This Friday!

Ahhhh UN Day is this Friday! I'm doing last minute preparations this week. I'm pretty excited though! Mr. Lon Burnam from the Dallas Peace Center is coming out as well now! And I have food donated from all kinds of places. Invitations are out and now I am in the process of creating the programs! I'm looking forward to see how it goes,and I will be sure to give a report the week following!

Tania

Mary, June 9

I returned to Austin on Wednesday of last week to prepare for a mini summer class, and I will be away from CST Dallas until July 13.  Since I got here, I have been catching up on my required reading and have been searching for additional articles in professional journals that I have access to through the university.  Although it's good to be at home for a bit, it will be good to get back to CST and continue work up there!

"No Sabe, No Comprende!"

These are among the first words I heard when I picked up a client from Ethiopia last week. After talking to Dr. Balbona last week, I learned that it is relatively common for our clients to learn Spanish quicker than English, especially when they are living and working in an environment that is predominately Latino. Last week involved alot of driving! I became acquainted with several more clients and learned about their respective cultures and lives. Tania and I did some more donation hunting and through Tania's smooth talking, Target donated CST a $50 gift card...woohoo! On Friday a few of us went and saw Dr. Balbona present a speech on the topic of PTSD to DISD school teachers. Very very interesting. After the speech we went and ate some La Cubanita....which was my first experience with the amazing-ness of Cuban food!

A few weeks away!

Ahh there's only 3 weeks until UN Day! However, I did have the great opportunity to meet the new high school intern this morning, Maya. She will be a great help and I am looking forward to working with her! We're working on securing all food and entertainment by the end of this week, so the next two weeks will be details alone.

Aside from that, I've continued to work on collecting donations to renovate the inside of the house. Brad and I have been quite successful as Target donated and I think we will get some things donated by World Market. But that's all for now!

I'll update again by the end of the week!

Tania

Hola!

Last week was full of cleaning, donation hunting, and driving! Tania and I went to various businesses around Dallas requesting donations in the form of gift cards. These donations would ideally be used for renovating various aspects of the center. It was a learning experience to say the least! Other than that we cleaned up the kitchen a little bit and did some oddjobs around the place. However, the peak of my week was my time spent with a man from Ethiopia. We got him some new chairs for his apartment and a brand new guitar! As far as I know, tomorrow I am going to pick up, cook and eat some fish with a unique individual from Iraq.....can't wait!

Brad