Reflection of Service

I had a great time volunteering with World Relief Moline this semester. When I first found out that we had to do a service learning project I was upset and worried because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to fit 12 hours of community service in my already crazy 18 credit hour semester.
I can honestly say that this semester has been my hardest semester since I started college 4 years ago. Whom ever said that senior year is suppose to be easy, was either crazy, a liar, or both.
I learned so much from my volunteer experience with World Relief, and the family that Anna and I were placed with. It was not a stressful experience, like I thought it would be, instead it was a stress reliever and I found myself looking forward to spending time with the family on Saturday afternoons.

I noticed many cultural and and interpersonal communications themes throughout my experiences that I have written about in previous blogs. This was a brand new experience for me, and I am so glad that I was given this opportunity. Because of this assignment, I now know that I don't have to limit myself to certain things just because I am hard of hearing. I know that communication is not just a one way road or but instead a two way road with many different paths. There is so much more to communication than just verbal language.
Non-verbal communication has always been a huge part of my life and something that I have relied heavily on, and this only increased during my time with the family.
I can now say that I know for sure that things like body language and facial expressions are universal across cultures and also a huge part of effective communication. Never in my life have I had to rely so heavily on non-verbal forms of communication. It is a good thing that I like to talk with my hands. I even found myself displaying some of my own ethnocentrism. I would unconsciously sign (American Sign Language ) things to the family, and then get confused when they didn't respond or understand what I was saying. Ethnocentrism within the deaf community, is that a real thing? I always forget that now everyone is hard of hearing, and not everyone understands ASL.

I still don't know a whole lot about Burma, but I know a lot more than I did before I met this family. For instance, I can tell that Burma is a very collectivist culture. This family does everything together, and the kids want to please their parents and help them in any way that they possibly can, which is something that is very rare in the individualistic society that is America.

I know that I will continue to volunteer with World Relief in the future, I have just had such a positive experience. There have been difficult times, and my ideas of what communication actually is have been seriously challenged, and definitely changed, which is something that will greatly improve most experiences that I have in the future not just with other cultures and societies, but right here at St. Ambrose University.