The third time I went to the Detention Center, there was still some excitement in my heart, but the nervousness had disappeared and I was more calm and comfortable. There were two new children today – even though the people changed, they still gave me a similar feeling. They were both people of color and both had distinct accents. One of them, like the guy I met last week, also loves to sing, and both of them love China and want to travel there.

The two people in my group today were almost the same as every time, one was more outgoing and the other more shy. The former one told me that although he loves music and writes his own music, he knows that it doesn’t make any money and can only be used as his side business. When I asked them what industry they wanted to get into, they didn’t have an exact goal, just have the idea of “making a lot of money” – they lacked a clear plan for the future.

I tried to motivate them during the process, pushing them to tell me more and to practice their storytelling skills. I noticed that they liked to use very short sentences to summarize a story that could have had a lot of details, and their storytelling lacked organization. So I contributed a lot of my own stories and my ideas for the future in the process.

It was interesting to note that both men were very interested in China and the Chinese language. They asked me a lot about my experiences of going to school in China, and in particular they asked me if I could write Chinese and if I could understand the meaning of each character. They were almost simultaneously surprised when I answered in the affirmative, as perhaps Chinese was something difficult and unfamiliar to them.

Overall, my experience today has given me a greater awareness and deeper understanding of a segment of American society.