Trading Spaces

Welcome back to my blog, "A Summer of Refuge." So far I've already spent a whole month here at Exodus and there still is never a dull moment!

This week, our department moved offices. Whereas before the Housing and the English programs were in the same office, we are now in separate offices. A Monday afternoon was courageously spent taking apart shelves, hauling books, and moving computers to a new and improved office space. Most people were happy about this change, mainly due to the fact that "now we will be able to get a lot more work done!" Gotta admit, I was not quite so thrilled. Smaller office, more closed off, and less people to talk to. I definitely have gotten into a habit at work of talking to whoever is in the office, probably because everyone is just so interesting. So now we have half the people, and although I really like the English people, I miss those in Housing as well. Occasionally I walk down the hall to the old office and reminisce about the old times when the housing and LCORE interns were in the office alone during staff meetings, pretending like we were the ones in charge. Sure will miss that place!

One thing this internship has taught me about myself is that I can be pretty chatty. When I'm not teaching, I'm usually in the office doing some sort of work or another, which can range from lesson plans to cutting out flashcards to laminating things to keeping track of attendance and making binders. There are just a million things to be done, and I'm very glad to be able to help out with them. And it keeps me on my toes, but it doesn't change the fact that I feel uncomfortable working in an office with several other people and not talking to them. I think I'd be a great character on "The Office." After about 5 minutes of silence, I start to become anxious and then begin to ask random questions and start conversations, even though I know that people are probably doing important things on their computers. I think for the most part people are happy to talk to me, but I should probably work on that one for the future: "Remember, Anna, people are here to work!"

Apart from the office, my students are inspiring to me, as always. And sometimes downright hilarious. One of my students told me that he was a cowboy in his home countrry. "A cowboy," I thought. Interesting...turns out he was a cow herder, but hey now, isn't that pretty much the same thing? He'll always be a cowboy in my book :)

Another thing that I have come to do at my internship is start teaching a night class. This means that I can take three hours out of my work schedule a week anywhere I want, which is pretty nice. Teaching this class also means that I have to organize the volunteers who come to teach and give a ride to some of the students who are physically unable to walk the distance. And this is where the Butzmobile (my red minivan) comes in handy. Not only can I give students rides, I can take up to 6 people! I'm sure that Exodus wishes they could make more use of my van, but alas, the sweet soccer mom vehicle shall remain mine. I keep forgetting to put up the two middle sits that I have stowed-and-goed, so I always feel terrible when I open the door for the elderly students and they have to climb all the way to the back, probably asking themselves why they didn't just walk. "Remember, Anna, to put those seats up!" Still hasn't happened, but I promise it will before the next class!

Teaching the night class is a whole different ball of wax. Currently I have about four volunteers that come to teach the different levels, but usually at least one of them is missing, so we really have to make do the best that we can. If any of you reading this are volunteers anywhere, please don't flake out! Even though you aren't getting paid and you probably deserve the occasional day off, your commitment is important as well and trust me. You are needed and depended upon way more than you think you are. So if you are thinking about volunteering at a shelter, or teaching classes or at a nursing home, that is absolutely wonderful and I wholeheartedly encourage it. Just make sure that it's something that you know you can really commit to every week. Do that for me, will ya?

Internship aside, I haven't talked a lot about what it's been like to really live on my own. It's been pleasantly very nice. I have my own room to sleep in, a kitchen to cook in, a bathroom to shower in, in a very nice part of the city. With my friends from school I like to go to Broad Ripple and either have a drink or get something to eat. I also go grocery shopping at Kroger...I feel so domestic! Cooking and ironing my work clothes and buying my own stuff all the time. Feel like a real adult. Except for one small detail: I need to learn how to budget. I thought that I was pretty good about this, but it turns out I was quite mistaken. Rent, utilities, gas, groceries, I can handle, while everything else becomes a major life decision. I'm certainly not complaining that I'm poor, but I'm just learning how to work my way around not having a lot of extra spending money. I think the first thing I need to do is learn to buy things in bulk!

