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,