Rain! Finally!

Boy, what a lightning and thundershower that was! I was taking a nice three and a half hour long nap this afternoon (first nap I've taken in a long while), when I was woken up by pouring rain and loud cracks of thunder. I was so confused as to why it was 9:05 PM and why Brukab was already awake and walking around.

Then I remembered I had taken a nap.

I never realized how disoriented I get when I take nap. It's so strange to me, but it was definitely something I needed today.

Today was a slower day than usual. We had class today and talked a lot about what we've seen over the past few weeks that we've been here. Manka led an interactive lecture about immigration and education in 21st century, and then we did an exercise with poster papers where we had to draw visual representations, based on what we've learned, of what social, academic, and emotional are required for the well-being of students from immigrant backgrounds.

We talked about the importance of a student's social network (friends, environment, etc.), their family, the background and immigration story, supportive schools and teachers, and government laws that affirm their right to education. It reminded me a lot of what I learned in Germany from Dr. Ulrich Raiser, who works at the Office of the Berlin Commissioner for Integration and Migration. He wrote his master's thesis on the upward educational mobility of young immigrant children in Germany, and he concluded that four factors are tremendously important to their growth and development in the education context:

• Parents
• Teachers
• Older siblings/friends who had successfully navigated the system
• Emphasize and reiterate family's immigration story

I found myself disagreeing with some of his conclusions when I was in Berlin, namely about the fact that many immigrant parents/families probably don't know the entire system or speak the language, hence many of the problems that exist. At the same time, not every student has older siblings who have navigated the system successfully. Strangely though, when I was coming up with the conditions for the well-being of an immigrant child here in the education context, I found myself coming back a lot to the conditions that Dr. Raiser had identified.

We finished our class session with a round table about what we've learned concretely so far, how our lens/frames of reference have changed, any current struggles, and what we hope to learn in our last week here. It was a pretty powerful tool for generating discussion about a lot of the challenging themes we've seen over the past three weeks. For me, I learned the most from the visits to the refugee center, talking with the political refugees, and hearing just how hopeless their cases have become. It's broadened my understanding of migration (both immigration and emigration) and the complex levels of why people choose or not choose to leave their countries of origin.

As for my frames of references, I've learned about the differing perceptions and beliefs when it comes to higher education. A university degree in Italy may not be the key to social mobility the way that it is in the US. It's taught me to look a deeper at the underlying reasons of why people do the things they do. I've also become more aware of my privilege of being a lighter-skinned, male individual in Italy. I've seen many of the girls in our program (only 3 guys out of 16 total students on this trip) struggle with the seemingly much more male-dominated culture in Italy, and there are a lot more concerns that they face than I do as a male.

Some of the struggles I've had while here, aside from learning to balance my time and trying to fulfill responsibilities in Seattle while in Rome (challenging, I must say!), have to do with my frame of reference when it comes to education outside the US. Up to now, most of what I know is from my HIA final research project in Germany (which is almost finalized!), so it's been a challenge to see things much more objectively and not try to draw too many comparisons between Italy and Germany too quickly (although my honors project for this course is a cross-comparison of access to higher education in Italy, Germany, and the United States).

Finally, I'm really excited about our visits with the schools next week. We haven't been able to visit any schools yet because school hasn't actually started yet for many schools. But we'll be visiting the University of Rome on Tuesday, so I should have some great information for my project then. We're supposed to present to everyone on Wednesday evening, so I'm running a bit out of time. Hopefully, this weekend will be more productive despite my few travel plans.

Tomorrow, I am planning on visiting the Baths of Caracalla, the Catacombs, the old Appian Way, and a few churches around the area. If there's time, I'll head to the Etruscan museum too. Sunday will be my Pompeii trip day with Manmeet after putting it off last weekend. I'm very excited to go!

It's hard to believe it but I only have another week left before I head back to Seattle. As much has I complained about the heat and bugs, I'm not looking forward to leaving just yet. After spending ten of out my 16 weeks of summer in Europe, it'll be strange to start using US Dollars again. Anyway, tomorrow should be a massive picture day. I'll go charge my camera. More to come!