Sunday, October 10, 2010

Research Assistant

I served my mission in Minnesota. I worked exclusively with the Hmong community and learned their language. The Hmong aren't very well known, so I'm constantly looking for ways to help their community or teach others about them.
Recently, I went back to visist the people I worked with there and while I was talking to one of my former companions, he gave me the e-mail address for a man at BYU who was supposedly doing some sort of Hmong project. I was so excited to find out what the deal was. As soon as I got to school, I sent him an e-mail and I cannot describe how happy I was when his response came.
Turns out that he is doing his PH.D in Anthropology on the morals and family values of Hmong people. Most of them came to America as refugees from Laos during the Vietnam War, but many of them also went and have been living in refugee camps in Thailand. He lived in a Hmong village in Thailand for a year and interviewed 10 families. Then he went to the Twin Citites(MN) to interview 10 families there. His research is mainly looking for differences and corrolations in morals, ethics, family values between Hmong people who have become more "Americanized" and those who have stayed in Thailand.
Anyway, I won't go into all the details. The point of me saying this is that starting in January he will need a new research assistant to translate, write down, and categorize the interviews and all the information gained from them. He says come the end of this semester he will let me know whether or not he wants to hire me!! It will be so cool to make this kind of a contribution to the people a culture I came to love so much over the last 2 1/2 years!!!!

3 comments:

  1. I hope this works out for you! What a wonderful opportunity. Maybe it could even lead to an opportunity to visit Thailand yourself. Lori

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  2. That's awesome! Amazing how things like that 'just happen' to work out

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  3. Cool dude. that would be awesome. Sometimes it is cool how when you are looking for opportunities to do something good and the Lord will provide a way to accomplish it.

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