Reading Professor Henry Loya introduced his Reading 96 class to a pen pal network where they interacted with foregin students from Germany that attend Adalbert-Raps, a school that is a combination of high school and a university in Bavaria.

Loya wants to expose his students to different cultures and hopes they make friends in different parts of the world.

“I’ve done projects with different schools, I meet these teachers and I know it will increase interests amongst the students about different cultures,” said Loya.

Last Wednesday Loya held a teleconference using Skype with German Teacher Franzman Franzose who he had met on vacation in Maui.

“It’s interesting to meet people from around the world,” said Angel Flores, biology major.

Both classes presented power points stating issues about the environment. They discussed how to use renewable energies, the green house effect, pollution, and how to protect the environment.

“We talked about the environment because it’s a problem in this world, it’s something that contributes a lot of health problems in this world and Europe has a handle on it,” said Uribel Meja, history major.

They also discussed the solar energy plants in Thurnau, the hydropower in Hof, the wind farm in Wirsberg, and the different politics on Fracking in both America and Germany.

“We’re stuck on this issue and if we learn more about it then we can do something about it,” said Vince Orrico, English major.

Both classes also discussed the lifestyles in both Germany and America.

“They are different understand, we face different issues everyday and we discuss that,” said Mejia.

After both classes were done with their presentations they preceded to an open question discussion and asked random questions about the different lifestyles the students have.

“They know how curious we are, they can drink and they’re our age and we have a lot of underage students here,” said Orrico.

After the discussion Loya and student Leslie Hurtado performed a quick salsa dance for the classes.

“I’ve been pen paling for a month or two, we develop friendships from around the world. Their rules are much stricter than ours and vice versa,” said Hurtado.