I succesfully drove around Portland for the second time today. I got to deliver games, crayons, and books to two somali children. That was a purely wonderful and fun experience that totally helped make up for the nightmarish first time that I drove in Portland. My first driving experience was assigned on Friday when I was asked to find an iranian man in a hotel by the airport and deliver a check (sounded like the start of a law and order episode to me too). He did not speak english but, I was assured, his daughter could translate. I had to take them to a nearby bank and to the grocery store. It seemed simple enough but I was terrified (hard to emphasize that last word enough). I was frantically looking up directions to and from these locations when the caseworker reminded me that the bank closed at three and that I had to get my butt in gear (no she didn't use those words--she is an older immigrant from the former USSR and tends to be a bit more dry in her humor). I grabbed my purse and ran to the stairwell. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my keycard and ended up locked in the stairwell, unable to get the necessary car keys. I had to exit through the basement and then run back up to the fourth floor, ask to be buzzed in, and then fetch the keys to try again. When I got to the car I then set off the alarm system and spent approximately forty seconds cussing as I tried to turn of the alarm. With this inauspicious beginning, I was off. The car was, unfortunately, out of fuel so I had to detour to a nearby gas station where I was yelled at by an attendant for attempting to fill up my car myself (apparently in the state of Oregon it is illegal to pump your own gas--not even kidding). I made it to the hotel without incident but was too late to make it to the planned bank. luckily, my brother, after many threats, looked up directions to an alternative bank with later hours. I walked into the hotel and inquired at the front desk as to which room the father and daughter were inhabiting. Unfortunately the front desk had no record of a pair of iranians with an elaborate last name (details witheld to protect the innocent) and it took twenty minutes and three phone calls to the office to discover that they were, in fact, in the room right next to the fron desk. With a mixture of relief and trepidation I knocked on the door-and got no answer. I stood there for a while, wondering what to do, until a small middle-eastern man walked up to me with a confused look on his face. I surmised that this must be the father and my suspicions were confirmed when he acknowledged his name but couldn't respond to any of my questions. There was no sign of the daughter, and the father couldn't explain to me where she had gone. He indicated that I should wait in the lobby and kept repeating "five minutes." An hour later I started to get desperate and even tried to call my iranian friend from jr. high who I thought might speak farsi so that I could figure out where this missing girl was. The father seemed really aggitated and probably was sharing my visions of this girl dead in a ditch somewhere. Fortunately she was not dead--or at least managed to look very much alive when she finally walked up to us, full of apologies. She had apparently left the hotel in search of food (understandable since I am pretty sure that no one fed these two since they had gotten off the plane the night before). On our way to the bank, through an argument with a teller who was unfamiliar with Iranian passports, and through our shopping trip this teenage girl was firing questions at me about life in the United States. Specifically, she wanted to know whether people studied dance in the US, where one studied dance, how expensive was it, etc. I tried to be polite and answer her questions (though a lot of them stumped me to the point where she asked me if I was sure I was an american) but I felt more and more uneasy about giving her a false picture about life in the US for refugees. The hardest moment was when she pointed to a nearby house (a relatively nice one) and asked if that is the kind of place that they will live--the average refugee gets $339/mo in state assistance which is hardly enough to pay rent on a crummy apartment, let alone a house. Furthermore, this girl was about to turn 18 and would probably not even get to go to high school for a year before having to stop and get a job to help with finances--dance lessons were unlikely. I got home (several hours late) feeling pretty crummy. Working with the Burmese family in Salt Lake was so overwhelmingly positive- this was the first inkling I've gotten that this year is going to be a lot tougher.
In other (less depressing) news of Sarah's new experiences:
1. I managed to make an appointment with someone via telephone in Spanishy (for those of you who speak a second language, you understand how much harder it is to talk on the phone than in person). I think I succesfully made an appointment at least--I suppose I will find out on Thursday when I show up at their house whether or not they were expecting me.
2. I cleaned out a chicken coop. Our house was invited to help out some franciscan nuns around their home/farm/convent(?)/italian villa in the woods. It was gorgeous and a fun way to spend a saturday morning. My job was cleaning out the large chicken coops (not as awful as it sounds). The best part was that the nuns served us chickens for lunch--I appreciated directly benefiting from my work in some way and I appreciated getting even with the chicken community for the mess they made. I also saw a chicken lay an egg (totally justified the 4 wheelbarrows of chickenshit that I shoveled)! I knew theoretically that eggs came from chickens but I now have visual confirmation.
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