Day4

Probably the busiest day during this project. Since tomorrow the workshop will finally be on stage, I have a lot of work to do as a leader. Tomorrow morning I’ll have to do the presentation about our workshop, so I have to finish the PowerPoint, write the script, and guarantee the preparation of all the materials.

We went to a nearby nursing house in the morning. After a simple tour and learning about the daily life of the elderly people there, we entered the meeting room and were provided with the opportunity to communicate with them and practice our warm-up game in advance. The process of communicating with them wasn’t as smooth as I thought, however. One of the elderly people we met had serious cerebral infarction, making her difficult to understand our words and to express herself properly. Sometimes we had to repeat the same sentence slowly, and it really required great patience. Though the process was quite tough, I gained an essential inspiration from this experience: When we practiced the wool ball warm-up game and told the participants to follow the rules, they looked really indifferent and reluctant. Nonetheless, a grandma started to throw the ball randomly to different other participants, and everyone became more excited and active: sweet smiles and excitement in their eyes finally emerged. From this experience, I learned that freedom and sense of control make the participants far more enthusiastic and active, therefore, maybe fewer rules will be better. After this reflection, I also told my groupmates: If there are some accidents during the workshop tomorrow——for instance, the participants refuse to follow the rules——just let them follow the way they like. We should not force them to follow the rules, instead, we should try our best to support them to do all the creative things.

Coming out of the nursing house, we went to the “Zaohua Museum” to learn more about the lives of the elderly people’s era. We saw a lot of novel things that we had never seen before there——old hearths, pots and pans, and therefore know more about the elements they might be familiar with, which is important since these elements will help remind the participants of their old days. I was impressed by how the people from that era could enjoy life with their whole hearts in such a harsh environment.

We took the bus and visited the local village committee and acted as the interviewers. Although I have taken many interviews, I was always the interviewee, making this experience even more novel and challenging for me. I too k the responsibility of designing the questions at noon, and was responsible for taking notes during the interview and using my mobile phone to record the whole process of the interview as well. This interview made me aware of the lack of popularization of science, as well as care for dementia——In fact, the majority of the supervisors have never heard of the word “dementia”. Compared to mental illnesses, the health science lectures were mostly about basic illnesses such as heart disease, flu, and fractures. The supervisors also state that they allocate time taking care of solitary elderly people but hardly allocate time for elderly people suffering from dementia or other mental illnesses, since the majority of them have their children as caregivers. They also had deep misunderstandings about dementia: some of them think dementia is the same as cerebral infarction, and some of them think that it is merely about natural aging and believes that it is just normal for old people to lose memory. However, after the interviews, the supervisors claimed that they were aware of their ignorance and negligence, and will try to add more lectures about dementia, as well as providing the families with a dementia with social welfare.

And finally, the evening was time for the preparation of the workshop again. We worked hard for more than three hours, confirming the theme and the materials, and the most important part for me is to write the script for the presentation and the workshop. We also rehearse our workshop together and alternate some of the points according to our personal feelings about the activities. I couldn’t wait to put my workshop on stage! Really wish that all the participants will enjoy the games and creative activities we dedicated much time and effort to, and I really hope that I’ll be able to hand in an answer sheet satisfying for myself.