Yesterday was the first day, but I was too tired at night to write anything. The office is located in the department of social services in Chesterfield. The working space is very small, and there were 5 of us total in 3 small rooms. Ms. Mitchell was out of the town for the next two weeks, so she left Melinda, Lesley, Megan and Beth to help me get started.
The first task I had was to create the new mailing list. I was thinking to myself, creating a mailing list isn’t so bad. I just need to enter them in. However, the task required more than that. Beth handed me a list of 330 people and their addresses. Some people had an email address, but the majority did not. Thus, I had the job of calling people to retrieve their email addresses. Furthermore, not everyone had a phone number, so I had to find the numbers somehow. Let’s just say that Google was my best friend and is going to be my best for the next week. Although the progress is kind of slow, at least I progressing through the 300 and some names.
After just being around my co-workers, I have begun to notice the frustrations of a non-profit organization. One lady had worked so hard to put on an event to help to improve parent and child relationship, but it was hard to have every organization to do what they had promised. There was also a concern that not many people may show up. If it was me who was holding the event, I would have been flustered because I want that things be on schedule. In reflection, I can see that I am not as flexible as I would wish myself to be. “Flexibility” should be something that I will have to develop in myself this summer as I work more and more with the Coordinating Council.
Ending on a cheerier note, I am looking forward to helping with the Grocery Gap Project and the JumpStart project after Ms. Mitchell comes back. I talked to Melinda, who as it turns out, has a master’s degree in public health. Since I had an interest in public health, she was able to give me a broad picture of public health, like the different areas. I think that I am going to have great mentors for the summer.
Funny thing:
On the first day, Abbey and I helped the town historian, Sarah to catalogue the historical artifacts in the Lyceum in Cheraw. After a dinner of chicken and rice soup, we decided to talk a stroll around downtown. As we passed by the Chinese restaurant on 2nd street, the owners, a man and a woman, looked intensely as at us. Abbey waved, and I waved too. The moment we passed the restaurant, Abbey turns to me and said with a smile, “I bet you that they were thinking ‘Anther Chinese person!’” Just as she was finishing her sentence, I hear the sound of a door opening. The lady owner of the restaurant bursts out and cries “Chinese girl, Chinese girl!” She has just moved to Cheraw to help her husband manage this family restaurant. A Chinese girl is rarely seen in Cheraw, as it turns out. I learned that there are only 3 Chinese families in Cheraw. She brought out her 4-year-old son to meet us, and we just chatted in mandarin.
One thing that I have noticed in Cheraw (which I am sure occurs everywhere else, but it is just more acute here) is that we relate to people so much easier and better if we are from the same race. I know that I am touching on a very delicate issue, and we have all been trying to avoid that issue of race. We like to think that we are tolerant of every race and so forth, but we are all partial to our own race. Most of my life, I have been the only Chinese girl. So for me to reach outside my race is an everyday thing. However, when I am in a community with just Chinese people, it just feels so much easier to reach out and connect to people. I don’t try to have a preference, but it just happens. Things you share with each other makes you much more able to relate. I believe that the culture and the environment play a big role in these unnoticed prejudices. I would feel awkward talking about a pig picking, but I would be perfectly at ease to talk about stir-frying and dumpling making. I have meet people who are not as comfortable talking to me as they would be if they were talking with someone with their own skin color. Deep down, we believe that our culture is the best, because that is our comfort zone. To over come something like racism in a small town where there’s not much contact with other cultures, one would have to make a leap outside one’s comfort zone, and not judge others so quickly according to our own standards or be snobby. And it certainly is not as easy as it sounds.
The above paragraph is about what I understand at this moment, whether it is naïve or one-sided, I will only know when I look back on it later.
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