Also, I've been trying to adopt a more healthy lifestyle over the summer. At the beginning, I was running almost every day until last week sometime when I pulled a muscle or a tendon in my calf, and now it hurts to run so I've been trying to lay off it for a while. My dental hygiene has also improved vastly. I'm not sure why, but not only do I brush my teeth once a day, but I also floss and use mouthwash. Now next time i go to the dentist he better not tell me I'm not doing a good enough job. Nothing's worse than the dentist criticizing you as he takes a metal pick to your teeth and gums and asks you questions that you can't answer because his tools are in your mouth. Oh, the dentist...

Another reason why I think I've been spending so much money is because I like to eat healthy food. And not in the way of calorie counting, but more in the way of fresh food that doesn't come out of a box. There are a few bad things about eating this way. The first thing is that unlike box and bag food, real food actually expires, and fast. And when I only have one mouth to feed, I can't be cost-effective when buying fruits and vegetables because if I buy too many at a time they go bad before I get the chance to eat them all. Another bad thing about eating this way is that fresh food tends to be a bit more expensive, and when you cook (literally cook) for yourself there are a lot of ingredients you have to buy. Never thought I'd be stocking my cabinets with baking powder, cornmeal, spices, and olive oil at the age of 21, but I gotta say that I enjoy cooking and want to keep at it. And now that most of the essentials are bought, hopefully in the next month I'll spend less money and be just as healthy.

Well, there you have it! Not only do you know more than you want about my work, but you also get a glimpse of what it's been like for me to live on my own. Thanks for reading and I'll post again next week!

Anna

Liberty

And welcome back to what I know is everyone's favorite blog, Summer of Refuge! Just kidding, but I sure hope someone likes reading it.
This week was an especially impactful week for me. Besides the fact that the Pacers lost the game on Monday (since being in Indy I have suddenly become a random Iowan die-hard Pacers fan), class discussions have been very interesting and eye-opening. One of the things we try to incorporate into our classes, especially the advanced levels, is American culture and American history. This week, we did a lesson on the United States' independence and the Revolutionary War. The students were very interested to learn about this, since the US is considered by many to be the world's greatest power and we can't pinpoint exactly why the US has been so successful in this way. The question is: how did it all begin?
We started with Patrick Henry's favorite quote: "Give me liberty or give me death." Although all of us grew up hearing this quote since we were little kids and reading it in the history books before we really could appreciate what it meant, I can't imagine what it must be like for my students to hear this for the first time. Even though it's hard for us to think this way, let's try to really think critically about the country we live in. We have liberty around every corner. Anyone can go to the library and get a book. Everyone has access to at least some education, which the government encourages. If I hate Obama, I can publish it on my Facebook wall and maybe the worst thing that will happen to me is that I will get some nasty comments. I'm allowed to have a Facebook if I want to. I have a president, not a dictator. I cannot stress enough the fact that not everyone is given such luxuries. Yes, I know that I'm speaking from a white middle-class perspective and like every other sociologist out there, I'm aware of the economic, racial and gendered disparities out there. Not everyone is given the same opportunities, but at least we can say that we all have certain human rights as citizens of the country. The idea of "give me liberty or give me death" struck the students in such a tender way. I could see each one of them, individually, beginning to understand the meaning of the concept, smiling, nodding, and saying, "I like this. This idea, I like." The reason people become refugees is because in their home countries they aren't given freedom. What they're given is oppression, threats, civil war, and corruption. Violations of basic human rights are a good reason to get out, and once they come to the United States, they've come so far and been through so much that I often feel like it's my responsibility to guide them the rest of the way. It's the least I can do.
Another quote we talked about in class was "all men are created equal." Yeah, we know that at the time this quote didn't really include women, or non-white men for that matter, but at least it's something that we can strive for as Americans. This quote really sparked some discussion in my group. For once, they talked and I listened. They talked about how in their country, men in uniform abuse their power. They go to the fronts of lines, demanding goods for free. When refused, they say, "I'M A GENERAL! DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" They beat citizens, they steal, they give advantages to those who can offer them the most money. One thing in particular that I remember was, "Military, and people with money, all same." If you don't have money and you're not in the military, you don't stand a chance. We even talked about how in one country, Burma, to get education you must pay money. If you don't have money, you don't get to go to school. All men are not created equal.
And I thought, no wonder they loved these quotes so much. These sayings express ideas that are forbidden in their countries, unheard of. I think that in these quotes my students really found something to become fond of and passionate about, and left class with a growing contentment in knowing that our founding fathers really had some good ideas, and here they are living in this very country. Sure made me proud as a teacher. That was a proud moment, indeed.
On a less serious note, I'm really getting to know my fellow interns and coworkers outside of class. Our office has four different desks in it, so usually I'm always accompanied by someone. I find it kind of awkward to share a room with someone and not talk to them, so I think sometimes I overcompensate for this by talking whenever I can. One of my fellow interns is from West Africa, and the other day we literally stood by a big world map in the office and spent half an hour looking at the continent of Africa and talking about it. This is what I really love about working with people of different backgrounds, you really learn something new every day. Another coworker, as I found out, had apparently driven through my luxurious hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The other day he asked me, "Anna, I know you're from Iowa, but where exactly?"
ANNA: "Cedar Rapids."
COWORKER: "Is that the city that smells bad?"
ANNA: "Probably."
COWORKER: "I think I drove through there once. A lot of cereal factories?"
ANNA: "Yep, that's the one."
COWORKER: "Huh. Yeah, it's not the nicest place, is it?"
As you can see, he had a lot of nice things to say about my hometown river city that reeks. I almost asked him if he was from a big white house in a clean Chicago suburb, but I resisted the temptation. Not trying to make a bad impression on anyone :) Sorry about the sass, old Anna blog coming out!
Either way, the internship continues to go well. As I teach more and more classes, I think I'm becoming really attached to being a teacher. Sure, I don't mind the office work in the off-hours, but there's something about being in the classroom and giving people life skills that really keeps my motor running. Hopefully I'll be doing more of the same things in the future.
Thanks for reading this one and I hope you enjoyed it! New one next week!
Anna

