Blog #2: The First Drop of Water

The first encounter that my partner and I had with our World Relief family was an interesting one. Thankfully, we had the help of Autumn, a long-time volunteer with World Relief that offered to help us start our project on a good foot. If she had not been there for us, we would have been left in the dark without knowledge of how to interact with our family.

We worked on basic conversation skills with our family on the first day. This proved to be more difficult than I expected because both the grandmother and the grandson barely knew how to say hello to us when we came to the door. The grandson knew more English than his grandmother, so he was able to help us explain some harder concepts to his grandmother (phrases like "How are you?" and "Nice to meet you".) Emelia and Autumn worked with the grandmother on conversational phrases while I worked with the grandson on some of his homework. He had to memorize the names of places around town, like the fire station and the post office. He knew that a station and an office both meant a building, but he had a hard time differentiating between the two, which resulted in words like "fire office" and "post station".

We had to understand that our family had to have a high tolerance for ambiguity during this experience. We had to realize that no matter how many times I wrote down the phrase "Nice to meet you" on a piece of paper, the family might say it and spell it without ever attaching the right meaning to the phrase. This also applies to the interpretation and organization stages of the perception process. Our family was able to organize the information well enough to say it and spell it correctly, but not to an extent on which meaning is attached. With no meaning (or an incorrect meaning) interpretation of the message can be wrong and the family could be left saying things that make no sense in context.

The biggest lesson I learned during our first interaction is patience. We have to have a high tolerance for ambiguity when working with our family. If we do not do this, then it is possible to get very frustrated with the family and get less work done than would get done otherwise. In our next experience, I need to calm down beforehand and tell myself that speaking English will never be as easy for them as it is for me. If my tolerance for ambiguity is high, it will make for a much smoother experience.