Tuesday, May 13, 2014
My New Friend Jonas
Yesterday i was playing basketball at Castro elementary and out of nowhere a small white kid with blond hair and blue eyes approached the court. He watched me play for a while until i passed him the ball, he looked at me and i told him to shoot. He did and he made it in the hoop, then i introduced myself and when he told me his name i heard voice and he had an accent. I asked him where he was from and he said Norway. I soon noticed that he didn't speak a lot of english but I was still able to understand him and him understand me. It was weird at first i had to change my word selection and sentence structure and use hand gestures a lot. I learned a lot from my friend he likes the lakers and Kobe also Barcelona and Man untied and he is a goalie in soccer. I learned from this experience that coming from a different country and not knowing the language is difficult but in my case it took patience and adaptivity in order to interact with Jonas who is 11.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Aw, I really enjoyed reading that. That kind of gives me an intro into what I'll be doing this summer. My mom's coworker's daughter is coming to stay with us from Germany for a couple months. It'll be interesting since she does speak english but not very well. I think I will have to do what you did and kind of change my sentences and the way I speak.
ReplyDeleteI think it is extremely interesting when things like this occur. Jonas and you have little in common physically but personality wise, you guys both enjoy to play basketball and soccer. Experiences like this give people the courage to reach out and meet new people because it teaches us that completely random individuals that cannot physically identify with us may be able to emotionally or socially identify with us.
ReplyDeleteAlex, this is really interesting. It reminds me of my interactions with Eric O' Dea, a 27 year old with Down syndrome, who I interacted with as part of my senior project. I had to change the way that I communicated. I had to slow down my speech and make the words I used more simple. It was very touching and cool to see that we could still interact and connect even though we were very different. Eric is not a "typically developing" individual, but that does not mean that he can not communicate or interact with others.
ReplyDelete