A Professor's Noble Party

After the final exams and essays, the professor of my module EH6032 Modern poetry invited all the students to come to her house and have a party. The rule of this party is that each one brings a poem and read it to all, and student who can play his instrument is encouraged to play there. After hearing this invitation, the first impression came up in my mind is that this professor is extremely kind, for only the teacher who truly loves his students will be happy to invite everyone, no matter how many there are. And also she's exceptionally interested in art, that's why she could come up with the idea of music playing.

According to the direction of the address, I rode to her house. I didn't know it is a huge house with a immense yard. After entering the gate, I still need to ride a couple of minutes to reach the house. The pictures below are taken from her place. They are bright and gentle, exactly corresponding to the professor's characteristic.
　
When I knocked the door, the professor and her partner gave me a hug to express their warm welcome. They asked me to sit down and drink tea and chat with them. I appreciated their hospitality but I know there's a lot to prepare for the dinner so I helped them to cook in their kitchen. Later I found the professor's partner is a model husband. He not only supported her idea of party, but also cooked several dishes for us. By the way, his cooking skill is marvelous! All the students enjoyed the meal a lot!
　
Now it comes to the poem reading section. I prepared an ancient Chinese poem called Upstream and downstream Tune. I read it in Chinese first and then read the English translation version. One student asked me："Does every character stands for something?" "Yes," I answered. "For example, the character "休"（rest）is composed of "人" (person) and "木" (tree), which means this character is coined from the phenomenon that "when a person wants to have a rest, he needs to lean against a tree". This example aroused huge interest from the others! After the party the professor sent me an email to specially praise my interpretation. "Thank you again for your poem and character presentation in the party last night. I will carry with me a long time the look on Conor's (another student) face as he listened to you present him with a whole new way of thinking about the relation of language to sign system, including the important questions that arise from "thinking in pictures." When he said, "My mind is blown," he encapsulated what everyone in the room felt as you explained Chinese language and poetry so clearly and compellingly."　

The poems of different languages in different cultures brought by the other students are also impressive. Every language has its own pride, and the mission of we language learners is to spread our language and culture, which are the legacy of our ancestors, to the whole world and see them bloom and shine in a new way. I think in this sense everyone of us did a good job, and this is the noblest meaning of our party.