Practicing What I Preach : )

It's always strange when you share something that you learned in the past with someone only to find that you need to hold onto that same truth yourself.  For me this happened this week.  I was doing a training on speech pathology and I felt that I needed to be sure to address the Biblical aspect of working with special needs kids (my version) before diving into the specific treatment techniques.
 
-Our belief about people: First, in all that we do we must remember what we believe about our kids.  We believe that as humans we are made in the image of God and that when he made us he declared that his creation was good.  As we work with people (and nature) we must remember that disrespect of the creation is disrespect of the creator.  When we look at kids with disgust or treat them with contempt, we are insulting what G0d created and declare good.  Dumb example, but I think of the movie "The Little Women."  I hate the scene where Amy throws Jo's manuscript into the fire.  You can feel the anguish in the pit of your stomach... Jo had put her creative juices into that manuscript and Amy disrespected her creativity and her heart but tossing it into a fire.  People were created by G)d, who are we to question their beauty, dignity or value?
  
-Be teachable:  The second point was to let the kids that we work with teach us.  Working in special education will change you.  It will soften your heart, it will reorient your priorities and it will make you appreciate the simple gifts in life.  Enjoy it!  We have a child at the center that loves to sing and dance, its generally at inappropriate times, but there is a time for you to enjoy her joy.  

-Give up your need for control or lose your sanity!   This is the biggest for me!   Basically I feel like we need to do what we do as an act of obedience to G0d and not obsess about measurable results.  This is hard because we work hard with these kids and we want to see them succeed.  We also want their success to show the people around them their abilities.  However, we don't have total control over the outcomes... we have control over the amount of effort that we put into our work, and shame on us if we don't give these kids our all, but we don't have total control over the outcome.  When we take on the total burden of "fixing" our kids we not only fail to respect them in whatever place they are in, but we also open the door for burnout, frustration, guilt and resentment.  We are burnt out and frustrated because we need results to keep us motivated and we're not getting them.  We feel guilty because we know that we're not as skilled as we could be and we become resentful of others (parents, caregivers, the kids) because we need someone else to blame for the "failure."  This can be avoided (or at least mitigated) when we see our job as something that we do out of obedience to G0d and we have to trust that He has the outcomes in His hands.  I'm a results person and my profession has made me even worse.  We are obsessed with data and research and being efficient and effective have become our God.  People that are in higher education for seven long years have to be intense on some level, I needed to get certain grades to stay in my masters program and I think it made me a little overly goal oriented.  But people aren't multiple choice tests, they have certain limitations and they have free will.  This is tough because it means that there are factors outside of our control.  I feel like I first started to understand this concept when I started mentoring with LAMP.  Sometimes when I was mentoring I wondered if I was only painting pumpkins with a ten year old and I wanted to know what good that would do in the long run (just to clarify... I LOVED painting pumpkins with this ten year old!).  I think I almost needed to see the outcome to feel like the effort was worth it, but that's not the right mentality.  When we feel that G0d has called us into whatever we are doing then our responsibility is to Him.  I wasn't only painting pumpkins... I was doing what I felt G0d called me to do at that time.  I  don't know what the long-term outcome will be, and maybe I don't always get to see how G0d works in every situation, but that doesn't mean that I'm not responsible to do what He has put on my heart.  For me, this idea has freed me... It's hard to carry the burden of "fixing" everyone.  There are times when kids don't make much progress and we continue to work with them, but in the mean time we don't have the weight of feeling like we've failed them.  

-Influencing change the Biblical way: The other point is that we must be careful to love kids the way that they are and not withhold our love from them until they make the results that we want.  In this we have a perfect example from J3sus.  The Bible says that while we were still sinners Chrst died for us.  He takes us in when we are still messy and loves us as He changes our hearts.  He doesn't withhold His love from us until we're perfect because change is hard and we need His help.  The kids that we work with are like that... they need our love and affection now and it needs to be unconditional.  We want good things for them, but we don't love them less if they don't make it to where we want them to be.  

