Rosa who was a nurse at the villa was a great person I had the opportunity to meet while working there. She was so gentle with every patient she was with and her patience for each of them was incredible. She talked to them as if they were her closet friend. She tried to teach me how they played volleyball with them so we could all interact. Her kindness brought many of the people to talk to me and it led to a great path to the questions about their lives I was able to receive. Rosa was doing a million things at once and I practically had to run to keep up with her. She helps give baths, arts an crafts, interacts, walks, feeds, and even helps the patients with whatever they need. I was able to help her through most of it and she taught me how to give a hand massage. Rosa's kindness was shown and everyone enjoyed her company when she would be on shift.
Her advice for the younger generations was to listen. To hear something isn't always enough but to understand what they mean and where they are coming from makes the words someone says more valuable. Her thoughts on why you can hear but not always understand makes her a valued worker who without working at the villa would be hard to replace. Rosa was a great person who I was able to meet during this experience and she like every one who works there wanted to help people. They all enjoy the work they do and every person they meet they enjoy getting to know them and be able to make their day better.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Work Interview #1
The main manager who works there is named Red. He is a kind man who works in all areas of the villa. He was the first person I met when I came to volunteer there and he helped me to interact with the elderly people. He showed me how to wheel their chairs and help them to go on the walks. His passion for working and helping is admirable.
His favorite part of working there was seeing the people get better and seeing them smile makes his day better. You can tell just by working with him that he genuinely cares about everyone he looks after and for the short time I was helping him he asked me questions about why I was involved with them and what I wanted out of it. Which just goes to show that the people there he wanted working with him to have the same passion.
His only advice for future generations is to help people, no matter who they are go out of your way and help people because in time those simple actions can help you far more than the individuals.
What We Discovered About Ourselves
Volunteering at Fatima Villa has been a great experience for us so far. Our project time in class is coming to an end but we hope to continue our journey of finding people's stories.
From simply filing papers to actually interacting with the people at Fatima Villa, we learned to appreciate all the work people do there. Even filing papers into binders was a difficult task. (Those huge binders were hard to open! And my hand hurt by the end of the day.) It shows us how caring the staff is to each and every patient.
For me personally, interviewing my grandpa really sparked my interest in my own family's history and it was super interesting to talk to a real primary source instead of reading history from a textbook. In addition, I usually only hear stories from my mother, and it was interesting to hear a story from a even earlier generation. Because I often watch Chinese movies with my parents, a lot of the story lines are now put in context for me.
We have discovered that hearing other people's stories has been very enjoyable. Even though we knew that the generations before us were very different, it was a great experience to actually hear specific details and anecdotes about a certain time period. Just learning about history only gives us a general perspective of the time period, and maybe a bias view that the U.S has if we're reading a textbook written by someone in the U.S, but actually hearing the stories from someone who was there brings the event to life.
Personally, for me, listening to all the stories of the people who were willing to share brought yourself to discovery why humanity is just an important aspect. We connect with the pain and joy of our lives and that is how we can inspire others, help them, and hopefully learn from it so we won't make the same mistakes again.
The main goal of this project was to connect with other perspectives about what they had gone through and although not everyone was willing to share we did learn a lot about why we are so similar and different about culture and as time progressed how we went about certain situations.
The stories we were able to listen to has formed a special bond within us and now we can be more accepting of people and perhaps if more people do this as well people won't judge as much as they too and instead they can focus on the good.
From simply filing papers to actually interacting with the people at Fatima Villa, we learned to appreciate all the work people do there. Even filing papers into binders was a difficult task. (Those huge binders were hard to open! And my hand hurt by the end of the day.) It shows us how caring the staff is to each and every patient.
For me personally, interviewing my grandpa really sparked my interest in my own family's history and it was super interesting to talk to a real primary source instead of reading history from a textbook. In addition, I usually only hear stories from my mother, and it was interesting to hear a story from a even earlier generation. Because I often watch Chinese movies with my parents, a lot of the story lines are now put in context for me.
We have discovered that hearing other people's stories has been very enjoyable. Even though we knew that the generations before us were very different, it was a great experience to actually hear specific details and anecdotes about a certain time period. Just learning about history only gives us a general perspective of the time period, and maybe a bias view that the U.S has if we're reading a textbook written by someone in the U.S, but actually hearing the stories from someone who was there brings the event to life.
