Adventure Time with KC

Now that you are nearing completion of your internship, what words of advice would you give to the next intern? Would you do it all over again? How did this experience challenge your assumptions and stereotypes? How can you be more compassionate/informed/involved regarding the community you served?

Why does this post's title include parenting? I'm not a parent! But in truth, I love reading what intelligent parents have to say. I've been following this blogger parent on Facebook, and here's his post recently: Jef Withonef Against my better judgment I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the purity movement. It’s just bloody horrifying, this idea of “guarding your daughter’s heart” by keeping it yourself, not to mention this notion of making her define herself only how she is viewed either by her husband or her dad. Lynda likes to joke I’m going to be “that dad,” the one who cleans a gun when Katy brings a boyfriend or girlfriend over. Truth is I’m not. I’m very prepared for what I want to instill in her when she begins to reach physical maturity. 1. That sex is beautiful and fun as hell. So is driving a car and a bunch of other things, and they come with responsibilities. You need to ask yourself if you can handle those. I knew I could be trusted with a car ...

Have you battled burn-out, disappointed expectations, exhaustion, or had trouble balancing your internship and personal life? If yes, do you find that these struggles influence any viewpoints? If you've not met any trouble in the internship, what are the positive and affirming changes you see occurring within yourself? Have you achieved any progress in the goals you set at the beginning of your internship? Why or why not? Have any of your goals changed? How or why? How has this internship challenged your beliefs about poverty, justice, and human capabilities?

On Thursday, I visited another children's rehabilitation center that my supervisor told me about. She said she called to let them know I am visiting, but when I got there the president strangely had no idea what I was talking about. She then had her 13 year old daughter show me around the place. It was a hot and humid summer day not unlike those in Houston, and the place smelled faintly horrible. I got there a little later than I had wanted to, so it was afternoon nap time from 12 - 2pm. I visited a couple of rooms with 20+ cribs for children from ages 2 - probably 8 or 10. I try to get to know the president's daughter better and we play with some of the toddlers. I wave and say hello to the youngest bunch of kids sleeping and half awake in their cribs. They had air conditioning and clean beds, a couple of older women as nannies, taking care of them and cleaning and washing. There are cuts, bites, and minor skin rashes on most of the children. One little girl saw that I was...

In  Behind the Beautiful Forevers , Katherine Boo tells the stories of residents of a Mumbai slum and the hardships they endure. What is the infrastructure of opportunity in this society? Whose capabilities are given wing by the market and a government's economic and social policy? Whose capabilities are squandered, and how does this affect their well-being and agency? Use specific examples. What capabilities are supported or neglected in the community you are currently serving?

What do I actually do when I go volunteer? Well it's hard to say because it changes from day to day. On Friday this is what I typed: Right now I'm playing a game with one of the little kids from group yellow. He's sick today so he's upstairs and has to eat and sleep separately. He wanted me to play with him. I found him tin tin adventure books in Chinese but he didn't like them. He's only 9 I guess. Now we're listening to music and we're playing a typing game. he's letting me type alllll on my own right now. What a cutie.  Friday 7/12/13 - 3pm Here is a picture from paint after we've done layers of damage and art to it. I must warn you, though, it is quite beautiful. Master piece, right?

On Monday, I got to work and found a surprise next to my desk. A boy named Carl (王小磊) was sick and so he is practicing typing pin yin on the computer next to me, away from the other children. Carl did not speak a lot but he could learn just as well as any other child. He pointed to all the letters and words on his screen to me. He is a little confused sometimes about the capital letters on the keyboard and the lower case letters that he is shown on the screen. I taught Carl how to close windows and turn off the computer. It was quite a struggle because with his motor difficulties, moving the mouse to the correct place and then clicking it without screwing up can be hard. But I encouraged Carl to keep trying, and he laughed a lot at his struggles. I told him it’s okay, just try again. He was resilient and was back at it in 10 seconds, after he finally finished laughing. Carl wrote his name for me, in English and in Chinese, and I showed him mine. Carl was ready to step things up, so we’...

