Welcome to the newly-arrived Dahal family!

No pictures! Why even post! Aargh. :( I love pictures! But am too lazy... And I'm still not sure about my poor camera.

Through volunteering with World Relief, I've had the chance to meet many very newly arrived refugees. It's a fun experience! But I had never gone with a case worker to meet a family at the airport. Reason being that flights typically come in at night, and it had just never happened.

Well, I decided that late night or not, I needed to go! So we went last night. Fun experience! I'd like to go again, maybe when it's a family who speaks little to no English and for a family who has no relations already here in America. Just for a different experience. This family already has all their family here (some met them with us at the airport) and the husband speaks good English. They're already somewhat "westernized", so they knew all the basics - how to use light switches, open doors, use plumbing and locks, read and write, etc

A couple things I did notice that were slightly surprising:

-While opening they can do, closing a car door from the inside causes problems, without fail. The handle that is used to open the door, they also use to close it. Which means that they are pulling on it while it is closing, thus not allowing the door to really latch. The poor guy was quite

confused at first as we tried to explain that you use one handle to open the door and the other, right under it, to close. I've never even thought about it before!

-Going into the World Relief office, the husband and wife automatically took off their sandals and left them outside the office door. I thought that was cute! And showed respect and care.

-The apartment is in an apartment complex a mile or two away from where the husband's parents and siblings already are. They were very disappointed and wondered why they had been placed "so far apart". They were just reunited having been on opposite sides of the globe! A couple miles seems trivial. I walk that distance all the time, and I know they're no stranger to walking such distances either. My own brother and sister are as far away as they possibly can get (slightly exaggerating) while staying in the contiguous US. I hard-heartedly wasn't feeling much sympathy.

-Their little 14 mo old adorable daughter had thick eyebrows painted on her. I don't know if I'd ever seen that before. Quite an interesting effect. Was it supposed to make her cuter? I thought her cute despite the dark markings.

Anyway, I am looking forward to working with this family! Today was a lot of orientation, as well as tomorrow. I've loved sitting in on that and hearing the translator. I'm starting to pick up more little bits and pieces of conversations in Nepali. Plus I got to learn more about case work files, Match Grant, DEFACS, orientation, etc. So much! So overwhelming and intimidating! But this family was very courageous and had an admirable "go get-'em" attitude. Quite inspiring.

Time for ice cream.

:)