Rachel: Week 5

Well, it would be a lie not to say that this week's event was a little disheartening. For this past event we decided to do our own type of event solely through IEP on more of a community level. We planned a trip to go down to the Haymarket to the pajama party Friday's at Paint Yourself Silly. From me and Ariel's perspective we thought this would be so fun! We overly advertised, told everyone about it, and really tried to get people excited about going to the event. With a Facebook post every day, reminder emails, and face to face reminders we hoped to at least have a decent turn out to come paint with us. Well.. That was not the case. We ended up waiting in front of the Union alone in our pajama pants.
What I realized after trying to put on this event and reflecting on why nobody showed up that this 'pajama painting party' is so completely American. What other country (with the known exception of China, but many Chinese students are not a part of IEP because of their knowledge of English) is it actually acceptable to run around in what you sleep in? I realized that when I did try to get some of the IEP students to come to the event and understand the idea I got a lot of weird looks and had to clarify that yes, this is something that is completely acceptable here. The main assumption I can make for our lack of attendance is that a majority of students that have been attending our events have been Saudi Arabian men. In relation to social norms of their culture in comparison to the ones here this is not something that would be acceptable to be around, especially with two women. Not only because of the dress code, but also because of the huge presence of sex segregation in Saudi Arabia as well. (http://wikitravel.org/en/Saudi_Arabia) All over the world women are seen as inferior or there are strict laws used to keep women and men in separate groups.
Now I am not saying that this is for sure the reasoning that the IEP students use when deciding to come to our events or not but it could definitely play a role based on their own cultural normality. It is definitely something to take into account. On the other hand, though, Friday night was quite cold and maybe wearing pajamas and walking down to the Haymarket just wasn't that appealing. Even though this was the first disheartening experience, Ariel and I are confident in getting attendance in the future. By being a little more conscious of opinions, weather, and time maybe we will be able to get higher IEP attendance. We plan on visiting the classrooms this week as well to let them know of our upcoming event and also emailing the teachers to let them announce the events as well and push attendance. Though this week's event wasn't what we expected, it was a learning experience and something to grow from.

Rachel: Week 4

Today is our fifth IEP event. We are partnering with International Student Fellowship here on campus who was kind enough to reach out to us to plan an event! We planned a game afternoon from 3:30-5:30 in the game room of Selleck and I am excited to see the turn out! I have learned that constant reminders and funny posts have really gained a lot of publicity about the event and I hope to see a good turn out tonight. I think this is a really good idea for an event because it is simple and interactive. The biggest thing about these events is being excited about it yourself. If people can tell that you are excited to meet them and have an experience with them then they are way more inclined to actually show up to the event. I really hope that people do turn up today and have a chance to interact and learn about one another. If this goes well I will definitely plan on partnering with this organization again for a conversation table night or something to really get people talking and involved with each other.

It was such a fabulous experience today! We had a huge turn out and it was so exciting to see the interactions between students. Partnering with Beth was a huge success! I had a chance to play Uno and Apples to Apples with a variety of students that I normally wouldn't be able to! It was so fun trying to explain some of the words on the cards to the Saudi students and realizing how difficult it was for even I to define some words. It was really great how fast they caught on and were able to play! We played for two hours and the conversations between the students and just the amount of noise we made while playing was so satisfying and it made it so worthwhile. Finally being able to bring students together at that level was so great and it really showed the true meaning of this internship. I got so many thanks and asking about nexts weeks event. It really was such a great afternoon!

Rachel: Week 3

Our last IEP event was going to see XPLICIT. He is a poet/math teacher that travels all over the country performing and talking to students. It was a really great time and a lot of people showed up to see him perform. It was a really different experience for me because I had never been to a poetry slam before but it was absolutely so much fun! It was such an experience being surrounded by people I normally wouldn't be. I loved hearing his story and outlook on life and it was surprising how many things I did agree with him on. His outlook on life was a very optimistic and he expressed his thoughts in a way that really connected with his audience and the people around him. The feedback he got from the audience was amazing and even I was snapping and calling out the things I agreed with when he spoke. It was an overall amazing experience.
We also had a chance this week to go and visit a few of the IEP classrooms! It was so much fun being able to visit them and meet the students that we are reaching out to! A challenge that we faced was actually getting ahold of the teachers to let them know that we would be visiting. Since we had issues with hearing back from them and already being three weeks into the internship we decided to just stop by and see what happened. Some of the teachers were really excited to meet us and half us talk to the classrooms but some were taking tests and we ended up bothering the classrooms instead of just letting them know what was going on. We are currently back in the process of making sure we email all of the teachers to let them know that we would like to come visit and try to solidify a date to go and visit that would be okay with them. The biggest challenge is actually finding time because between me and Ariel we already have crazy schedules and hopefully we will be able to squeeze in time to stop by the classrooms and let the students see our faces and know we are serious about getting everyone together We are still looking around for ideas for events and I am excited for the coming weeks!