Things got real today! Ms. Ho is a teacher from Hong Kong who comes every year to do professional training and observations with CereCare in Shanghai. She observed group blue (my class) today. I bumped into Ms Lieu, the founder of CereCare, this morning and we observed the class together. Every kid had an adult working with them and Daisy was teaching this class. She was modeling directives like stretching arms from left to right and top-left to bottom-right, and the kids followed along as best as they could. Ms. Ho takes notes, sometimes briefly interrupting to help correct the class as she saw fits. At one point, she talked to Ms. Gao, the director in charge of the teachers, who then proceeded to ask one of the trainers to exit the classroom with her. Why, you ask? Well, he started dozing off, again. He does this every day, so I’m not surprised he got in trouble. I wonder why he’s always so tired, and how everyone has put up with him dozing off all the time. I was asked to fill ...

What do you know about the history of the agency you are serving? What do you believe is the long-term future of the agency and its work? Is it self-sustaining and if not, what might be changed to make it so? What have you learned about the strategies and internal operations of your host organization? Are there aspects of the organization that work very well or that seem problematic? I am helping CereCare revise the English translation of their chinese website (separately so I can still spend time with the children), so I have read and heard a lot about the history and goals of this organization. CereCare was started 10 years ago by an elderly chinese woman with cerebral palsy who developed her own acupressure/massage therapy method and wanted to open a rehabilitation center for children with cerebral palsy. They’ve always struggled financially, and the founder’s sister (Iris) travels quite often to countries such as the U.S. and Canada to fundraise and apply for grants to keep the cen...

Working with the kids at CereCare has been such a unique experience. I was sitting at KFC waiting to meet up with Joyce for our trip to Huangshan, which was amazing and will hopefully show up in the next post. A mom and her two young sons settle in to a table near me. The two boys are wild, running, playing, shouting. The mom is frantically running after them, spanking them and asking them to stop running/playing carelessly. I think about how lucky they are that they have functional limbs to play and run at such speeds and ease. They get the luxury to move so much they sweat a ton. I also think about the irony behind all of this. When babies are born, we can’t wait for them to utter their first words. We can’t wait for them to start crawling and walking, feeling our hearts ripped a little every time they fall and cry. Then after a while, we can’t wait for them to shut up, stop running, and go to sleep. For a split second, I think about how nice it is to see the kids running. One of the...

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn use storytelling to bear witness to indignities and oppression of gender discrimination. This week describe an experience during your internship that has increased your understanding of broader issues regarding gender discrimination or poverty. Discuss the way these issues compare to those presented in  Half the Sky . In general, almost everywhere in Shanghai I go, women of all ages are mostly dressed up. Most of them are wearing chiffon dresses, tights, flashy high heels/wedges, accompanied by a nice purse, as well as armed with the latest cell phone/tablet. It was very surprising to me to see how they seemed to dress up everywhere they go, particularly seeing the short dresses/skirts on women of all ages, and even work attire was rather short in length. Apparently Shanghai are held as some of the most fashionable people in China. I wonder why the women feel the need to dress this way. Is it to appeal to others? To find a job? Because it'...

An update on the boy who is being arranged to be available for adoption: I talked with one of the teachers in our class and she revealed that he really wants to be adopted. Why, I ask? Apparently he used to be really good friends with another boy here, who was "cuter, more functional, and ended up being adopted by some Americans." So now he really wants to be adopted, too. What do you guys make of this? 

I finished my second week of volunteering. For full disclosure, the program at school calls it an internship and according to my mom, apparently my dad has been bragging about me doing an "internship" as well. But I always tell people I'm volunteering, because essentially that is what I'm doing. I'm very thankful to Rice for providing me the means to be on this trip, and I'm proud of the opportunity to spend time with the children and helping the center, so I don't feel the need to call it something it really isn't. In many ways this post will be almost a response, an echo, to my friend Laurel's struggles over the week. She is teaching children music at Bolivia this summer, please check out her blog here . Laurel struggled with her purpose and contribution to the children she is working with in Bolivia. Her Spanish is good, but not as good as she had hoped, and the inconsistency at which students show up is disheartening. I really admire that at ...