During Service (#3)

During our volunteer hours today it was a little more of a relaxing have fun day because Taghreed was really tired and starting to get more baby pains and both of the kids were a little high strung from being inside all day. However, this gave me more opportunity to notice subtle things about the family and the house. The kids got our names right away this time and then we colored for a little bit. We found out that the kids really like to do mazes and they both got pretty good at them which was exciting.  We also did another power point where they had to write down the word from the screen and then tell us the letters. Both of the kids were pros at it this time and sometimes the dad would even get a couple right and he usually doesn’t join in our activities so that was fun. During some of the down time I noticed one of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, masculinity and femininity. In this family the father works and the mother stays home with the kids and does all of the house work. These are the traditional roles of man and woman, however, today I did notice that Taghreed was really tired and kept holding her stomach and instead of still making her do all the house work Saad noticeably stepped in to help, which I hadn’t seen him do before.

                Another thing I noticed today was the ascribed identities of each member of the family, particularly the mom and dad. It was easy for me to tell the type of person they were each trying to identify with and how they wanted to be known to other people. The last concept I noticed as I was observing the family was ethnocentrism. It wasn’t a mean form of ethnocentrism but none the less I would classify the event that happened as ethnocentrism because they kind of laughed at our culture a little bit.

                In regards to the masculine and feminine component of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, I mentioned earlier that this family does adhere to the traditional 1950s gender roles. Saad, the man of the household, works and Taghreed, the mother, must provide moral support for her husband as well as take care of their children and the house. Both of them don’t speak English very well so I would assume that even if Taghreed could speak English she wouldn’t be looking for a job, however, she is also eight months pregnant and will need to care for a baby soon. It is very clear in their family that the women and men’s roles are separate, whereas in my family the roles are more similar. My parents both work and they both clean the house and take care of me and my siblings. Earlier I discussed ascribed identities which are labels given to you by other people. From the way Taghreed acts I can tell that she is trying really hard to be a good mother and to be hospitable towards me, Kaelin, and Hailey.  She always makes sure that we feel welcome and gives us food and drink without us asking for it first. This could also mean she is just a really nice person, but I also think that this shows her ascribed identity. As for Saad, I believe that he wants people to think he is a good dad and he is also trying really hard to know English so that he can teach Taghreed. Also, I noticed that when we first walked into the house there were some kids’ toys lying out on the table and he got really embarrassed and put them away. This shows me that he doesn’t want people to think his family is messy because it was only one toy on the table and their house is surprisingly always clean, whereas in my house it is easily disrupted by all of the belongings my family has.

                Lastly, an event occurred that really confused me at first and all three of us didn’t really know what to say when it happened. For our power point this time we focused on food instead of animals and for the letter h we put ham. The dad, Saad, happened to look over and tried to ask me that he wanted to see a picture of the ham so I showed it to him again. He actually wanted to see a picture of where ham comes from. When we finally understood we found a picture of a pig online and showed them and they all started cracking up. We had absolutely no idea why they were laughing and we were so confused that we just started laughing with them. I did a little research and it turns out that Muslims cannot eat pork because it doesn’t come from a kosher animal. I think this may have been the reason they were laughing but at the same time they were laughing at the fact that we do eat pig in our culture. Apparently they don’t agree with the eating of pig.

During Service (#2)

We visited our family for the second time and the experience was a little different because we didn’t have Kelly there to show us what we need to do. However, I think we did a really good job of engaging our family in the activities we conducted and I would even say that they learned something from us. One thing I noticed right away was how much more American their new house was. It made me believe that this family was leading in to the acceptance and integration phase of their initial culture shock, where they were slowly getting used to this new culture. We started out the first ten minutes or so going over everyone’s name. I thought it was really interesting that this time around it was easier for them to remember our names after not see us for 5 weeks than the first time we had actually met them. After this we did a little coloring with the two kids Baneen and Mustafa. I paid a lot of attention to the behavior of the kids and noticed a lot of similar things that happened between my brother and me when we were younger. We colored for a while and worked on colors with the kids and then we moved into power point that Kaelin and I made.  All we basically did was pick an animal for every letter of the alphabet and put them into a slide show.  For example, for the letter A we put the word ape and had a picture of an ape. We read the letter and the animal out loud and then had them write the word ape on a piece of paper.  During this exercise I noticed that Baneen who is eight years old, had moved into a more transactional way of communicating. It is definitely easier to hold a conversation with her now than when we first met because she was able to understand us better.

The next activity we did had to do with the alphabet as well. Kaelin and I made flashcards of the alphabet that showed both the upper and lower case form of each letter and we went through them a couple times and had them say each letter out loud. We ran into a little trouble with this because Baneen know all of the letters except a few and she was proud of herself for knowing them, but it didn’t give Mustafa and Taghreed a chance to learn as much.  After this we moved into money. I brought some change with and we taught them that a penny equals one cent and a nickel equals five cents and so on. This proved to be a little more challenging for all of them. We spent a while on this activity and I still don’t think that any of them quite grasped the concept. Overall, we had a really good time with the family and there was a lot of laughter between us and definitely less stress than the first time we visited. This makes me think about the attributions I made of Middle Eastern families and the stereotype I put them in and how I was wrong.

In relation to the family being in the acceptance and integration phase of culture shock, I observed how comfortable the family was this time I visited. They seemed to have the groove of things down and they didn’t seem as shocked by the things me and Kaelin did, although they were still curious. Also, their apartment that they just recently moved into seems more like the home of an American native. They still have their religious paraphernalia, but they didn’t have the drapes over the doorway and the kids toys were left out. Also, the father Saad, was Skyping someone from back home and to me that shows that they have almost completely adapted to an American style of living. Like I mentioned before I noticed that the behavior of Baneen and Mustafa was similar to that of me and my brother. They would push each other and tease each other and I think this shows that other cultures have the same relationships with their family as we do, but I just have never witnessed it before. They behave similar to us in other ways too that I guess I never really thought about. For example, the kids got really excited when their dad came home and he teased and played with them just like my dad did when my siblings and I were younger.

When I talked about Baneen moving into transactional communication I meant that when we ask her questions now she interprets it and them formulates a response that we then have to interpret. It’s not like this all the time because there are still a lot of things she doesn’t know, but I can definitely tell she is getting there faster than the other members in her family. Toward the end I also mention how Kaelin and I laughed and had a really good time with each member of the family. From the very first email Kelly wrote to us about this family, I was a little scared because I had this image in my head of a stern and silent family where only men were allowed to talk. I had basically attributed this family into a stereotype using the group-based mechanism. This is how I viewed Middle Eastern cultures as a whole. Now that I have gotten to spend time with this family, I have observed how much they are like my own culture. They are a close family and have a lot of fun together and aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves when they make a mistake, which is exactly how my family behaves.

Something I learned this time that would be beneficial for next time would be splitting the family up and doing more one-on-one based teaching. Taghreed, the mom, really doesn’t know her alphabet or how to write and so I think if one of us worked more one- on-one with her than she might pick up more information. Another thing that I learned was that we have to be very careful how we show them things. For example, our power point had a font that made the a’s look different and that really confused them because they thought it was an e. The same thing goes for the picture of the ape. They thought it was a monkey and it got a little confusing because we don’t want them to think that monkey starts with an a. I think for next time we just have to do very basic and low context pictures so there isn’t room for interpretation on what they are.