#5 Post Service

    I had many great experiences and could not be more happy that I was given the opportunity to work with a refugee family and interact with them in so many ways. I observed many things about our refugee families apartment, and what decorations and things they had around the house. First of all, they have a Chinese calendar that they use but they are Burmese which is Middle Eastern, and not Chinese at all which was somewhat humorous to me. They also had this decorative rug in the family room/main room that looks like it was from their hometown or symbolized a part of their culture. Every Wednesday that we went there, I noticed that they had rice out either cooking it or it was on a drying rack probably for their meal that night. They also would have some type of vegetable or leafs that they would have out cooking and the last time that we went I noticed some type of broth in a crock pot. Our family has 4 kids and the kids wore typical clothes that you would see any kids wearing, but the mother often wore baggy shirts and a long skirt which seemed like traditional clothing for her and their culture. Lastly, another theme that I noticed with our family was they didn't have very many pictures up, actually none, from what I saw and they didn't have furniture in the family room they sat on the rug which was actually pretty neat to me. Sitting on the floor made it more homey to me in a sense, just because that usually doesn't happen in a typical home because we have couches or chairs and I just really liked the change.
  My experiences with our family will definitely help to shape my interpersonal interactions. I am now more accustomed to seeing different types of foods that people eat and also how they live in general. I think that just experiencing these themes and interactions helped me to realize that everyone has different styles of living. I think that now I will be more open and less stereotypical about other cultures. My future interpersonal interactions will be stronger now I think because I will actually know what to say to people even if we don't necessarily understand each other or speak the same language. I am definitely going to be more prepared to have different types of interactions with people as well. 

Now What: #3

I have learned so much about being more open to other cultures and having a better "attitude" with our service learning project and I can thank my refugee family for that. I can definitely use what I have learned to help me not to judge others off of what race they are, what background they come from or what language they speak because we are all humans and there isn't one race that is better than another one: we are all equal.  

   I plan on being a nurse and I know that I will encounter many interactions with people of different backgrounds and cultures. This service project has taught me to try and understand other cultures and be more accepting instead of shrugging people off if I can't understand them. The rest of my life I will encounter situations with all kinds of people with other cultures because more and more people are immigrating into the United States as we are a very diverse country. Especially in the health field I will have to treat patients and try and make them feel comfortable if they aren't familiar with our ways of doing things. I learned with this project that especially when the mom was breast-feeding in front of us not to judge her but just to be accepting and know that that is how some cultures may be. When the little boy was in the house and was somewhat in our way I adapted and tried to get comfortable because he was welcomed into their home the same as we were and we had no more rights than he did being there. I am really glad that I got the chance to try and help the little kids also learn to speak English and how to count money and other things like that. My favorite activity was when we baked cookies with them and watched the movie Frozen. The kids had a great time and it was fun to see them doing regular things that kids would do. I also don't think they had ever had chocolate chip cookies because when they tasted the cookies their faces lit up. I learned so much with my refugee family that I really think it will help me in life to have a more ethnorelative outlook on things, and be more accepting of other cultures. I am better prepared for the confusion that may come up if someone of a different background or speaks a different language needs treated or helped for when I am a nurse!

So-What #3

    I have a better understanding of the actions that I have seen or that I have encountered over the course of my service-learning project with my refugee family. On the first blog about the situations I encountered I talked about how the families still don't speak English very well and how the little boy who came over kept interrupting us trying to teach them English, and we couldn't tell him to leave. I think that this action just was how they do things in their culture, they are very welcoming with quests and the mother, Aye-Mya didn't want to tell him to leave or to be quiet because that is seen as rude he was just having fun. Also, another thing that we encountered was when the mother was breast-feeding out in the open and we looked at that as being "wrong" or "not right" in our culture because typically when mothers breast feed in the U.S they do it in private or when no one is around. I would see this concept of what I was feeling in my mind as "ethnocentrism" because I thought what she was doing wasn't necessarily right just because that is not what we do in the U.S. which is judgemental on my part because they are from a different culture and I should have known that they do things differently in their culture.
    Our family still doesn't speak very good English but I do think that we helped them a lot because they have showed progress in things like counting money, shapes, colors, emotions and labeling household items. I also think that now after doing this service project and encountering these situations with the families my attitude is more ethnorelative rather than ethnocentric. Overall, I think that I may have gone into this service hours not very open-minded and my "attitude" wasn't very culturally sensitive. I analyzed that during the visit that the little boy was there interrupting or what we thought to be as interrupting he was just a little boy saying what any little boy would do in that situation. He also was helping us out with translating the words and things we were trying to say, so in the end I think I should have been more thankful rather than annoyed or bothered by him.