimes all I have is my love for the job. Luckily, that is enough. So if you aren’t happy with teaching right now, take this holiday weekend to relax. Because your students expect a happy teacher. And they deserve one too.

Although there’s been some press about how inhospitable to tourists Beijing will be during the Olympics, this video, in complete saccharine madness, argues otherwise.

Since we’re taking a trip to Beijing in about a month, it was cool to see all the sites in this video (Apparently all the singers are famous people too. Did you see Jackie Chan?). But I also laughed at several parts, just because the song is so long and there are so many huge smiles in it and there are, like, several beautiful women telling me their doors are always open…it just got kind of silly.

But when I looked at the comments, everyone was taking the video totally seriously!

When I pointed out what I thought was one of the funniest quotes to Jewel, our resident Mandarin speaker, she was able to explain why I thought the video was funny even though it’s not supposed to be. Here’s the line:

The flowing enchantment and charms are filled with youthful spirit and vitality.

Apparently, that’s relatively normal speech in China. While in recent decades the English style has become as concise as possible, Chinese writers (and weird promotional video makers) embrace flowery language.

This gives me even more reason to learn Mandarin. When I first started writing I was drawn to the flowery style. Now I like being economical with words, but it took some getting used to. Maybe I find my way back to the sinuous delights of language wrought with sonorous hues, or something like that.

But anyway, I suppose the tendency to be over the top with language might help explain this highly exuberant video. I can’t wait to get over there and see the enthusiasm first hand. I want to learn the “Beijing welcomes you” part and sing it to people when they ask how I like the city.