Blog 5: Post Service

1. As I look over my time at Rock Island, I notice a couple of reoccuring themes. To start off, I was always very careful with the questions that I asked related to the students' lives. I have never really had interaction with people from different countries in this aspect before, so obviously I didn't really know what to say. I could use some common sense to determine what would be okay and what wouldn't be, but for the most part I would just let the students tell me what they were comfortable with sharing. As I've said in a previous blog, talking about their lives before coming to America probably isn't very enjoyable, and that's another reason that I was careful with what I would ask or say. Another theme I saw among most of the students was the desire to go to college. I think it's great that after all of the things these kids have been through, college is still on their mind. Maybe they wish to go to college because it's the "American" thing to do, but I think the majority of these students want to go to college because they genuinely enjoy school.

2. This experience will greatly affect how I interact interculturally in the future. Because of this experience, I learned how to talk to students in all the different stages of culture shock. This will greatly help because I have learned sort of what is going through a person's mind at each stage, which allows me to know what I should or shouldn't say. This was also a great learning experience, and every student that I had interaction with taught me something. The biggest thing I learned from this experience is just how different other countries are from America. I knew about some of the struggles that other countries experience, but I had no idea to what extent all of the issues were. As I've said many times, this experience has taught me how to interact with people from other cultures, and how to appropriately respond to the things that they decide to share with me.