I said all of this and then had a meltdown a couple of days later because I feel like I'm not doing enough for the vastness of the issues here.  I don't feel qualified to deal with the complications that some of these kids have and I'm not always getting the outcomes that I dream of.  There are so many kids who need services and there are so few people to give them those services.  For some of them I feel like giving them special ed/speech services is such a small drop in the bucket that I feel frantic.  Many of them need is sooo much more than I can give them.  I LOVE what I do here.. it's the most fulfilling thing that I've ever done, but at times I feel like its not enough so I may as well pack up and go home.  The ups and downs are maddening : )   I'm still working out how to ride this roller-coaster, but the only thing that I know for sure in it all is that G0d calls us to "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy" Proverbs 31:8-9.  
 
This is just me talking so Biblical scholars ( hi dad: ) ) may tear this apart...luckily for me, drones of Biblical scholars are not reading my meager blog : ).   I feel like in the Bible when G0d invites people to be used by Him, He tells them what to do, but doesn't hold them to outcomes that are out of their control.   When G0d called Moses, He told him what to say to Pharaoh but He didn't hold Moses accountable for changing Pharaoh's heart, that was G0d's role.   When he sent the disciples out He commanded them to preach the Good news but the results weren't their burden to bear... they were G0d's.  This is all good news for me because I'm tired and I can't take on all that there is to take on here... but luckily G0d's here and this is His work : )   

 

Homesick : (

The last two weeks have had more downs than ups.  I have been blessed to have not come to a time where I really didn't want to be here...although I still haven't hit that place, these past two weeks have been the closest.   My dislike isn't for Chna, its just that I miss home : (   The shame of it is that I am at a site that has a ton to do and I feel like I'm living under a dark cloud, I've never been less motivated to work than I have been these past two weeks.  

During this time I've had two revelations... one is that I am incredibly blessed to have a family that my hurt longs to be with.  We go into an orphng here and seeing all of those kids without families is really depressing.  There is a lot to be sad about in this world but seeing kids lonely is the hardest for me.  I can't even imagine not having a family to love me, protect me from harm, rejoice with, grieve with etc.  But that is the reality for these kids.... I hate seeing it, I can't even imagine living it.  

My second relelation was the reality of our Heavenly Father and brothers and sisters in Him.  Sometimes when life gets lonely we let the lie that we are alone feel true.  We're never without a familiy... we have a father whose love for us is perfect and eternal.  We also have brothers and sisters all over the world.  My nephew was born about two weeks ago and that week I was craving holding him.  That Sunday during a meeting there was a little baby that was fussing... the mom has nine kids so I offered to take the baby.  He fell alseep on me and I remembered that I do have family here.  I'm surrounded by foreigners who are also away from home.  They miss their parents, sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews just as I do.  While we are not blood relatives, we have all been adopted into His family and are therefore family forever : )   

Thanks G0d for not only being my comforter, but for sending my brothers and sisters in you to hold me while I'm here. 

W.S.

I am on the move again!  I moved all of my stuff out of the apartment that I was renting in kMG...moved it into K and L's and packed a suitcase to take with me to W.S. where I'll be for an undetermined amount of time.  I am already about half way through my time in Chn... WOW, it is going so fast!  

I am loving the site here in W.S., there is so much to get involved with.  They have two projects that I'll be working with.  One is a therapy program for kids with special needs.   They have about over 15 kids at the site.  Most of them have cerebral palsey and four have Autism.  They don't currently have an SLP so the kids are mostly doing PT.  One of my responsibilities will be to evaluate the kids, write goals and train therapist and parents on treatment.  Another part will be to train a local SLP to work with these kids but to also begin simple assessment and treatment around the province.  I'm sooo excited about the model here!  One thing that I LOVE about this site is their heavy focus on parent training and parent support gorups.  The encourage the parents to develop relationships outside of the therapy room and also have a parent retreat that allows them to have a break from the kids and focus on their marriages.  I LOVE that they see beyond just therapy and are working on family relationships.  Another project is working in an orphng... There are six or seven special needs kids that we are working with, again they are doing PT but I'm hoping to start up a speech/special ed group.  There are so many factors that play into a kid being institutionalized (the special needs kids don't attend school).  Kids pretty much always have severe language (very limited vocabulary) and educational delays.  I would like to start doing some small gorup activities that will expose them to vocabulary, academic skills such as counting and writing and work on social skills.  I'm REALLY excited for this next part of my time!   

