The USA Melting Pot club will hold its ninth meeting at the Troy Public Library Thursday, January 17, 2013, from 7-9 p.m.

African American Culture and Skiing

Mrs. Joya Shepard, Personnel Director of Orion Assembly and Pontiac Metal Fabricating at General Motors, will speak on African American culture, history, food, and traditions, including their contributions to education, science, literature and music.

The hobby topic this month will be cross-country and downhill skiing, with input from members of a local ski club. They will share techniques for both sports and tell where to ski locally, in Michigan and elsewhere in North America.

The new USA Melting Pot club is unique in building and crossing bridges between ethnic groups, which already have their own individual clubs. In the past, we’ve had meetings on Chinese culture and bicycle touring, India’s culture and canoeing, Korean culture and camping, German culture, Brazilian culture and held a potluck picnic at the Troy Historic Village.

Club Purpose:

• To help newcomers assimilate into the USA and mingle with all ethnic groups
• To celebrate ethnic background & cultural identity, including American culture
• To provide a forum for conversational English
• To encourage face to face dialogue in our increasingly technology-dependent world

Please pass the word

Attached is a meeting notice. Please print copies and post them on bulletin boards at work, church, grocery stores etc. You can also help us out by emailing links to this article to interested friends.

We wanted to finish last year with meetings about our next door neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Below is information about the meetings.

November 15 Meeting on Canada

Canadian citizen Rick Vriesen spoke on Canada’s geography, history, culture, food, and sports.

Attendees learned about Canada (world’s second largest land area) and its people:

• Which sport has the highest participation rate: (hockey is #2 and curling is #11)
• Where French is spoken and how Canadian English differs from American English
• How to spell colour and centre correctly :-) and what hydro means
• What to see if you visit Canada – the world next door

December 17 Meeting on Mexico

Vicente Sanchez, Consul of Mexico in Detroit spoke on Mexico’s history, culture, food, tourism and the contributions of Mexican immigrants to America.

Attendees learned about diplomacy from Consul Sanchez. Mexico has 50 consular offices in the USA, 11 in California and 10 in Texas. The Detroit consulate has been here for 80 years.

22 million tourists visit Mexico each year, mostly from the USA. There are 35 million Hispanics in the USA, with 70% of them from Mexico.

Mexico has 56 local languages in addition to Latin American Spanish, which differs from the Spanish spoken in Spain.

Consul Sanchez emphasized the hardworking people of Mexican origin work not only in the traditional farming and service industries but also engineering and other professional careers. He introduced Karina Cortes, who shared her story and details of her new business venture which will be launched soon.

Future meetings at the Troy Public Library Meeting Room

• February 23*, 12:30-2:30 p.m., Panel Discussion on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War
• March 16* 12:30-2:30 p.m., Ireland
• April: Turkey or Bangladesh

*tentative dates

More Information

For more information, visit our club website for posts of the Germany, India and other past presentations. Check back often as new information and more past presentations are added.                                                     

Contact: Weilou Gao at weilou@USAmeltingpot.org or 248-978-7904