And thanks Wordle.net for their easy to use and creative cloud builder!
And thanks Wordle.net for their easy to use and creative cloud builder!
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Ahhh… licuados. One of my host moms in Costa Rica ran a “soda,” a small restaurant on the same property as her house. As I would sit at the soda’s tables working on my laptop in the hot August afternoons, my host mom would make deliciously refreshing coffee licuados for me. Usually some combination of blended coffee, ice, milk, and maybe a banana, she could be marking these as frappuccinos. They weren’t on the menu, but I’m glad I made the request. They provided that extra boost I needed to get through my work. I have begun making them at home to bring back that little extra boost of caffeine and memories while writing my thesis. Yummm… Thanks to all who stopped by my poster sessions at the NAFSA Conference or connected with me throughout the week. I am returning home feeling a renewed energy for my work and my research. One takeaway from my conversations regarding my research with host mothers is the importance of storytelling – a) in the listening and gathering stories as a more culturally appropriate/comfortable “data collection method” than Likert scale response options and b) sharing stories as a way to make the “data” come to life. I conducted semi-structured interviews and questionnaires in the form of a pile-sort with 30 host mothers. My quantitative data paints a broad picture of women’s experiences hosting, while their individual stories prove rich examples of how hosting affects women's lives. Yet, I feel hesitant to share individual stories here in this public forum. As I am currently in the writing stage of my thesis, I have to make lots of decisions about which stories to share and how much detail to provide about the women telling the stories. Using pseudonyms for the mothers and the town and following Institutional Review Board research protocol is not enough. I try to put myself in the place of each host mother, imagining what she would think of her story shared as written. I feel a deep obligation to share the voices of host mothers I interviewed, but only in the most respectful and responsible manner possible. As this takes a lot of thought and care, I will not launch into a moving story of how hosting positively transformed one women’s self-esteem and life of her family – but know that those stories exist and I will someday get to the point that I am ready to share. |
Sara A.R.C. ClarkWorking at the University of Oregon, recently completed my MA in International Studies, continuing my investigation into Costa Rican host mother experiences. Archives
June 2015
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