The third day in the series of Constructive Engagement of Conflict Workshops asked participants to consider the different perspectives and possibility of “multiple truths” that sometimes exist for different parties in a conflict by a not-so-fairytale-like “Princess Story” and heated “perspective debates” on topics ranging from “Batman v. Superman” and even “Thongs v. Boxers” to Gay adoption and the abolishment of bull fighting in Mexico. The idea of the existence of “multiple truths” and a link made to post-modernism and “El Fua” (an infamous term introduced in a Mexican video on Youtube) by one of the facilitators stirred up unexpectedly great but definitely most welcomed interest.
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| Perspective Debates |
Before lunch, the movie “Babel” was shown with Spanish subtitles. From the fact that I still occasionally needed translations of words in the subtitles by a participant sitting next to me during the movie, it can be easily inferred that I had a hard time following the follow-up discussion between participants when they were asked to apply the theories and skills introduced in the first two days’ workshops to discuss developments of the various conflicts in the movie— a shame, and yet another reason to motivate myself to improve my level of Spanish!
The pleasantly surprising fact that the group of participants understood my explanation of the Orange Game (which required creative thinking and effective communication between participants to find a solution to a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between two companies) in Spanish boosted my confidence in starting conversations in broken Spanglish with participants at lunch. Some participants even commented on how they liked to hear the non-native facilitators speak Spanglish in the workshops because they wanted to teach us more Spanish!
Admittedly, the level of surprise brought by the unexpected encounters of a small (though seemingly dead) scorpion in the bathroom at the facilitators’ house two days ago might be too high to be compared to anything else, but I have been again and again struck with surprise when I saw the participants’ curiosity for our home countries and culture and their big, warm hearts since the beginning of the course. I did not expect to be stopped by a participant at the end of the day to ask me to teach him basic Chinese during lunch breaks, nor did I anticipate to be repeated asked by participants whether I enjoyed the day, the workshops and being at the course with them—I only hoped we had not disappointed them!
- - Sonia Cheung (AC ’10-’12) – Hong Kong
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