I started volunteering on Friday!
I am volunteering at a local library with a program that does ESL and Adult Literacy (reading and writing). I am a volunteer tutor and I am charged with helping an older Chinese lady learn to read. She is pretty awesome and has such a great attitude.
She told me that she came from a very poor farming family in China and had a pretty wicked witch of a step mother. For Chinese New Year, (if memory serves me correct from her story) she was supposed to get new shoes to wear every CNY, but her step mom refused to purchase new ones for her, so she was forced to wear the same pair of shoes each year from the ages of 5 to 12. I was also told that school was never made an important aspect of her life because farm kids went to school and then came home and worked, so there was no time for homework and it wasn't seen as important. Some of the punishments she endured I could never imagine putting a child through. For instance, she was in charge of getting water from the well every morning and cooking before school, so she was constantly late for school. When her teacher finally said something to her about, she told him about her morning chores. He didn't believe her because it sounded so outrageous. Her teacher spoke with her parents, who denied it, and her parents punishment was that she had to stand outside all night with a piece of large circumference bamboo behind her knees and another just under her knees in the front, then they were tired together. Imagine that for a second. Your legs basically in a straight-locked position all night while standing as an adolescent.
Her mom wanted to marry her off to get out the house she was in a 15, but J didn't want to because she felt she was too young, but eventually married a man (from what I gather) who was in the US military. She came to the country knowing no English with what turned out to be a pretty terrible husband. She is incredibly admirable in that she learned English from watching soap operas on TV and picked up more as she began to work. She taught herself how to drive in an alley at night (since her husband wouldn't teach her) in a car she bought with $3,000 she saved so that she could leave and be independent.
Now that J is retired, she wants to learn to read so that she doesn't have to ask others what her mail says and so that she can be more self-sufficient. I really enjoy teaching her and putting the knowledge from my linguistics degree to use! We have only had 2 sessions so far (we meet for 2 hours a day, twice a week). They had been trying to find her a volunteer tutor since May, so she is very grateful that I came along, even if I am "a little baby!"
Learning about J's life and upbringing really makes me realize how lucky we tend to have it here in the US, which is why it annoys me how much people take the small things for granted. Especially when the "small things" are something as big as an education. I was asked by the director of the program I am volunteering for what drives me volunteer, to which I replied: "I think it would be unfair and selfish of me not to use the knowledge I have to help others if, and where, I can." Too bad more people don't take this stance as the world could use more selflessness, though I guess if more people did, it would be even more trying to get into the Peace Corps, haha.
/Forgive nonsensicalities as I did not proof read this, but hey, at least I used the word "nonsensicalities."