A Little (because I don't know much yet) about W.S....

W.S. is a smaller city than kmg.  It is still a city and has a lot of people but it has a different feel.  For one thing there are not a lot of foreigners... I got a lot of stares when I went out today!   Also, it has a rural city feel... there are big buildings but on the side streets it almost looks like the mainstreet in a rural area.  I have seen a couple of horse drawn carts which is something the kmg wouldn't have.  There are quite a few ethnic minority groups that live here or that come from villages on the weekend to sell food.  I think that the three biggest are the Miao, the Yi and the Zhuang.  This brings up another difficult thing... they don't speak Mandarin here!  Some people do but they have a local W.S. dialect and then the minorities all have their own dialect.  I was really hoping to get much better with my Mandarin but it looks like that won't happen!  Well I don't know much more than that so that's all I have! 

Miao

Yi 

Zhuang

Stone Forest Hospital Part 2

The last week of February I headed back up to Stone Forest to work with the kids and rehab staff there.  The original plan was that I would evaluation, write goals for and begin training the staff on therapy techniques during my first visit and then just observe and tweak during my second visit.  It turned out that they had new kids arrive so I ended up completing the initial steps of the process for the newcomers.  The fact that they had new kids was great!  It seems that sometimes it is initially hard to find kids with special needs and then once you get a couple, kids start coming out of nowhere.  What was challenging is that two of the new kids had totally different needs (they are Deaf), than the kids that we already started with, so I was needing to train the staff on yet another form of therapy.  I was really glad to have those two children though... being Deaf is tough especially in the rural areas because they generally don't have access to a school for the Deaf and do not end up going to school. These kids have high cognitive skills so I hate to see them sit at home all day and not have access to education or a social life.   Because they aren't taught academic skills, when they are adults they have few vocational opportunities.  Geting these kids relatively early (they are 5-6), is a blessing.   With children who are Deaf here you have two options; sign language and literacy skills.  Sign language is tough because they have Chinese sign language but it is hard to get teaching materials and really no one in the childs environment would be able to use it so it's actually not that helpful.  Basically, we decided to encourage the family to continue to use the sign language that they had made up (the little girl points to her mouth when she is hungry etc) because it works and is understood by most people, but we also want to push reading and writing skills.  When a person can read and write their whole world gets exponentially bigger.  In Chn, cell phones are EVERYWHERE!  Even people who are very poor seem to have them, this means that if we can teach these kiddoes to write, they can text, type, write characters etc to communicate.  Chnse is acutally easier in this respect than English.  Because it is a character based system, they can learn to match characters to words (whereas in English, letters represent sounds).   Also, to some extent, characters resemble the word that they represents (for example, the character for "person" actually looks like a person).  Also, teaching them to read and write makes them seem more capable to the community... everyone was soooo impressed when we taught these kids to read the couple of characters that we taught... it was really cool!!!

It was also nice to see the therapists beginning to really grasp some of the concepts that we have gone over.  One tendency is for the therapist to grab a stack of flashcards and have the kid say the words on the flashcards.  There are multiple issues wtih this approach when not thought out... one is that some of these kids have very delayed langauge and the flashcards were very random.  One kid uses maybe 15 words and the words that they were practicing were exotic animals.  I explained the concept that since everything that we teach will take a lot of effort, we want to start with functional language... he deosn't need to know how to say "starfish" when he is living in land locked Stone Forest when he doesn't use the word for "shoes" yet.   By the end of the week I saw that they therapist was really grasping that idea and when one of the kids bought a toy into therapy she was sure to teach him the word for that toy which was great because he plays with that toy daily.  

During this week, I also saw the parents of the kids start to hang out together.  This was really neat to see becuase there are no parent support groups here.  Many of these moms carry the heavy emotional weight of caring for their child on their own.  There also tends to be a lot of blame placed on the mom for the childs disability (why the dad is never to blame I don't know... if its genetic its half his genes... obviously no one should be blamed but if there is blame lets at least make it gender neutral : ) ) Anyway, I think its huge for them to support each other and to give the kids the friendships of each other since they may not have the opportunity to play with other kids.