The English Language

Thus ends the second week of my internship with Exodus Refugee Immigration! Although it's been a short week due to Memorial Day, the work has been constant and there is never a dull moment.

I've realized over this past week that given the right circumstances, I'm actually pretty fond of teaching English. I remember when in the Dominican Republic in a room of over 20 children and preteens, I thought that teaching English to non-native speakers was something that I really didn't see myself doing. Not that I didn't have a good experience, because I developed quite a relationship with those youngsters and I miss them a lot since being home in the states. But my teaching work with Exodus is very different, and in a very nice way. I teach English to only adults, so that in itself always gives me a sigh of relief. First of all, these students are coming to class because they want to and because they want to learn the language. I mean, you can't even say that of all college students because some take classes "because they have to" or are even in school "because their parents make them." Not the case this summer, though. These are dedicated learners who work hard and study in order to better live their lives, not because anyone is making them go.

Also, I think I just relate better to adults than to children. Sure, I like kids as much as the next person, but I (like my mom) have a very low tolerance for whining. Yes, there are a lot of adults who whine, but it seems to be more common around children and younger people who don't yet understand the value of education. Once I learned that lesson, I became a lot less whiny about going to class, doing homework, etc. My students at Exodus are certainly not whiners. They see class as an opportunity, not a task or a chore. They come to class eager to learn, eager to pronounce correctly, and eager to understand and make those bilingual connections. And this, my friends, is what makes me love teaching these classes. My students have been through a lot, and they are so deserving of this opportunity to learn the language of their new country. And I'm proud to be able to say that I am helping them adapt and guiding them on their way to self-sufficiency.

