#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.