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.