On Thursday of this week we went to a garden party.... sooo fun!  People wore big floppy hats (someone let me borrow one) and we ate BBQ out in the garden.  There was a big vat of chicken feet which was a favorite among everyone except me.  I lucked out and since there was such a crowd around the chicken feet that no one noticed that I didnt' each one...I dont understand it, what are people even eating?  There isn't any meat on a chicken foot.  

Overall, it was a great week and I really enjoyed working with the kids, parents and staff!  

laminating without a laminator = lots of packing tape!

The garden party!

Chicken feet!

"The Joy of Cooking" with Friend!

This month my childhood best friend, Janelle (aka Friend) came to visit me in China.  We traveled around for the first couple of weeks while the rehab center that I work at was closed for Chinese New Year and then she spent a week in Kunming with me.  During her week in Kunming, she took it upon herself to domesticate me... what a task!  Next week I'll be moving to a new city in China that is less Westernized and I will not have access to Walmart.  Sooo Janelle decided that we ( I ) need to learn to cook using just the available things in the open air market.  

Herein lies the tale of two girls desperately trying to avoid becoming vegetarians in a world lacking prepackage frozen meat : ) 

Meal One:  Chicken Breast and Couscous:

Step One: Go to the market and choose a sad, dead chicken.

Step Two:  Put that dead, sad chicken in a plastic bag and walk half a mile home.

Step Three:  Take numerous pictures of this poor chicken that has given you it's life.. post some of them on facebook and harrass your friends (the chickens feet really do look like the fingers of one of my friends in her baby pictures... it was unreal!)

Step Four:  Hack the poor thing into pieces with little idea of what you are doing (at least I had little idea, Janelle seemed to know what she was doing)

Step Five: Cook and enjoy... try not to think about its sad, cold face as you sink your teeth into its flesh. 

Meal Two: Fish (not sure what kind) and Pasta:

Step One:  Go to the market and pick out a live fish (briefly consider letting all of the frogs sitting in a mesh laundry bag free... I don't get why they don't jump away, if they all modilized at the same time there would be no stopping them... Using the name of a popular children's book as their battle cry "JUMP FROG JUMP!")

Step Two: Gasp in horror as the fish seller takes the fish out of the basin, holds it over his head and throws it against the ground as hard as he can to kill it (I was not expecting this, I thought that they hit them on the head which isn't much better but at least its less dramatic)

Step Three:  let the horror continue as the seller scales the fish and puts it into a plastic bag and you take the dead fish to another store where you are stopped on the way out to practice English with a child and asked to take a picture with a child that you have never met.  During the entire encounter and photoshoot, Janelle was holding a bag with a dead fish, this may not have seemed weird to anyone else, but it seemed weird to me.

Step Four:  Watch a Youtube video on how to fillet a fish.

Step Five:  Try with no success to cut the fish apart in the way that the video said.

Step Six: Ask your friend to block the fish from falling off of the counter as you attempt to cut into it (it was much slimier than we thought it would be and slid all over the place, it was terrible!)

Step Seven:  Repent for your murderous heart as you slice into the fish trying multiple knives and eventually resort to using scissors to do the job.

Step Eight: Bread and fry the fish

Step Nine: Guiltily eat the fish and try to remember why you even like meat in the first place.  Also try to remember why you ever left a country with Giant Eagle for a country without Giant Eagle...

Step Ten:  Resolve in your heart, and try to convince the love of your life to be a vegetarian OR find a way to become the Duchess of Downton so that Daisy and Mrs. Patmore can take care of cooking from now on.  

Step Eleven:  Find out a couple of days later that the new city probably has frozen meats : ) 

But it was all worth it for THE JOY OF COOKING WITH FRIEND!!!