Personally, for me, listening to all the stories of the people who were willing to share brought yourself to discovery why humanity is just an important aspect. We connect with the pain and joy of our lives and that is how we can inspire others, help them, and hopefully learn from it so we won't make the same mistakes again.
The main goal of this project was to connect with other perspectives about what they had gone through and although not everyone was willing to share we did learn a lot about why we are so similar and different about culture and as time progressed how we went about certain situations.
The stories we were able to listen to has formed a special bond within us and now we can be more accepting of people and perhaps if more people do this as well people won't judge as much as they too and instead they can focus on the good.
Third Life Story
My grandmother's name is Lindsay Jackson she is currently 68. Her maiden name is Campbell and she was married four times and finally settled on Jackson when her late husband and her separated. She lived in Beverly Hills most of her life and has one younger sister named Candie. She is still in contact with her sister but they live far away now so they connect by long phone calls weekly. My grandmother left home when she was 16 because of family troubles and lived on her own or with friends; she then began working and putting herself through college and then became a real estate agent. She loved her work and became very well known in Southern California, Beverly Hills and Brent wood where she ended up living. My grandma eventually became apart of AA; which is alcoholic anonymous a safe place where you learn to detox and become sober once more. She is now 33 years sober and is a sponsor for many people helping them to gain a better perspective on life besides drowning your sorrows. She met her first husband before AA and had two lovely children and then after her husband gambling the money away and leaving she decided to become sober. This led to her meeting years down the line the husband which she has now before they recently separated last year due to family tensions.
When my grandmother was young she loved to play volleyball and went to the beach almost every day to play. Later on she rode horses, did bare back, and even performed with them in shows. She became a great performer and loved the experience until she felt she got too old to continue.
My grandmother today loves to go shopping and spend time with her many grandchildren. She is full of life and her message to the younger generations out there is don't be afraid to be different. To try out and do things that you want to do and life your youth to the fullest. Don't worry about what your hair looks like or how many friends you have just try to be happy because that is the only thing no one can take away from you.
When my grandmother was young she loved to play volleyball and went to the beach almost every day to play. Later on she rode horses, did bare back, and even performed with them in shows. She became a great performer and loved the experience until she felt she got too old to continue.
My grandmother today loves to go shopping and spend time with her many grandchildren. She is full of life and her message to the younger generations out there is don't be afraid to be different. To try out and do things that you want to do and life your youth to the fullest. Don't worry about what your hair looks like or how many friends you have just try to be happy because that is the only thing no one can take away from you.
Monday, May 11, 2015
The Future
The next steps for this project will be to create a way where we can share the information we learned and share it with our class. It will be a wonderful way to expand ourselves as we now understand different generations. The problems we have encountered will lead us to a different direction than before. Our original idea to make a novella based upon the details of the lives we have learned from the project but we now will just end up creating a short talk about what we have learned; since we don't have enough information to create a short novel from the experiences from all the patients. The main issue for this project will be we needed additional stories from nurses to get to a better understanding of what they thought of being around these people who have experienced so much yet the emails we sent out we heard back no response.
So the new result will be a lesson of what we learned and some interesting facts about the project we had. The overall project itself will be an interesting story about the compelling lives we have had the privileged of knowing and the ones we don't have we will still be able to come to a conclusion point for this 20 time project. The 20 time Ted-Talk presentation will be dedicated to expressing our ties to how this affected us and will in turn hopefully change the perspective of those around us to influence the people at our school and beyond. The story of how we did it, why and then finish it off with the overall theme or message about the lives we aren't connected with but now the realization of how much they are like us will change how we see people. We can bring people together and show them that we all go through trails and tribulations but the ultimate result is that we are all human. By being simply that our mistakes and highlights in our life will be able to express how other people can be influenced by knowing someone else has been through tough situations too.
So the new result will be a lesson of what we learned and some interesting facts about the project we had. The overall project itself will be an interesting story about the compelling lives we have had the privileged of knowing and the ones we don't have we will still be able to come to a conclusion point for this 20 time project. The 20 time Ted-Talk presentation will be dedicated to expressing our ties to how this affected us and will in turn hopefully change the perspective of those around us to influence the people at our school and beyond. The story of how we did it, why and then finish it off with the overall theme or message about the lives we aren't connected with but now the realization of how much they are like us will change how we see people. We can bring people together and show them that we all go through trails and tribulations but the ultimate result is that we are all human. By being simply that our mistakes and highlights in our life will be able to express how other people can be influenced by knowing someone else has been through tough situations too.
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