This week: I observed (and helped in) English language learning classes for three full days (2 high schools, 2 middle schools, and 2 elementary schools), attended meetings at multiple social service institutions, tutored, braved an icy knoll between parking lots to caucus on Super Tuesday, gave a presentation about Bosnian Roma to a group of teachers, dealt with a jerk of an endocrinologist, and coordinated college student volunteers.

My highlight was the elementary schools. I met a second grader from Bosnia who was so excited that I spoke his language that he hugged me, and then other kids followed. I wish Bosnian adults in Fargo would be that genuinely happy to meet me. I really should work with kids.

I met a 7th grade girl, who should be in 8th grade, but she didn’t pass, and now she’s simply biding her time until she’s 16 so she can quit school, like some other (but not all) Bosnian Roma in Fargo, and which will be a part of my dissertation (formal education through high school is pretty key to being an upstanding citizen). This particular girl has missed more than 50 of this year’s 100 days of school and she told her teacher she probably wouldn’t be in school next week because her family is going to a wedding in Florida. Twice later that day I found her and a friend hanging out in the bathroom just to get out of class. I have a hard time figuring out the best way to meet Roma so I gave the girl my phone number and within 15 minutes of school ending, her mom called. I told the girl that I would tutor her mom in English. Her mom is not literate in any language and doesn’t speak any English. She told me she couldn’t pay me. I wasn’t looking for money, but I am looking to meet more Roma, so hopefully we will reach an agreement. I’m going there tomorrow and they live just down the block from me! One of my big goals is to be invited to a Romani wedding, and this family has a teenage son who is going to get married sometime in the next few months. These sorts of facts (not knowing English, children not going to school, migrating around too much, having nice cars) are giving all Roma – and Bosnians in general – a pretty bad name in Fargo – even though they are not a uniform culture!

I met a group of three middle schools girls (from Somalia and Sudan) who reveled in giving the teacher’s helper a chronic hard time. I probably would too, if i were them. The helper (aka “para”) told me in a loud frustrated whisper that these girls were trouble, so are Roma; she said she tries so hard, she cares about the kids, but they have no respect, “no f-ing respect.” She believes in the Lord and that the Lord created us all equally but some people just don’t act like it. I decided she needed a break (or rather I needed a break from her), so I broke the girls up and took the Sudanese girl aside and asked her to talk to me. The girl liked Obama so I told her I voted for him and I told her about this video. We talked about music, facebook, and myspace. She told me her dad was for McCain (he’s also a preacher so I would have thought Huckabee), her mom is for Hillary, and she is for Obama, and that I was cooler than the para (whew). I think respect has to be earned, not expected, but I’m learning that many people around here don’t think that way when it come to refugees in particular. In a high school class, I only had to say two words in Southern Sudanese Arabic and the students classified me as a white Sudanese. Again, I should be working with kids.

Speaking of the Obama video: I played it for some people at a social service agency on Super Tuesday. Someone shut the lights off, and we 9 sat around one computer on a cold afternoon in a basement office. It was a pretty cool moment. Multiple people got goosebumps and for those four something minutes, plus a few seconds, no one said a word.

Finally, on the day I went to a middle school, I went to the Y later where I saw one of the ELL (English Language Learning) teachers who is also a step aerobics instructor and she invited me to her class. I went, and like with the Body Pump class I went to with my new cop friend a few weeks ago, I’m having a hard time walking afterwards. It was an intense 65 minute work out that involved balls and steps and coordination.

Blizzard watch pending, I’m taking two college students to meet new refugee families tomorrow morning, then I’m off to tutor the Bosnian woman.