Post Service

         The end of this adventure is a whole lot different than I had imagined it when we first started visiting the Ling family. I keep thinking about how nervous I was to enter their house for the first time. Now, it feels unreal that our group will no longer step foot together into the home of their loving family. Our final minutes there with them was extremely bitter sweet. I could not think of the words to say to tell them that we would not be coming back. When things come to an end I always start thinking about the beginning. Reflecting back on the time we have spent with Nei, Dawt, Sui, and Do, I am realizing that there were a few themes present throughout our the entirety of our 10 hours together. 

         

         One theme that was present during every visit was language. Language is one of the largest barriers that separates one culture from another culture. It is what every cultures needs to communicate interculturally and even intraculturally. Both verbal and nonverbal communication were essential everyday we spent with our family. In order for us to successfully teach them about our culture they needed to pick up our message decode to be comprehended and send feedback to us. Later on the communication was becoming more immediate and transactional. Linguistic rules of the English language were also being used and broken during our visits. Whether it be pronouncing with the phonological rules, understanding the semantics, or the pragmatic social norms of our language. A lot of nonverbal language was used as well. Such as teaching them to connect body parts with their names. In order to do that we had to point to specific body parts. Once we practiced pointing then describing and naming body parts we could move onto more verbal questions to comprehend. 

         Another theme that I noticed was the application of the Social Penetration Theory. The very first day was filled with one word conversations and just basic facts about our lives such as our names. Our relationship at the beginning was tremendously impersonal with a small depth of self-disclosure. After each visit, we all learned something new about each other and were peeling away the layers of our relationship. With more and more disclosure we were moving further from impersonal relationships and closer to personal relationships. Reciprocity was a large factor for development of our personal relationships. We would ask them different questions every day and after they gave an answer, we would disclose the same information. It was the same even when we would just state a random fact about ourselves, they would respond with the same self-disclosure. 

         The last theme that I experienced during the whole service was Identity and more specifically, reflected appraisal. This goes hand in hand with the Looking-Glass Self. Since Nei and Dawt's children's perception of them had a larger impact on them it affected how the parents behaved during our visits. They would always pretend to not pay attention, but do it behind their children's backs. The parents were not as concerned if we saw because we were just acquaintances. Since they think that their children look up to them to be intelligent and wise they would laugh when their children made a mistake and not give themselves any opportunity to make mistakes. This was what happened everyday. Each visit I would ask them to join and they would simply say no and look away. 

        Our service hours may be over, but our relationships with Do and Sui will continue to flourish and grow. The distance from a most personal relationship will continue to decrease. The moment we described to them that we would not be coming back I saw the disappointed looks on their face. Do asked us all for our phone numbers and Facebook names. As soon as I wrote them down I could see his dreary face brighten up so cheerfully. It made me very excited to keep in touch with them. Do and I have already gotten in contact with each other and I will continue to use these themes and concepts and keep them in my mind as we continue to develop our relationship. I will also use this experience in the further when I start my career as a physical therapist also just flat out meeting new people. In order to give workouts to my patients they mud be able to interpret my communication the way it was meant to. There is no doubt that some will be from a different culture. This experience has made me expand my horizon while trying to effectively communicate and teach people of other cultures. 

During Service #3

         Our visit today was a little bit more laid back than our past visits. Do and Sui are already very good at their alphabet so today we started off by focusing more on difficult numbers and how to count money. We brought a small bag of multiple pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and also some singles and a five dollar bill. The bills were easiest for them to remember because they had the number values clearly written on them. When we first got there, Do answered the door and only him and his mother were at their apartment. I figured it would be like the last time and we would be able to focus on Do and give him our full attention again. Do started off a little bit slow with the memorization of the names and values of the coins, but after he got that down it was smooth sailing from then on. 

         About a half hour after we arrived, there was a knock on their apartment door. Sui and Nei had just gotten back from their English classes that they take during the day. Even though Sui was just learning English in her class she still was very eager to come work with us. Because Sui showed up we got to work with Do with the money before she got the chance to. We went over the names of the coins and their values and it helped Sui and also made Do an expert with money. As I had talked about before I thought it would be beneficial for Sui if we worked with her separately. It was perfect since Do knew what we were talking about he knew to sit back and watch and even translate for Sui exactly when she needed him. In a sense, we did get to work with Sui independently and I think it helped her tremendously. 

         The rest of our time with Do and Sui, we spent just trying to have conversation with some verbal and nonverbal cues as well. This helped them to not just hear the words and memorize a word with a picture, but also to comprehend what we said and comprehend how to respond. During our time I began to realize the Social Penetration Theory taking place. The Social Penetration Theory explains how people move from an impersonal relationship to a personal relationship. The very first day we had a very impersonal relationship with Do and Sui. All that we disclosed to each other was our names and then teaching them some basic words and numbers in English. Now that they are more comfortable with us I can see us all peeling the layers of our onions to reach a more personal relationship. We were talking about how their classes were going and what their favorite things were such as food and subjects in school. Their vocabulary is limited, however, with the amount of words they can understand and put into sentences they are giving us a look into their lives more and more everyday that we see them. I can also see the Social Penetration Theory taking place within the group of volunteers and especially with Aj and me. We had a rough start with coming together and being able to actually cooperate to go and visit the family. Now, we are becoming a lot closer and having detailed conversations with each other on the car ride and comparing music selections.  

        Also during our conversation I started noticing how they spoke English words. As we teach them more complex words it is more clear for me to see what they can and cannot pronounce. They do not know the phonological rules of linguistics in English. Phonological rules have to do with how the words of a language sound or how they are pronounced. Whenever we would ask them what we were sitting on they would say "cou" and leave out the "ch" in the word couch. I said it slowly for them and it took Do an especially long time just to say the full word couch. In their language I am guessing the sound of "ch" is not used very often or maybe even ever. Another word they had a hard time with was saying dime. Instead Do would say "dine" and when he did pronounce it right he had to use a strong and long emphasis on the "i". When Sui said dime she would actually pronounce it "dame" and use an a sound instead of an i sound. Even though we were speaking these words to them and they could hear us, it was their phonological rules in their language that kept them from being able to correctly pronounce English words.

        The Social Penetration theory is explaining to me why I get more and more excited to see our family with the people I have the pleasure of volunteering with. In the future I am looking forward to moving our relationship to an even more personal state and getting to know these people beyond what they would disclose to an impersonal relationship. I can also use it to know my boundaries of how fast or how slow to move into our relationships and become close friends. Knowing that their memorization and understand of words is tremendously improving, we can try to spend our last day together working on the pronunciation of words. We can move forward to harder readings and be right next to them to help them with any pronunciation help and also give them a visual how certain letters together make a different sound than what they are used to.