Lizzy- Freedom House- Day Three

Today was the day I realized how much the residents appreciate our presence here. Katie had warned us that there is a period of time (between their Visa expiring and being granted asylum) that the residents are not allowed to have jobs or leave Freedom House on their own accord. Because they are less than 100 miles away from an international boarder, Border Control has jurisdiction to ask for anyone’s papers for any or no reason. Last year, two residents were walking back from a nearby grocery store when they were stopped because they “didn’t look American.” One man had his papers, but the other was immediately detained for four days before Freedom House was able to bail him out. Though he was respectful and cooperative during the incident, its mark on his record added an additional 18 months to his asylum processing. Freedom House has been more strict on residents staying on their property ever since. For the same reason, only staff answers the doorbell.

In the morning we held an American Slang class. Easily 20 adults attended, and each one took notes. I
was surprised with how engaged they were, though it makes sense since they will eventually need to
work with this language. We organized slang phrases into the “ABCs of American Slang,” covering topics from “the bomb” to “swag” to “watch a flick”. They were constantly clarifying and making comparisons to phrases in their native languages – constantly helping each other. In the middle of our lecture, a resident sneezed and Shannon instinctively said “bless you”. The residents asked about this habit, and thought it was funny we said it for sneezing, but usually not coughing.

After dinner (and helping A. with her reading again) we hosted a movie night. I couldn’t believe how
excited they were – we decorated the room with red theater-style curtains, made a concession stand
with popcorn and soda, and organized a ticket booth. One resident made himself the bouncer of the
movie room while we were decorating, and another dubbed himself the ticket collector. Nearly all of the 35 residents attended our movie, and I’ve never heard people laugh so hard at “Finding Nemo”.

We spend as much time as possible at Freedom House, because we all really enjoy simply hanging out.
However, today they had a two hour English class at the YMCA, so we all got to stop by the Motown
Museum and explore Detroit more in addition to volunteering.