Cambodia

Today we spent the day touring the Killing Fields and the S21 Prison in Phnom Penh.  Most depressing day ever... I've read about four or so books about Cambodia's recent history and it's really hard to stomach all that the Cambodian people have been through.  It started with the U.S. bombing the rural areas during the Vietnam war because the Vietcong were hiding there (hey America, stop bombing everybody, it's hateful and we regret it everytime).  About 600,000 innocent lives were lost as well as many injuries.  Then around 1976 a communist leader named Pol Pot took over Cambodia.  In order to create a utopian society, he wanted to rid the country of all western influence and also all upper middle class people.  His group (called the Khmer Rouge), rounded up the people in the cities and took them to the countryside where they were forced to do manual labor.  There, many of them were executed or starved to death.  The killing field that we went to today was a mass grave site of over 19,000 innocent people who were savagely murdered by their own government.  The cost of bullets was too high so they were killed with common farm tools and then buried.  It was a horrific site to see...some to the methods used to kill are so disgusting that I don't even want to think about them enough to write them here.  The prison that we saw was where many of them were taken before being executed for crimes that they never committed.  The hardest part of the tour was a room that had pictures of the victims... one wall was children, there was one particular picture that caught my eye... it was a little boy with chubby cheeks who was no older than two.  The government had a saying about killing children because to kill grass you must pull it out by the roots.  There was a big tree at the killing field where members of the Khmer Rouge admitted to grabbing babies by the legs and beating them off if the tree until they died, it makes me want to puke.  It is estimated that about 2 million people were killed within a two year time span... it was about 25% of the population.  It was so sad to think that many of the people in Cambodia over the age of 38 saw these horrific acts of violence happen all around them... its scary to think that there are also many people who committed these acts of violence and are still running the streets.  Even though there has been a change in government (sort of), many of the people responsible for these acts have not been prosecuted.  

It gets almost worse... Cambodia continues to be in disarray.  Despite the U.N. intervention and a ton of money from the international community, it has not been able to recover.  With the exception of the tourist sites, many Cambodias live in the same conditions that they lived in over a thousand years ago, but on top of the poverty you add fear and mental health issues due to trauma.  The Khmer Rough basically ruined what infracture that the country had and killed most of the educated class.  Before the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia had about 943 doctors... when they were over thrown, there were only 50 left.  The same is true with educators.  This has made it difficult for Cambodia to pick itself back up.  It's also estimated that about 47% of the population has PTSD and that it is actually past onto the next generation.  The plight of women here is so bleak I can't even take it, and kids even bleaker.  It's estimated that 25% of women are severly beaten by their husbands and child rape seems almost common (about 80% of reported rapes are of children).  Prostitution/sexual slavery is a huge business that is difficult to combat because the brothels owners pay off the police.  About one third of the prostitutes are children.  Only 14% of Cambodia has access to clean water leading to disease (63% of Cambodians have TB, in the developed world, about 1-2% have it).  

The most frustrating thing about all of this and the underlying reason for dispair is the corruption.  Cambodia has been given quite a bit of money from the international community and it appears that the money is being embezzled.  There was a report done a couple of years ago that indicated that the gvt embezzles abut 500 million dollars a year which is half of the budget of the entire country.  The corruption runs through every sector of society making it hard to fight...  in the education system teachers make the kids pay to attend school even though it is supposed to be free...poor kids can't go because they can't pay the bribes.  Students then cheat their way through school by paying their teachers and buying answers... most of the teachers don't have over a  second grade education themselves so the education system struggles to begin with.  The healthcare systems consists of Dr's (some of whom have cheated their way through school) who charge their paitents even though the care is supposed to be free... soooo the poor don't get healthcare.  There was a story in one of the books that talks about a poor family going to the hospital to gave a baby, there was a complication and the dr told the husband that he wanted $150 u.s. to save the mom and baby.  The husband didn't have that much money so the dr took off his gloves and let the mother and baby die.  Donors around the world have given an insane amount if money for healthcare and there's nothing to show for it.  The main industries in Cambodia are tourism, rice production and garmet industry.  The rice industry suffers because the people are basically using the same techniques that were used over one thousand years ago... a blade and an ox.  Most don't have irrigation systems so while their neighbors (vietnam and thailand) are able to   produce 3-4 rice crops in one year... the cambodias only produce one...when there isn't a drought that is.   Even when they get a good crop, they are only able to  sell it within Southeast Asia because they don't have rice mills that make rice that the developed nations are willing to buy.  It really is the most depressing situation imaginable.  When Cambodia is compared to many of the countries that we consider to be in trouble... Cambodia seems to come out on bottom.  Haiti is considered to be one of the poorest nations in world but on a lot of counts Cambodians are worse off... in Haiti, 29% of kids under the age of 5 have stunted growth from malnutrition, in Cambodia the percentage is 42%.  The statistics that I have read and the personal stories of the people here are staggering.  As a tourist you don't even know what to do with it all.  As we walked through the killing fields children from the surrounding area came to beg... the tour books warn not to give to begging children because there are gangs who kidnap these kids, force them to beg and then take the money that they collect... giving the kids money only funds the gang.  But I hate looking into their sad eyes and doing nothing...  

