من زمان ما حكيت عربي

It's been a while...

I started my internship at Catholic Charities this week doing refugee resettlement work. So far it's good - really interesting, a lot to do, a little bit overwhelming. In the two day I worked so far, two Iraqi families came, and 14 more people are arriving on Monday (although I think they might be Burmese). The other intern and myself spent most of our days driving around Portland taking care of various tasks and going to the airport to greet new arrivals. The best part? We got to speak Arabic! I never thought I'd get to brush up on my skillz at PWM of all places. My goal for the summer is to make friends with an Iraqi family so they can teach me how to cook, or at least invite me for dinner or something. It's really cool to work with interpreters, especially understanding as much as I can because you totally pick up way more about the translation through language and culture. We had to go to this orientation program thing (explaining what it was for would take up way more energy than I have) and there were Sudanese, Somalis, and Iraqis, all with their own interpreters, and listening to the English and then watching the interpretation into Somali or Arabic was mind boggling. But so cool. I hope I keep getting opportunities to use my Arabic ... fingers crossed!