Our visit with our family tonight was a lot of fun! I think we are all getting a lot more comfortable with each other. It has been two weeks instead of one week since our last visit due to scheduling conflicts: me being out of town one weekend, my partner the next, and the kids are very involved in after school activities and church so it is sometimes a challenge to find a time that works for everyone. We are just taking it week by week and we try to set the time for our next visit at the end of each visit.

We spent time working on the children’s homework as usual, checking math problems and working on English vocabulary. The youngest boy is three years old and up until tonight I had not heard him speak much English. Tonight he kept pointing to a ton of different items and saying, “What is name?” I would tell him- that’s a phone, that’s a picture of a dog, that is an ear. My partner and I also spent time learning some words in their native Karen language. It’s quite a challenge! It is such a different language and it made me really think about how difficult it must be for refugees trying to learn English.

Tonight, the kids were very much getting in the Halloween spirit and they were asking us if we were going to dress up and what we were planning to do for Halloween. One of the younger girls is going to be a cow and one of the younger boys hasn’t decided what he is going to be yet. They are planning on trick-or-treating just inside their building and when we offered to come and trick-or-treat with them, they seemed very excited about the idea. We are planning on going over there Monday night, on Halloween, to go around with them. We thought it would also be fun to do some outside Halloween activity with them this weekend, so we are going to see if they would like to come to the LRO trick-or-treating event on the Loyola campus Sunday afternoon. I’m excited!