Misunderstandings Can Be Good

~ When you realize you or someone else has been misunderstood, you come one step closer to understanding.

My group's forth visit was an interesting one. One we wouldn't expect and one ironically, our family wouldn't expect either. Someone in our group didn't feel good a few weeks ago, so naturally we decided to reschedule. But something got mixed up in the process and although we thought we had confirmed the time, the family had not known of it. Volunteering has been hard because as a group we aren't scheduling directly with the family, we are working with a "middleman" so everything we say and schedule is translated or moved through another person. This puts a lot of pressure for us, our family, and the contact person to put in full effort to make sure everything is set ahead of time. Everyone has been excellent in their effort, but this one time there was a little misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are hard to correct when you cannot communicate with the individual you need to, in the way that you need to. 

It was a Friday night and we went to our family's house. My group was hoping that our time was set as we thought. When we arrived we stood in front of the door and knocked as we normally do, but no one answered the door. Just when we look at each other we hear a voice, "who is it?" and we said "us, the volunteers" and so Hoi Len Par the mother of the house cracks the door to check as if she was scared. She then opens the door as she notices us. So we come in as she invites us to do so. We see that Taun Sang, the father of the house is gone. Her and her son Rual Lian Hmun are watching a movie. We tried asking her if we were supposed to be there or whether or not she knew we were coming, and it was hard to understand what she was thinking. We just had to try and read the body language. After starting interactions, I thought to myself, "Something just doesn't feel right." So we had Clarice check the calendar, and we were not on it. We all looked at each other and were like "Oh, that's awkward", at least that's what our faces said. So we put the new date on and left. We felt embarrassed and awkward and she didn't know what to do, but just smiled when she didn't look a little confused. We thought, the best way to do better is to make sure that both us and her knows what's going on. By adding our date on the calendar, this was a way to avoid further scheduling problems and made a direct effort to add what was needed. She seemed happier and we felt better about the situation. Later we would see how this increased our understanding of our relationship with her and the family. So misunderstandings can be good, they can lead to further understanding.