However, that's not to say that you don't have to be flexible while doing this job, because you most certainly do! Most days, I don't get through all the material that I want to because I constantly have to stop in the middle of the lesson to explain a new word of vocabulary or a grammar lesson so that all of the students can understand and we can move forward. Every once in a while I'll be at the table with them and will say a word or a concept and be facing a table full of blank stares." Of course," I think to myself, "they don't know what that word means." Time to get up from the table, go to the white board, and make sense of things that I've never even thought about. For example, the other day I was teaching a lesson to a pretty beginner group of students. We were talking about family, and the members of the family. The lesson plan said to use the word "memory." Even though I probably should have skipped over this concept entirely, I wrote the word "memory" on the board. Students: blank stares. Anna: all right, how do I explain this? "Um...well, a memory is something that happened in the past that you remember!" (really should have had a dictionary for that one.) Students: blank stares. Anna: what do I do, what do I do? "OK, here I'm drawing a PICTURE of my FAMILY." Students: less blank stares. Anna: "What is family?" One student: "Mother, brother, sister..." Anna: "Very good!" I had to think of a family memory, and fast! My family probably has lots of memories, but I wanted something that clearly was in the past. Well, how about when my little brother was born? So I drew a picture of me, my mom, my dad, and two older brothers and a little baby that signified my little brother, John, when he was born. And yes, he was the cutest thing.

Now, just so I don't end up taking up two pages about the half hour I used trying to explain "memory," basically I used a lot of hand gestures, made a chart about past present and future, had to explain that now in the present my brother is fourteen years old, what it means to be born, the year I was born, that 2013 is the present, yesterday is the past, therefore yesterday is a "memory." I kept digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole, but eventually I think most students came out of it understanding the concept of past, present and future. Good enough for me. This is just an example of how flexible you have to be when teaching very basic level ESL students :) Quite the experience, and like I said, NEVER a dull moment.

Now, as you can only imagine, I don't speak in my normal fast native English way with the students, or even in my normal tone of voice. Lots of hand gestures, lots of repetition, lots of slowww speeech. So when I get out of teaching a three-hour class, I am still in that mode of speech, which can be pretty funny. The other day I came out of class and was talking to a fellow intern, without realizing that I was now out of English class and was talking to a native speaker. After about five minutes, she said, "Anna, I'm actually not five years old. You can talk normal now." In this way, readjusting can be pretty comical. At least for the people around me.

Sometimes I make such connections with my students and am able to see eye to eye with them that I forget why they're here. I guess I'm so used to working with people from different countries that I kind of start to see everyone in the same way. But when I am reminded of the fact that they are refugees who were, at one point, facing such atrocities in their home country, I can't help but feel very fortunate for myself and very grateful that they are able to come here. For example, one of the students got lost on the bus the other day. When I heard about that, I felt immediately empathetic. I remember when I was seventeen living in Chile, taking the bus late at night to my friend's house in Santiage in an area I didn't know well. I got on the bus very late and was one of only three people. And I couldn't remember which stop was the right one, because everything looked the same to me. Eventually, all the other people got off and I was all alone, and we had probably already gone through the route about twice and the busdriver told me this was the last time going around for the night, and he would have to drop me off somewhere in the next 20 minutes. I hadn't been so scared in my whole life. So when I heard he was lost, I felt so scared for him because I knew what that was like. But then one coworker mentioned, "Well, he's been in guerilla warfare before, I'm pretty sure he'll survive this until we find him." I didn't know what that was like. Sometimes we forget how fortunate we are never to have had to face such things and never to have had to fight in order to survive, and then be shipped to a new place where we don't have money, food, or know the language. But then I remember, this is why Exodus is here. This is the work that we do. And I couldn't be more happy to be doing it.

That's all I got for this week, but please let me know what you think! Also, Exodus always welcomes donations, so if you have anything to donate (clothes, food, houseware, toys, etc) please let me know! Anything and everything is vital and needed. Thanks so much for reading and I'll post again next weekend!

Anna

My first week with the refugees

            Hello everyone and welcome to my brand new blog, A Summer of Refuge! My last blog was about my Aventuras during my semester in the Dominican Republic, but this summer I have moved on from traveling around Latin America (as I often do) and toward doing work in one of my local communities, Indianapolis.

