Today most of the Honors kids went to the Neighborhood House, which is a place for immigrants or refuges in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. They offer many programs for adults, kids, and families. We got the opportunity to talk to some of the students from their ESL (English as a Second Language) classes. We also got to take a small tour around their building and see some of their services.
This applies to what we are learning because all of the people who are being helped by the Neighborhood house are part of the poor and marginalized. Most of them come to the country with nothing. Then they have to start all over again without knowing the language or how to get a job. We have learned that it is hard for the poor to get out of the rut of being poor.
Today I talked to two women from Northern Africa and a man from Thailand. To start we all shared a little about ourselves like who was in our family and where we were from. Then I asked them what they would like to talk about and the man told me that he would like to know how to get into college. He also talked about how hard it is to learn English at his age. The last thing he talked about is how hard it is to learn how to work jobs in Minnesota. The younger women had only been in the United States for seven months. She did not like to speak a lot, but when she asked me a question it was about GED’s. She was wondering if it was hard to get one, and if you needed to know how to read to get one. The second woman has lived in the United States for 7 years and in Minnesota for at least 5 years. She has one child and a husband. When she came over two of her other siblings came over, but two had to stay. It was very hard to understand some of the things that they were saying, and even harder to remember others. The hardest things to remember were their names, and even if I did remember them I would have never been able to spell them. It was a great experience to talk to them, because I got to understand where immigrants and refuges come to America. The thing that I will always remember is that the man said that sometimes it is just so hard that he wants to quit. Learning everything all over again after he has already started a family is not something that he wants to do. He has helped put a lot of my frustrations in order.
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