Post Service

       I noticed a lot of different themes during my meetings with this wonderful family from Burma.  I noticed that the mother, to me, seemed the most interested in what we were doing every time we came to meet with them.  I also noticed that she always tried to keep notes of what we taught her somehow, whether it was her writing little notes in her native language in the books we helped her read or keeping all of the post-its that we wrote on when we did the post-it activity.  To me, it just seemed that the mother was more interested in learning more about the English language.  The father was interested at the first few visits over there, but after awhile, he seemed to distance himself from the activities that we did.  I think that it could have something to do with the fact that he was the only guy there, so he may have been, not overwhelmed, but not as included maybe?  Whenever we did activities with Reyana, though, he was always interested in seeing her reactions to when she was right or showing her attention when she was trying to show her parents a picture she drew while her mom was trying to focus on her tasks.

       I think that this was a very good learning experience for me when it comes to my future interpersonal interactions.  I think this because this experience showed me how difficult it can be when it comes to meeting and interacting with people who do not know much English and who are from a different culture than my own.  I would like to think that I am understanding and open minded when it comes to people of different cultures than my own, so this experience for me was not really eye opening in that sense, but it was very eye opening to me to the fact that everyone who comes to the US not knowing much English is in for a difficult learning process because the English language is a very confusing language.  I'm really glad that I had an opportunity like this one.

Another Service Meeting

       My group met with our family on Sunday April, 13.  When we got there only the mother was home.  She said that her daughter was playing with a friend so she wouldn't be there.  Her husband was out as well, but he did arrive a little while after we started working with the mother, but left for a short time and cam back with strawberry milk for us.  I thought that was a nice thing for him to do.  Every other time we came to work with them, they always offered us something to drink and snacks.  This could be a social practice that came with them from Burma or it could have been something that they picked up from being in the US.  I believe hospitality is a social practice that Burma and the US shares.  Anyway, before the father got home the first time, my group and I worked with the mother alone.  I think that she was a little more open with us and more talkative than she was in previous meetings.  This could have had something to do with her husband not being there, or it could have just been a sign to us that she was more relaxed with us and engaged in what we were going over.  We went through the books that they had there again.  She chose a book that was about ocean life and she had a lot of questions about the names of certain sea creatures and other things like that, which is understandable, since my group and I didn't really know much about that subject, either.  We helped her as much as we could with those questions, but helped even more when she asked questions about words in the sentences, like low tide and high tide, instead of explaining why a starfish grows its ray back after it gets ripped off.  That was a funny experience, however, when we did get to that part in the book that described how a starfish's leg was called a ray and how it can grow back when it gets bitten or broken off.  She was very surprised that a starfish could do that, it was the way her face turned surprised and how she said 'really??' that made us realize that.  Anyway, we also went over the pronunciation of words with 'TH', 'SH', and 'CH'.  She was having problems remembering to say these sounds when the sound was in the word instead of at the beginning of it.

       I think that non verbal communication and social practices were the main concepts that I got from this meeting.  Pretty much at every meeting there was some form of non verbal communication between us and the family.  Examples of this would be when either members of my group and myself or the family use hand motions to try and explain something or describe something; like when something is really big or when we need to try to explain something, like a book or floor, we mime out a book or point to the floor.  Social practices that were in this meeting were when we were offered drinks and in other meetings when we were offered drinks and snacks.  They are very hospitable people and just nice and welcoming.  It could be a social practice from Burma to make sure your guests are comfortable, because one of the first times we we met with them, the mother talked to the father quietly and kind of tapped him with the back of her hand on his side to motion him to the kitchen to get us something to drink.  I thought that was funny because it reminded me of my mom and dad, when they were together and had friends or work friends over, my mom would do the same thing to my dad to get glasses for water or tea.

       I learned that just because people are from different cultures and different backgrounds, there can still be a lot of similarities when it comes to family interactions and group interactions, especially if these cultures are somewhat similar.  I also learned that when you are trying to communicate with people who don't speak the same language as you do, or if they can't speak it as well as you, nonverbal communication, like pointing to certain things or using hand motions is a good alternative.

Service Meeting

       My group and I met with our family again on Sunday, April 9.  We had a lot of miscommunication between my group and the family.  We went two weeks in a row without them being there.  But this time, when we arrived, we saw Reyana and her dad outside playing with neighbors.  We went up to them to tell them that we were there and to head upstairs where the mother was home.  We did a lot of activities the two hours we were there.  We brought flash cards with us that had different times on an analog clock that we quizzed the family on.  We also had flash cards with different amounts of change on them and quizzed them on those as well.  After that, the mother brought out books that they had, mostly books for children since they are only learning English, and we read with them.  Whenever they did not know the meaning of a word, like about, we did our best to explain it to them.  This was a really difficult part.  How does someone explain words like about or until?  This is where semantics comes in.  It was really frustrating for us to try and explain words that we just knew and never really thought that we would ever have to explain the words until or about.  We also went over colors and shapes with Reyana, the daughter.  We brought a crown that had different colored and shaped foam stickers that you had to match to the spots on the crown.  Helping Reyana with matching the stickers to the right shape and color place was a little bit frustrating.  Most of it had to do with Reyana being a 5 year old and just wanting to decorate the crown how she wanted it.  But after I started to hand her one sticker at a time and told her to find where the blue circle was or the green rectangle, she wanted to go back and make sure that all of the stickers she put on before were in the right places.