            I am not a native of Indianapolis; in fact, I am from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Attending DePauw University as a major in Romance Languages and a minor in Sociology, I have traveled a few times to the city for cultural festivals and of course to go shopping at the international market, Saraga (highly recommended). After working at my local coffee shop for the past five summers and realizing that I’ll be graduating in a year, I decided that this summer I needed to focus less on making money and more on gaining some useful experience. Well, useful experience can mean a lot of things. It can mean having a bad relationship and learning to recognize what we like to call “red flags”, it can mean going to a third world country and being so humbled that you are forced to put your own life into perspective, it can mean working in a boring office from which you come away a resume-building master at Microsoft Excel, or it can mean interning at a non-profit and recognizing the pockets of our society which need the most help, which is what I have chosen to do with the summer before my senior year of college.

            This summer, I am lucky enough to be able to intern at Exodus Refugee Immigration in Indianapolis. When choosing what to do with my summer, I honestly had no idea where to start. Do I stay at home in Cedar Rapids and save money? Do I do an internship abroad? Do I apply for Teach for America? Do I work on campus? I’m sure that these are all questions that fly around the minds of a lot of college students who are deciding how to make the best use of their summer. And the reality is, every person is different and every person is supposed to do something different. If we all tried to get internships every summer, think of how mundane the world might be. Some of us need to stay home and work, and some of us need to travel around. For me, I had never lived on my own before. In all my travels I had always been with a host family or a group, every summer I had lived at home with my family, and at school I had always lived in my sorority house. So even last summer I knew that this time I needed something different and was actually in the position to do something different. So I decided it was time for me to live on my own for a summer and try and get an internship.

 Now, you ask me, why Exodus? Why Indy? Well, Indianapolis, for those of you who don’t know, is a pretty cool town. Like any city, it has its pretty parts and ugly parts, but for the most part it’s got a lot of culture, it’s not so big that people are impersonal (sorry New Yorkers, but it’s true), and it’s not too expensive to live in. And it’s the capital and biggest city in Indiana, where I have lived for the past three years. And I thought, after traveling around so much, why not work in my own community and make a difference in my own backyard? So that’s what I determined. An internship in Indy was my best way to go.

            Now here I am, done with my first week at Exodus Refugee Immigration. I’ll have to start out by saying that a lot of information in the office is case-sensitive, so while I would love to share with you all of my experiences with the clients and the individuals who I encounter and work with in the office, I can only share certain information and certainly can’t mention any names. So I will do the best that I can J

            I started the work last Monday, and I gotta tell you…those eight-hour days are LONG! The first day, I was greeted in the office and immediately began right in the classroom with the new students. Our clients are refugees from many different countries, and I really got pushed into client interaction on the first day, which I loved and was really excited about. We started out by doing some ice breaker activities (having been a first year mentor and an international student ambassador at DePauw really helped out with this one). I immediately felt very comfortable with the students, and of course, when I feel comfortable with people I start to make jokes. If you have ever taught ESL before, you know that when you tell jokes and the students get it and laugh, that’s a really good sign. We learned everyone’s names and got to learn a bit more about the students and where they are from and what they did in their home countries. What was most amazing to me is that all of the clients come from very different backgrounds and had very different lives back home. One client was a human rights activist, another was a carpenter, another was a teacher, another said he was a father, and the list goes on and on. And they all start out here all over again, with a completely new life, new set of clothes, and a new perspective.

            This first week, I have been mostly learning the ropes and teaching A LOT of English class. When I lived in the Dominican Republic, I taught (or rather, I tried to teach) students ages 8-16, all 25 of them all together in one room. That, my friends, was what I might call a useful experience. Getting through a class and being able to actually teach the students the material was challenging enough, never mind teaching them well. The English classes at Exodus are very different. LCORE is a program that oversees English teaching and cultural orientation for the clients. Each student is assessed and placed in a certain level of English class, and each class has a different focus, so not only are the clients learning how to speak better English, but they also learn about American culture and history.

