ABSTRACT THURSDAY - SHAPE

We had a good time at the iCafé today, although again, not many turned up.  We had four people and two of those came in later, so the participants were outnumbered by the volunteers, but we had a good morning chatting about names and how different cultures decide on names for their children and where those names come from.  It was also interesting to hear about the cultural differences between us - those from Portugal, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh - and two of our volunteers who come from Ireland and Scotland!  One of our volunteers had just come back from Nepal, so we heard another “take” on the culture of that country.  We did have to teach the Imam a new phrase "Spoiler Alert" - he wanted to talk about the cricket, as he is from Pakistan, and I told him my husband was watching it at home, but our volunteer who had just returned from Nepal didn't want to hear, as he was recording it to watch later! Difficult to explain, but it did make us laugh!

I was especially pleased that I sat next to a lady who couldn’t speak a word of English a couple of weeks ago, but today, when I asked her how she was, she said “I am fine.”  We chatted about her children or rather, I chatted and she occasionally told me she did not understand, so I had to think of other ways of conversing/communicating with her.  I eventually found out that she had two children so wrote that on her white board, then told her that I also had two children and showed her photographs on my phone.  

As I was wearing my name badge from my Community Fridge volunteering, I could tell her that my name was Maureen or Mo for short - and she told me just her name when I asked her.  However, by the end of our session this morning when I asked her, “What is your name?” she was able to say “My name is ?” so I was thrilled with her progress, small though it was.  Hopefully, if she is at the Community Fridge next week, I will be able to reinforce this.  She was wearing a mask so it was difficult to hear her sometimes, because she is very softly spoken, but she has beautiful eyes, so when I told her that she had done well today, her eyes “smiled”, which gave me such a thrill because it means we are making progress.

It is such a privilege to be able to make relationships with these people who are far away from their own country and families, and one man, who had also been to the Community Fridge earlier in the week and then went to the Computer Course, is doing very well, so I will look out for him next Monday too.  He always writes things down and wants to make sure he has things right, so again, very thrilling for us as volunteers to know that these things are important to him.

Obviously, I cannot take photographs in our group, but I saw that the lovely roses on the table just outside the Church sanctuary on Sunday were looking just as beautiful today, so I decided to take a shot and use it somehow for Abstract Thursday.  It was only after I had played around with this that I looked at the theme for today, which is “shape” and if you look carefully, you can see that the shape behind the abstract is a vase of roses so thank you to the person who brought them to Church last weekend.  

I then had a play with my iColorama App and this was the result.  However, during my “playtime” the app suddenly decided it wanted me to buy the full Pro version and put a horrible watermark image on my shot - but fortunately, I have managed to delete this now.

It is a very cold and windy afternoon, so I think a huddle under my electric throw and a read of my book is on the cards for the rest of the afternoon - and the heating still isn’t on!  

“We may have different religions, 
     different languages, 
          different coloured skin,
               but we all belong 
                    to one human race” 
Kofi Annan