       I think that semantics was a large part during this particular visit.  When the mother was asking us about the meaning of certain words, words that we really did not know how to explain, we looked them up the definition of these words on our phones.  When explaining the definition of the words to her didn't help that much, we tried another approach.  We used Google Translate to look up until and about in Indonesian, the language that the family was most familiar with.  The mother said that she was from Indonesia while her husband was from Burma.  I thought that was interesting because Kelly told us that the family was from Burma, so did that mean the the mother of this family left Indonesia to go to Burma to be with her husband and then left Burma for the US? These are some of the questions that I had that I didn't think to ask because I didn't want to bring up anything that might upset them.  Anyway, after looking up words in Indonesian and trying to pronounce them out loud, which didn't go so well for any of us, and then showing what came up to the mother, she was visibly happier, I think.  I think she seemed happier because she could link the English word she did not really understand to the Indonesian word that she did know.

       I learned that Google Translate is everyone's best friend.  I also learned that when trying to explain the meanings of words that you never really had to think of the meaning is a very difficult thing to do.  If it is difficult for us to explain and define words in a language that we grew up speaking, I can only imagine how hard it is for our family to learn these words in a different language than the one they are used to.

First Meeting

          On February 9th, my group met with our family for the first time.  We met with Kelly outside their apartment complex so we could all go in together.  When we first arrived at their door, we had to wait a few minutes after knocking before the mother of the family opened the door.  She was the only one home, her husband and daughter went out and were not back yet.  My group talked about how nervous she must have been, since she didn't answer the door right away, that she was there by herself and she didn't know who was at her door.  I'm glad that Kelly was there with us for the first visit, since we really didn't know what to expect.  We did a few activities when the father and daughter got back a few minutes after we arrived.  Kelly brought books and other activities with her for this first visit.  We went through a children's encyclopedia and covered various vocabulary pertaining to body parts and bathroom and hygiene items.  We also worked with money and making addition and subtraction problems with money as well as asked them to pick out certain amounts of money from a pile.  We also talked about various holidays that were coming up, like Valentine's Day and Easter. When we talked about Valentine's Day, we talked about how the holiday is about romance and chocolate and we made Valentine's Day cards.  When Kelly brought up Easter, it was interesting to see that the family had barely any idea about who Jesus is and what the holiday was about.  I'm sure this had something to do with the fact that they are not Christian and probably were not around a lot of Christian people.  A relevant concept that I thought about after my experience with the family would have to be intercultural communication.  The family knows some English, but we are helping them learn more of the basic things.  It was interesting trying to help someone learn things that I learned at a young age, like counting to certain amounts of money and knowing the word for toothbrush or shampoo.  It was a very interesting experience and I'm glad that I get this opportunity to do something like this,

Pre-Service

   I have a couple of hopes for the service project that I will be starting today.  Hopefully my group and I will be able to help the family that we have been matched up with, whether it be by helping them with their English or whatever else that they need help with.  I also hope that I won't be too shy around the family to start up a conversation or to start an activity while we're there.  I just hope that I will do a good job helping the family with whatever they need help with.

   I don't think I have any specific assumptions about my service-learning site.  I know that we are going to be going to the refugee's houses, but I'm not sure if they are just places that the organization placed them and they are with other families or if they have their own apartment.  I only assume that the family that my group and I will be meeting with for this project will have made their house as much of a home as they are able to.

   I don't really know that much about refugees.  I know that a refugee is a person that came to the US because they were unable to stay in their home county, for a number of reasons, like political unrest.  'm not sure if the family that we will be meeting with will be able to speak that much English or if they have a good grasp on English and just need help figuring out more practical things, like figuring out how to read a bus schedule or filling out important paperwork.  Hopefully the family that we are preparing to meet is friendly, welcoming, and ready to learn!

   I'm really interested in learning more about the family that my group and I will be meeting.  I probably won't ask them why they left their home country, probably a good thing since it may be very emotional for them to talk about.  I'm just really interested in learning more about how the organization World Relief does when they have volunteers like me come into a family's home.

How Does Service Relate to Learning?

      I think service relates to learning in a lot of ways.  When you take time out of your day to help someone else, aren't you learning more about that person? Are you not learning how to better yourself as a person by volunteering your time to help someone else? I think service, whether it be volunteering with a charity or even volunteering at your church, is a good way to learn more about yourself and the other people volunteering with you and the people you are helping.  Service relates to learning in the sense that it helps you learn more about what it takes emotionally to become a good volunteer.  There can be people who donate their time just to add it to their resumé and there are people who volunteer their time because the charity or cause they are helping is very close to their hearts.  Someone running a marathon for breast cancer research most likely knows someone that has the disease.  I think service relates to learning in the sense that donating your time to something that is productive and helpful to a lot of people teaches you to empathize with the people you are helping.  That someone you are talking to and helping can easily be a friend of yours or someone in your family, because that person is someone's friend, is someone's family member, who is need of your help.  You have the opportunity to help, so why don't you?