Service Learning # 2

            After A second and third meeting with the family from Nepal, I feel much more comfortable with this process.  However, the family is starting to not always be there right away, the one time only half of them were there right away, but then the rest of them came within twenty to thirty minutes.  This makes it harder on the big group because we do not get the one on one experience, but we still get the overall interactive experience.  The first time we went, Kelly was there and kind of got everything moving, this time it was all on our group.  It went very well, the family remembered us, they were excited to learn, and they were proud to tell us that the Father, Gore, got his first job here.  This was a cool thing to witness, between that and them showing us that they’ve been studying and showing us everything they know.  This is cool to see, because you can tell that they are becoming more and more comfortable with the new culture, and they seem to be adapting very well.  For being here only two months, maybe they are still in the honeymoon phase, or they are past culture shock.  However they seem more and more comfortable each week.  We have been taking them outside to show and tell them what certain objects are and this way they can see and say them which helps with the learning process.  After that, we work on reading and see how much they retained from the last session.  The first time I was with the mother and had her read Cat in the hat.  With the two hours I was there she was about three fourths of the way through.  I brought it back the following week, and she got all the way through it.  They keep showing improvement and that makes them very happy.  They still continue to be eager to learn and they look forward to our visits.  For future visits, maybe challenging them more could help increase their learning.  On the contrary, if we challenge them too much they may not learn anything and they may give up on trying during that session.  So for now, I think it is best to keep doing what we have been doing until it becomes too easy for them, at that point we can then increase the difficulty.