One of the U.S. ambassadors to Cambodia, Joseph Mussomeli, was quoted to have warned people, "Be careful because Cambodia is the most dangerous place you will ever visit.  You will fall in love with it, and eventually it will break your heart."  I believe it, there is something about this place that draws you in and beaks you down at the same time.  When you hear the history, your heart breaks.  When you read about the current politics you become furious.  When you read about some of the social issues, you feel scared.  It's a place that you don't even know where to begin.  God heal Cambodia and give the rest of the world wisdom on how to do our part. 

Books about Cambodia:

Cambodias Curse (explains current situation)

When Broken Glass Floats (about Khmer Rouge era)

First They Killed My Father (Khmer Rouge era)

The Road of Lost Innocence (current sex trafficking) 

Southeast Asia : )

I LOVE to travel!  I always have... there is something about not knowing what to expect and stepping out into the unknown that makes my heart pulpitate in a good way.  I have done some backpacking in Western Europe and now had the Chinese New Year break to give Southeast Asia a try.  There are certainly differences between the two.  If you enjoy romance, art, museums, breathtaking architecture (I was teary with joy when I saw the Effile Tower) and good food... I highly recommend Western Europe.  I loved my trips through France, Germany and Italy.  

Southeast Asia is a totally different story... If you enjoy ambiguity, adventure, cheap food, multiple near death experiences (that somehow become everyday life) and conditions that simply can't be sanitary, visit Southeast Asia... You won't be disappointed!

Here are a few of our memories... Shopping for $1.75 sunglasses with the sounds of rice farmers protesting a corrupt government in the background (who is no longer in power apparently... I can't figure out who is running the country but it apears that no one is), mysterious bathroom situations at every turn (the only mystery in China is if there will be water in any form to wash the waste away or if it will sit there in a pool for the next decade... I quit dreaming of toilet paper weeks ago... there is only so much disappointment I can take on one trip to the bathroom.  Thailand is totally up in the air.  Sometimes it was China style, sometimes there was a seat warmer and bidet, mostly there was one of those ktichen sink sprayers to be used to wash yourself but we truely never knew what to expect!), Standing in a Cambodian hostel debating on what to say about the bloody sheets in our new room that we waited for them to clean  (it's true... there was blood on the sheets of both mine and Janelle's bed in Cambodia... the odder thing is that the staff seemed confused when I asked if they could give us clean sheets.... I'm glad there are no life threatening diseases transmitted via blood in Cambodia... oh wait, I think I read somewhere about something called AIDS), the joys of trying to find a hostel that apparently  has another name in which no one cared to share with you at booking leading you to wonder the dark streets for over an hour while passing the sign for your hostel, riding on the back of an elephant through the jungle of Thailand in a basket contraption that would never pass inspection in the U.S. (I was sure that I would fall to my death and screamed and laughed for at least half of the trip) while on a trekking adventure-some of the people on our trip had a difficult time crossing the river and a group of elephants with their guide came to the rescue and rode the people across, getting 19 bug bites in about 30 minutes (I am a little scared about the bug situation in Cambodia... they have A LOT of diseases here that are transmitted via mosquito), getting up at 5am to catch a bus at 6am to take you to a boat that leaves at 7am....in real life a car came to get us at 7:30 to take us to a boat that left at 8:30.  The  best thing is that the fun hasn't ended yet!  In all seriousness, I do love travels in Asia... it build character : )   Let the madness continue!