This past week we got the opportunity to visit Casa de Manana to participate in our LEG project. As the class split up into groups we were able to talk to a resident from Casa de Manana about their life at 20. Through this experience, Diane allowed a couple of us to learn about her personal experiences as a young adult and was able to share some of her knowledge about life in which she learned through traveling. Diane shared a beautiful canvas photo of her family along with photos of her and her husband while traveling to different places. I thought it was really kind of her to let us learn about her life and get to know who her family members are. It was remarkable to speak with someone that has traveled to many places, which all differed in cultural background, as she shared so many funny and memorable stories that stuck with her. A fun factor into our conversations with Diane was that she asked for us to share about ourselves and about our personal traveling journeys, allowing us to not only get to know her but to also learn more about each other and our unique experiences as students.
Visiting the Bayside center was a little bit different this past week for our class. Although we intended to participate in Zumba with the community center just as we did last quarter, we ended up at the building located in front of the Bayside center and instead participated in “My life as Twenty.” The activity allowed us to engage with the members of the community as we heard them talk about their personal lives and experiences when they were 20. From my conversations I kept observing how exciting and nostalgic it is to reflect back to a time point in your life that seems like so long ago. One of the persons I spoke with began our conversation with apologies that she wouldn’t be able to remember much from her life when she was 20, but after breaking the ice a little bit and sharing about our personal lives, she was able to describe her experiences traveling to different locations around the world with lots of details.
I got to hear about the different experiences in traveling to Europe, Asia, and migrating into the United States. I also experienced a sense of understanding and being able to relate to one another as we both discussed the challenge with time constraint as a student. Visiting the Bayside Center was fun as we got to discuss different experiences about a person’s life at 20. Returning back to the Life Course Scholar Program after spring break, almost felt like we never left. Because we became familiar with each other as students, we were quickly able to get right into the logistics of the class and the coming events and projects that will be happening this quarter. The class of week 1, we focused mostly on coordinating and finalizing our HAP groups for this quarter. The group that I will be collaborating with is focusing on potentially using the West Senior Center as a location to provide free personal care services for the elder population. We hope to be able to provide the West Senior Center with haircuts for both males and females, make-up, and massage services. The reason we chose to focus on such an event is because we truly believe that self confidence and comfort is essential for a person of any age to be healthy.
As we move forward into the course, I am excited to not only see how our HAP project will play out, but to also see the hard work of my peers as they also work on their HAP projects. |
Maria MendezWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2019
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