Hey y'all, I apologize for my uncharacteristic silence. Things have been busy in the refugee world (and in the medical school application world). Allow me to give you a shortened list of highlights (I don't have time for the long one since I must catch a bus)
I was accepted to Emory!!! I don't know if that is where I will end up going but it is nice to know that someone will take me. By this time next year I will be in medical school (probably drowning my sorrows at a dive bar after a horrendous anatomy exam). I was also invited to interview at a few more schools (Tulane, Duke and the U of U). I will keep you all posted as the decision-making progresses
I was able to compile a good list of the shocking, the predictable, and the shockingly predictable:
The predictable: One of the somali guys has decided that he wants an American girlfriend. As I am the only girl he has met in the United States he decided to ask me. (His english isn't very good so I just pretended that I didn't understand and started pointing out bus routes on the way back from the clinic). When I dropped him off at his apartment he thanked me by kissing my arm (I think he was aiming for my hand but I was surprised and moved--plus he was nervous). His english is not good enough for me to explain the concept of boundaries to him (though if he gets too forward I suppose a slap is a pretty international signal). So I have mostly been avoiding the problem by avoiding him. It has mostly worked. Although the other day I was supposed to pick up this guy and his three roommates. When I arrived the three roommates were gone and he invited me to wait with him until they returned.....I declined and instead went to the library to kill time.
The shocking: We received a huge clothing donation from a children's clothing store that went out of business. We don't have anywhere to store clothing so I took the 16 trash bags of clothes to another charity. Unfortunately, one of the other caseworkers found out the next day and was extremely upset because she needed clothes for one of her client's kids. So, I had to go back to the charity and take advantage of a new volunteer who was naive enough to leave me and another intern in the storage room to "pick out a few outfits." We frantically started stuffing clothes into trash bags and managed to bring back two bags of kids' clothing with no one the wiser. (what did you do today sarah? 'oh, nothing, just stole back my donations from a charity').
The shockingly predictable: The US refugee resettlement program is really messed up. It is almost perfectly designed to fail. Also, since it is under the umbrella of TANF (temporary assistance to needy families) it is a part of the welfare block of "discretionary spending" that congress is talking about slashing. The benefits that families get only last for 8 months---in 8 months a refugee family is supposed to be economically independent (with a full-time job in this economy), speaking english, and adjusted to life in the US! It used to be 3 years of support but "budgetary concerns" during the early 2000s cut it down to less than a year. So yeah, that sucks.
On a lighter note, I just came back from the social security office where I took an adorable Burmese couple. I was speaking to the husband (who knows english) and asked him what he wanted to do in the US. He replied that he wanted to get a job where he could learn how to make coffee drinks--particularly how to make cool pictures in cappuccino foam. He fled his village in Myanmar and survived three years in a refugee camp in malaysia and now he has come to the United States and wants to be a barrista--if that isn't the american dream then I don't know what is!
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