Service Blog #3

1. This time when I was volunteering there were not many people who needed help with homework. Instead, I played Scrabble with some of the kids. Scrabble has never really been my forte, but I thought it would be fun to sit down and be able to have a conversation with them aside from focusing mostly on their school work. We played for about half an hour before that class was over for them. It was interesting getting to know them better. It seemed like they were very much assimilated to the American culture before but after having an actual conversation with them, it is easy to see that there are still some aspects of their culture they keep with them. This was evident even in the game of Scrabble. They would sometimes use words from their native language and would then explain to me what each of those words meant. I was also able to talk to them about what they thought of our culture and how different it is from what they are used to. From this question I got mixed answers. One boy told me that he is pretty much used to it and it seems normal to him. A different girl told me she thought it was hard to get used to at first but now she's seemed to have adjusted to it. She did say that she misses some of the food they used to eat and mentioned in particular a certain kind of bread that I forgot the name to, but it seemed like it would be comparable to what we call monkey bread. Overall, I had a great time getting to know more about their culture and about them individually.

2. During this visit I felt like I was both a member of the in-group and the out-group. I felt like part of the in-group because sitting there playing a board game with them felt really natural and we were able to talk about things we had in common like how school was going, if they were interested in sports, and that type of thing. I did feel like part of the out-group though when they would talk about their culture because they all had that in common and I was pretty much clueless about what different things meant and had to ask questions about almost everything. I could also tell that they were from a collectivist culture because of how they referred to different things. For example they were not very competitive with the board game we played. In my family growing up if we played a game it usually ended in a fight because someone was mad they didn't win. I also noticed that when they talked about doing things outside of school they were always with other people. It was never, "I went grocery shopping" or "I went to the mall." Instead they would use "we" a lot and mentioned the group instead of just themselves.

3. I think what I learned here is going to be very beneficial to my future visits. Being able to learn more about their culture and some of what they're going through will help me interact better with them in the future. I will know how to better relate to them and I think it helped to break some of the remaining ice that may have been there. Once again I felt myself self-monitoring a little at the beginning but once we started playing and talking I was able to relax more interacting with each other felt natural. This will definitely help me because I don't think I will need that time to get used to being there and helping out for awhile before feeling comfortable, I will be able to jump right in and have things feel natural.