During Service #2

Our previous visit with the Al Qay's was quite interesting. It was a great representation of time orientation. We arrived to the house to find a moving van full of all of their belongings. It turns out they liked Ohio so much more than Moline, Illinois and Mr. Al Qay even found a job there. It was the first time I saw the mother happy, she was grinning from ear to ear, and the son was super excited to move near kids he knew from his country. They said how this was a great opportunity for them and they could not turn it down, so we helped pack the remainder of their things, said our goodbyes, and they were off to Ohio.
We were given a new family for what will be our last two visits. This service was our very first time meeting the family and it taught me even more about intercultural communications along with a large array of intercultural and international differences. There is a mother, a father, and a nine year old son. They are Arabic and from Iraq like our other family, however, this interaction was much different. They have only been in America for 5 days now and they barely speak english. The only english the son knows is simple vocabulary such as animals and food and the mother knows little to none but tries her best to understand and speak to us. The father speaks just enough for us to understand him with the help of hand gestures, greatly increasing my knowledge of nonverbal communication and how it is done. As we began to converse with them I was astounded by what they have been through and what they are going through. While living in Iraq, the father was an engineer and worked for an American company, because of that the government was out to kill him. He had to leave his wife and new born baby for six years while he went to Jordan to stay safe. The wife is the sweetest thing. As the father told his story she did her best to explain how hard it was on her, but she still continued to smile. She is such a strong woman. We then came to find out more about Iraq and they told us about the weather, how it can get up to 130 degrees fahrenheit. You can only imagine how much they dislike our 20 degree weather right now! Also, they said they are not allowed to leave the house. They have no TV, no computer, the son cannot go to school yet, and all they can do is eat. The son has already gained about 11 pounds in 5 days because he cannot be active and his diet has drastically changed. He is becoming overweight. We continued to spend the rest of our visit getting to know them and I cannot even begin to describe how inspiring and kind this family is. After all they have been through they have an amazing spirit and mind-set and they are simply happy to be safe. It is the greatest feeling in the world to know how wonderful our country is and how lucky we are to call it home.

Time-Orientation is one of five cultural patterns. It is defined as how people conceptualize time. Some cultures choose to describe the future and most important, others emphasize the present, and still others emphasize the past. The Al Qay family greatly emphasized the future throughout our whole time with them. They were always looking ahead and thinking about finding a job and a better place to live. They valued their future as most important and I was able to realize this specifically when they quickly decided to get up and leave Illinois in hopes of a brighter future. However, I would say our new family conceptualizes time differently. They emphasize the present. They are living day to day not worrying about the future and trying not to look back on the past because they are simply happy that they are finally safe.
Nonverbal Communication is messages expressed by nonlinguistic means. Because they don't speak english very well, this experience was a way to test my nonverbal communication skills. I really had to pay attention to they way they speak in order to figure out what they were trying to say. I did this by looking at their facial expressions, their eye behavior, how they convey their emotions, and their hand gestures. Not only could I tell what they were saying, but it was a way for me to understand their culture.

Learning to see language in a different way (nonverbally) will really help me in future interactions with this family and even other cultures I'll run into throughout the rest of my life. Also, I learned a lot of international aspects relating to climate and things of that sort in Iraq, which made me a more knowledgeable person of the world around me. Because this family is so used to being outside in Iraq and have yet to really do so here in Moline, we would like to take them to a park or even on a walk next time we visit, if the weather is nice. I hope this will make the family more comfortable with their new surroundings and give them a better image of America.