Week Five

A little late blogging this week but once again finding time to sit down in front of the computer has been hard.

To start, this week has been busy. A lot of my coworkers have booked the long weekend off so I'm working extra shifts. I got to go do a tour of the Horn Lake Caves with a family from the resort, it was very cool and I can't wait till Thursday when I get to go again!!

My main thought this week is about language barriers. It's hard enough to get kids to listen to you, but when they don't speak your language it's next to impossible. It seemed to be the foreign traveler week at work. There was three Swiss children, of which only the oldest spoke a bit of english that she learned in school, two from South Africa who spoke Africaan first and english second, and a little Dutch girl that spoke no english. I felt bad for the Dutch girl because you could tell she was really uncomfortable being around all the english kids and only stayed with us for a little while.

The Swiss family I got to spend a fair amount of time with, they were at the kids club and a dinner and a movie night, which was really nice. They were a lot of fun to spend time with but I was so glad the older sister translated for me. Something as simple the rules of a game of tag are hard to convey, and sharades only goes so far. They watched an entire movie in english and were laughing at most of the same parts as the other children. I just thought it was probably very tough for them being out of communication with the majority of the kids.

In Ken's leadership class we talked about communication and how body language is ninety percent of it, but when you have no context for the body language, like a common toungue, it can be tough. Try explaining "What time is it Mr. Wolf" to Swiss kids and you'll understand.