July 2010 Blog Posts (6)

Working with Oasis has brought about a lot of research projects for me. One of my first was to “translate” some documents about fair trade chocolate from British English into American English. Besides smiling at the occasional “whilst” and trying to remember which words need a “z” instead of an “s,” I learned about slaves in West African chocolate plantations. Pretty uneasy thing to think…

Growing up you learn so many different words nonchalantly. I now understand that you learn these words at an early age because the experiences in your life later on will define them. These past few weeks have given "flexibility," "challenge," "patience," and "contentment"…

I love public transportation; its like sensory overload in a good way. Even being crammed into a packed subway is exciting to me, despite the sometimes unfriendly smells. You can learn so much about personalities and culture just by watching the people around you.

For the second week of our journey we stayed in Hungary’s capital – Budapest. The city has a fabulous and quite efficient public transportation system – from buses to trams to the metro. Just about everyday this week the TAG…

This week Caitlin, Nina, and I had the opportunity to work in two different communities with two different groups of kids. In Derecske, we worked with Hungarian kids (not Roma) at a Baptist church that our supervisors, Ralph and Tammy Stocks, attended when they lived in the community. We also worked with a Roma community in Pocsaj that Ralph and Tammy have developed a relationship with…

Whenever you are about to go on a trip, you get an excited feeling in your

gut...butterflies galore! That's how I was when I got on the plane! Ready

for new adventures, ready for traveling out of the country for the first

time, ready for learning! It brings this lighter mood and you are floating

on air. One week later and my heart went from being light and floating to

heavy and full of love for new friends.



This past week we worked at Szatmarcseke, a small…