The second group dinner. My teaching isn't always recognizable as teaching to students used to traditional methods: I curate experiences for them, and then let them have at it. Group dinners are a great example. Whenever I take them out as a group, I'm stretching them in some way (tonight it was waistlines as well as intellectually!). I always order for them because I know what is unusual, and the point is education as well as mere feeding. I order family style (which is typical for Greece, but outside the students' comfort zone), and I get a range of dishes, including unusual meat (goat, offal, snails, seafood), and local specialties. Tonight's dinner included several eggplant dishes (typically a stretch for 18 year olds), grilled (not fried) calamari, fried pork intestine, zucchini balls, and fish roe. Unfortunately I didn't realize that this particular restaurant had enormous portions, and so we were defeated, saved only by liberal use of take-out boxes. I think everyone has dinner for a second night. The students were very game, trying everything, even the intestine, unwilling to seem too picky in the face of each others' enthusiasm and adventurousness. Doing this on a study abroad is even more effective than when I do it at home, as they are already deliberately trying to be adventurous. I'm hoping that this way of eating challenges them to keep pushing themselves out of their comfort zone well beyond the trip. I don't know for sure, as I've never done any polls, but I think it works, based on how often I run into Greece students or my food class students at unusual food events in Jacksonville.
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