My art based workshop was a success!

At least in my book it very much was. I will update with a full on detailed post on the activities I did for that day and also what was accomplished. I will share with you the following story to keep you teased as I will be headed to Saigon soon for a Southeast Asia Regional Workshop on Child Trafficking. Tomorrow, in the early morning, I'll be hoping on a motorbike to visit the homes of four scholarship recipients in the rural areas to write their backgrounds/profiles for our visiting donors in the very near future. I always like visiting their homes. Grounds me again and again. I'll miss this when I leave. Anyways here's my story:

Our sample tree by Patricia Nguyen =)

I was doing a "Tree of Life" activity that I learned from my days at UC Berkeley working with southeast asian youth with SASC. I've always liked this activity and felt that it was relevant in many many settings. The tree was representative of your identity. With the roots being things that have rooted you and made you who you are today, what has kept you growing. The trunk represents your current identity and who you are presently. While the branches and leaves represent your future and what you dream for. In this case I was working with trafficking survivors and wanted to get personal without making it seemed to forced. I wanted some inner reflection to be natural. As a visual person, doing anything with color and art is very natural to me. Something I innately incorporate when I create my workshops. I don't expect people to be hesitant about - just like kids with crayons, they become free flowing when it hits the paper. However B* was nervous when I said that they had to draw a tree on a big piece of paper. "I can't draw" Her face looked pained and very scared. I told her that she could draw a tree, that it was very simple, that it wasn't the main point of the activity, and that there is no right way to draw a tree beautiful or not. She was still hesitant. I told her that I would help her.

I asked her what color she wanted her tree to be. She said she didn't care. But I told her to choose the colors she liked. To have an opinion about something. She chose pink for the trunk and green for the leaves. I drew the trunk and roots for her, asking if it was okay. She said yes. Then I told her now it was her turn to draw the leaves. "I'm so nervous my hands are shaking." At first I guided her hand, but told her she just had to draw big C's in order to make the tree top. And before you know it she was done and went on with filling in her tree.

Although this was a very fleeting instant, I was frustrated in her inability to believe in herself. Frustrated at the world for the many instances in her life where she felt worthless to now make her think that she couldn't pick up a marker to draw a tree - something that all children are able to do. No one should ever feel that way. To be beaten down to the point where you no longer believe in yourself, even the simplest tasks.

And so I write. I write so much that sometimes I narrate as I am living or experiencing something. You have hands, you have eyes. Use them folks. Use them and feel lucky to have the freedom to do so, because many don't. Below is a picture from an activity that day - a box decorated by the resident coordinator.

"Sprinkle some salt into your life"

The quote she cut out roughly translates to: "Sprinkle some salt into your life"

So even when things "taste" bad in your life, it's up to you to sprinkle some salt into your life and make it "taste good." 
 Also, I've been getting wonderful random emails, messages, and chats from my very friends and strangers in the states and elsewhere in the world. Know that as a rather internal person whose creativity and feelings is sometimes held deep inside me, I really really value all the little pings my friends and stranger friends give to me. They give me quite a bit of a high, sometimes lasting for several days.

In the hot rays I get old

I could never know what the dead man sees

I could never know what the deaf man hears

Or know what the dead man fears

Even if you were incomplete

Maybe I'm in need of some chili peppers in my life too.

---

 The person in my life who was the best at eating chili peppers is my grandpa. He bites into them as if they are candy. "Is it spicy?" I asked him one day at a Las Vegas buffet. "I don't know anymore, I've ate so much chili I can't taste anything anymore. My grandpa called me today. He said he missed me and wanted to see how I was doing. A few weeks ago I spent my Sunday afternoon showing him all my pictures from Laos due to the wonderful technology of Skype screen sharing.

"Now I can sleep well after seeing all your pictures."

His voice is becoming older and older, faded and faded as I grow up. His skin likewise, always been rough, but now rougher than usual. On the phone he reminds me to exercise as he always does. Maybe I should really listen since I've been prone to fall ill as of late, and have lost 4lbs. He was very disappointed in me when I quit my ping pong lessons. I tell him a bit about human trafficking and my work and what I will be doing in the next few days. He tells me to remember to call home sometimes. My grandpa is the only family member that shows how much he cares and misses me. He's the only one that has verbally said "I love you to me." I really should call him more often, I really should.