Rachel: Week 2

Wow! I can't even express how satisfying this internship is! Thursday we co-hosted an event with the Intercultural Team and their Valentines Craft Night. It was super successful and there was a huge turnout of both International students as well as American students. I got a group of my friends to come along and to say that they loved it is a complete understatement. They were ecstatic about the interactions that they had with people that they normally wouldn't be sitting down and talking to. We spent a good hour teaching our new friends to make Valentines Day cards, eating way too may cookies, and trying to guess the character that was stuck onto our back. I finally found mine after a ton of laughs. Partnering with another event really helps our numbers and through these other events we can publicize our individual IEP events to the International and American students that show up. Because these events are already funded and set up in high traffic areas, it is easy to get a lot of attendance. My friends can not wait until our next event and are so excited to start making new connections this way. This weeks event was an overall success and I am so happy that I got to be a part of it.

Rachel: Week 1

What a crazy week. Who would have ever thought that trying to plan events would be something unlike any other. It becomes your responsibility to find/create an event, tell people about the event, be at the event, and then actively work to get people there. As you can see from our first turn out we might need to work a little harder at the actively getting people there. The hardest thing about events, especially cultural events, is getting people out of their comfort zone. People are not apt to do things that they would not normally do, especially with people they would not normally be with. For our first event we planned a movie afternoon to see the movie Frozen. We didn't quite have too many takers, but that could have been because of the crazy cold weather or the fact that we really haven't had a chance to show our faces in the IEP classrooms yet and really the only advertising we have worked at is on Facebook and by word of mouth; and even though this turn out isn't ideal, it is a starting point, and a starting point is exactly what we need. This whole semester is going to be a learning experience because this is something that I have never done before. Still excited to get into the classrooms this week and keep spreading awareness and getting students excited about our events. Onto the next one!

The Beginning: Rachel

This internship is such a great opportunity with such a great goal in mind; to connect international students with UNL students here on campus. As the IEP intern it is my job in order to plan and raise awareness about the events in order to connect and start relationships between students who otherwise might not have the chance. Two weeks into this job and I am finally getting my head around how I need to go about doing this internship. I feel like the first couple weeks are the hardest. One needs to get over the initial "oh my dear, how in the world am I going to accomplish this" stage before they can really be productive. Over the past couple weeks I have been brainstorming ideas, making connections with organizations on campus that I could involve, learning of activities being held around campus and the Lincoln area, planning my schedule accordingly, deciding when I can visit the IEP classrooms to meet the international students myself, and just trying to get an idea of what this semester is going to look like.
Since this is a relatively new program, I am so excited to expand on what the girls last semester did and make this something even bigger and better. I am confident that I will be able to get people to my events and I am so excited to get started, it is just a matter of what event? When thinking of an event to put on for a large group of diverse students, it can be a bit overwhelming. It is a hard thing to get any student out of their rooms to eat let alone go to class. I am excited to explore the best way to not only get attendance to these events but also get students excited about them.
We decided to kick off the semester with a simple Thursday $5 movie night to the movie Frozen at the Grand. It is not an event that would require the students to be too social but would be an incentive to get out and see the large community of people that they might not normally be involved with. To raise awareness, both me and Ariel have been posting on Facebook about the event, are going in to talk to the international classes about our new FB page and event, as well as telling our friends to invite other friends. I think the best way to get attendance is to get friends to invite friends and etc. Students are more apt to come if they know someone else who is going, so I plan on starting off small and hoping that word of mouth will increase attendance of not only international students, but also UNL students as well.
In this first week I am nervous and excited, but so ready to begin this experience!