I started physical therapy this week! I am doing some walking (mostly with the boot and a crutch), but it is super exciting! With this advancement I decided to take the bus to work for the first time. Below are some pictures from the bus and a bike path I took a walk on near Casa Alitas.
At work this week I learned how to do intake. I was shown the google form and told to go. I listened to the people around me and memorized the three questions I needed to ask in Spanish.
Viajando solo? (Are you traveling alone?)
De Dondé es? (where are you from?)
Necesita atención medico? (Do you need medical attention?)
The rest of the information I could find on their immigration documents. As I registered person after person I refined my questions, added clarifying questions, and worked on my pronunciation.
It felt exciting to be speaking Spanish, but I also felt frustrated. It is very important to me to make people feel seen. To me this means honoring the stories of others by allowing space to share and by listening attentively. However, with my limited Spanish it is very hard for me to do these things. When people start sharing more than the bounds of the google form questions, I barely understand what is being said let alone know what to say in response. When the man in front of me starts explaining that his wife might need medical assistance because she just had an abortion or a woman was separated from her husband and child this morning, I have to turn to a staff beside me or google translate for assistance. This takes so much of the humanity out of the situation and makes showing sympathy quite challenging. The moral of the story is that being able to communicate with nuance is so important.
At some point during the week I noticed that a lot of the people coming through Casa Alitas are close in age to me. Mostly young Cuban men 20-30 years old. I started paying more attention to the birthdays that I was entering. I have enough vocabulary to talk about dates and birthdays, so I started commenting when I noticed that someone was the same ages as me.
Tiene viente y dos años? Yo tambien!
This did not fix any problem or change anyone's life, but for a moment our eyes would exchange a smile and a nonverbal "I see you." I hope that as my Spanish improves I can find ways to connect to more than just the 22y/o's and those born on January 20th.
I cannot take pictures of my work, so you get lunch pictures, and a bonus bean burger dinner, because I thought it looked pretty.
Stories:
1 One of the 22-year-olds I registered was a man named Lasha from Georgia. He spoke English so we were able to chat a bit more. After I had completed his form he stayed and helped translate for the other Georgians because not many of them knew English. He thought the questions were silly.
You are from Georgia? You speak Georgian? [Lasha would laugh and say yes]
I have to ask [I replied smiling]
Do you need medical attention?
No, he is strong [Lasha would reply, and the man would flex]
This series continued several times. I was grateful for Lasha's translational help and for the shared laughter.
2 Tuesday afternoon after all the guests had arrived and there was nothing left to do at intake, so I went to work at the help desk. Rabindra a 26 year old from Nepal came to me with a plane ticket already purchased. All he needed was for us to make plans for him to get to the airport that evening. By that time it was quarter to 5, which meant he had missed the last bus to the airport. After consulting with other staff we decided the best option was for me to drive him to the airport and then be done for the day. He spoke a little English, so on the 15min drive I learned that he has a two year old daughter and a wife in Nepal that he hopes will come join him one day. We bonded over our love of mountains and snow, and he told me of his excitement to be living in the US. "Everyone loves living here," he told me. When he got out of the van, he expressed his gratitude and said "I will miss you every day." I watched him walk through the airport doors with tears in my eyes, hoping that for him the "American Dream" will be reality.
3 This week I learned how to do a change of address. A process that requires two lengthy forms, an email to immigration offices, and a lot of explaining that is way over my understanding of law or Spanish vocabulary. I was working with Orlando, a man from Nicaragua, whose document papers said he was going to live in Texas, but he was actually going to Georgia. This is a common problem. People come over the border hoping to stay with a relative, but the person is out of a job or there is no room in the house, so they have to make other plans. At that point their papers are already finalized and their court hearings are in a city on the wrong side of the country. So I was working with Orlando to get everything shifted over. Once the process was completed he asked about English classes. He had been taking classes at home and wanted to continue learning in Atlanta. I was showing him a place called Adult Education Center, I tried translating the name into Spanish but he corrected me saying I had pronounced adult incorrectly. We spent the next two minutes trying to get me to say adulto (Ah-dool-toh) properly. There was a lot of laughing and not a lot of correct pronunciation. My Lewis County mouth was struggling to relax enough to make the long ooh sound. After practicing a bunch at home I've almost got it, sometimes. I was grateful for his patience and commitment to helping me learn.
I found joy in shared humanity and the language learning process.
Happy House moments :)
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