This morning I got up and joined the creole students for
their morning language lessons. They
have all been here for about two weeks, so I felt a little ridiculous trying to
jump in to the class at this point. I
pretended that I understood what was going on, but most the time just felt
overwhelmed. A new session will start in
about a week, so I’m looking forward to starting from the beginning with the
new group of students.
After lunch
K. and I began brainstorming plans for the Student Health and Wellness
Center. I am so excited to get this work
going, and it was pretty refreshing to feel like this is something that I
genuinely feel qualified to do. I know
how to do trauma counseling. I know how
to teach psychoeducation classes on stress management, healthy coping skills,
etc. Who knew? J K. also asked if I would help teach her
Health Psychology class. The class has
about 50 students and she wanted to give them more practical skills, so for the
next 8 weeks we will divide the class and I will teach half of them for four
weeks while K. teaches the others, and then switch groups for the remaining
four weeks. I was again excited that I
felt totally comfortable volunteering at kind of the last minute to teach
classes on listening/communication, relaxation therapy techniques, and
cognitive behavioral therapy.
I spent the
rest of the afternoon studying Creole independently. My roommates have given me their old
notebooks so I am now just trying to memorize vocabulary words so I can focus
on grammar when I actually start the language classes. We had another incredible thunderstorm all
throughout the evening, with the most gorgeous rainbow that went from one side
of the narrow valley we live on to the other.
Pretty much
everyone in the house decided to go to a local hotel known for its late-night
parties. C. and I decided to stay
back and I thought I was just going to have a quiet evening. There were a few guys that didn’t go out,
either. S. is a Haitian student at
ETS who also teaches the Creole classes and teaches some at the school. I ended up talking with him for a long time
about his counseling work in the IDP camps after the earthquake and other
experiences he has had. While we were
talking, another guy that teaches here named J. came in. I had just told Soulouqe that I have never
had alcohol, and he announced this to J. with great astonish J. immediately asked me if I was Mormon,
which turned in to another hour-long conversation with S., J., and
soon another teacher named D. who overheard our conversation and wanted to
come learn about Mormons, too. It turned
out S. has some good friends who are Mormons, but this was J. and
D.’s first time to ever talk to a Mormon, and they immediately started
asking me all kinds of questions. The
first question was about the “underwear”.
They were amazed to learn that there were Mormons that lived outside of
Utah. I fielded questions about the
Sacrament, the Word of Wisdom, living prophets, Joseph Smith, and why we have
so many rules. I definitely was not
expecting this interrogation and was kind of exhausted when the conversation
came to an end, but it was so fun to have people willing to ask questions to
clear up their own stereotypes and misperceptions with a genuine non-judgmental
curiosity.
No comments:
Post a Comment