My freshman year of college I had the opportunity to participate in a service learning trip over Spring Break. The trip was to Taos, NM a small mountainous community in the north-west part of the state. Not only was I able to learn a great deal about the culture of Taos, but I was also able to learn about China because there were three students from China on our team.
One evening the three students asked everyone to come to their culture. They had even made a meal for us. I was so surprised at how different their foods are from the Americanized version of Chinese foods. Their dishes were simple most from broths with lots of vegetables (cucumber, cabbage, and other greens mainly). There was little meat in the dishes and they said that one of the dishes would have a whole chicken for the family to eat from, unfortunately, we only had breast cuts of chicken.
All in all, we were able to learn a lot about the culture of China and the simplicity of their dishes.
The presentation of my summer internship project was Tuesday. There were 17 individuals in the group that I presented to. I was initially a bit nervous as the presentation was scheduled for 1.5 hours (the longest I've ever done)!
Thankfully, I was well prepared for the demonstration of four activities and sharing of information on how the curriculum is outlined and designed. In all, there were 8 lessons containing a total of 23 activities, 7 clinic display ideas and numerous additional resources and handouts.
The agents and educators were very excited for the program and to see it all together. As expected, there were a few comments and suggestions, most notedly will be having the program translated into Spanish and wording of a few items.
A few of the other suggestions were about additional activities that could be added, but began to branch outside the scope of the program. However these discussions gave way to thoughts about future projects for students/interns.
In summary, my summer was far more of a "real world" job than I expected. From staff changes to curriculum expectations to working independently, I feel much better prepared to enter the world of graduate school and eventually the workforce. I also feel more prepared to be pregnant, should that ever come my way! This experience was very humbling as I felt so blessed to be able to provide a resource that the educators were excited to use and implement.