            For example, the other day in class we learned about American body language. It’s funny…every culture has their own definition of what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to gestures and personal space. In the US, when you meet someone you give them a *firm* handshake. In the class I learned some things that I hadn’t even thought about before, such as when Americans talk to one another, we tend to stand about 2 ½ feet apart and slightly at an angle. Now think about it…when two people are casually talking, they typically don’t face each other directly. They stand slightly at an angle, so they don’t seem to be in each other’s faces. Probably something you never noticed. Learn something new every day, right? It was fun to teach this lesson to the students, and we got to talk about what certain hand gestures mean in their own culture, and how in many other cultures, when trying to get someone’s attention it is common to make sounds, such as hissing or smacking your lips. In the US, we tend to use more hand movements, like waving or raising our hands, instead of making noises. Learning about other cultures also makes you learn about your own culture, and I have been so lucky in my life to meet people from all over the world, but I still get to learn more about my own culture every day, especially in my internship.

            This week, I have taught a different English class every day. It’s fun to change it up, and as the students are more advanced, my teaching methods differ depending on the level they are at. This gives me a constant challenge in the classroom, and since the classes are small, I am able to be more personal with my students and assess each one individually, instead of trying to manage a group of twenty-five kids and angsty preteens who look around the room half the time and fight the other half.

            Along with teaching classes, I also do a lot of office work at my new job. This I can completely understand, as in most companies or organizations it is common for this kind of work to be passed on to the new people or the interns, work study students, etc. Having had a work study job at DePauw for two years in an office, I can work a copier and printer pretty well, so this was not a hard adjustment. I get a good variation of being in the classroom directly with the students and being in the office where I can do my own work and get things done in my own time. The LCORE department is in the process of developing an entirely new curriculum, so it’s really exciting to work in that area this summer because I can see all the changes happening. Learning English is such an important part of the orientation and adjustment to the new country, and it helps that all the students are so eager to learn the language. I think part of this is because they really have to. If you have room full of high school students in a Spanish class in the United States, you aren’t going to see the same levels of motivation as you are in a ENL/ESL class in the United States with a room full of people who are brand-new to the country and are constantly trying to figure out their new lifestyle.

            I applaud my students for all the work they do. Exodus does a lot of work in relation to self-sufficiency of the new refugees, such as employment, housing, English lessons, paperwork, transportation and medical aid, but at some point the client has to take it upon his or herself to really become able to live comfortably in their new society and culture. And the most incredible part of it all is that each person has a different story. In general, refugees are people who flee their country or region because of a particularly life-threatening situation. Many have faced threats of torture, being killed, being raped, having their families taken away, and many other horrific things. So, in other words, they need to flee. These people are not your typical immigrant to the United States, although many US immigrants are, in fact, refugees. The United States takes in about 60% of the world’s resettled refugees, so in this way I can applaud my country as well. There are a lot of things I don’t like about the United States, but this is one thing that I know I can be proud of. And most of these people have been waiting for years for a chance to come and create a new life outside of refugee camps where many of them are living in terrible conditions and cramped quarters where disease is all too prevalent and many do not have access to education, or even a true breath of fresh air, something that many of us often take for granted here in the United States. Our clients have been through a lot, and it is our job and our social responsibility to aid them in whatever way that we can. This is what Exodus does, and I am grateful to be a part of that for the next three months.

            I am also grateful to be a recipient of the Summer Independent Internship Grant from DePauw University. While my internship does not pay me, this grant is what allows me to pay for my rent, my food and my transportation for the summer. I have been very fortunate to be a part of this opportunity and probably wouldn’t have been able to do it without the extra help, so I’d like to extend a thanks to DePauw and to the state of Indiana for really allowing me to have this experience. I will be writing in this blog every week and will do a presentation at DePauw next semester about my internship as part of the grant program, so I hope that this can be a good way for me to extend my gratitude for all the fortune that I have been given not only this summer, but my whole entire life.

            I think that’s all I will write for today. Thank you for listening to my experience and my point of view, and I hope that you will keep reading every week to see how I progress in my new experience and learn more about refugees and non-profits in our home community. Thank you-

Anna