Fake Smiles and Lasagna one high school teacher two Rwandan refugees and a three year journey of selfdiscovery eBook Christine Jenkins
Download As PDF : Fake Smiles and Lasagna one high school teacher two Rwandan refugees and a three year journey of selfdiscovery eBook Christine Jenkins 
Christine Jenkins is a high school math teacher who has never heard of Kinyarwanda or Kigali. Sonia and Eugene are Rwandan teenagers who have just set foot on American soil. Assuming they need a parent, social worker, and miracle maker, Christine enters their lives with naïve notions of how their relationship will unfold. Her attempts to overcome cultural barriers come in the form of awkward conversations, forced smiles, material gifts – and lasagna. Lots of lasagna.
A series of life-changing events throws Christine’s plans off course, destroying her sense of security and control. As she slowly discovers what matters most, Eugene and Sonia gift her with lessons of faith, love, and resilience. Based on actual events, Fake Smiles and Lasagna is a tale of the transformative power of unlikely friendships – and how to find joy in unexpected places.
Fake Smiles and Lasagna one high school teacher two Rwandan refugees and a three year journey of selfdiscovery eBook Christine Jenkins
Full disclosure first; I graduated high school with the author but we didn't hang out together. I enjoyed the references to places I knew of course but Christine really puts herself out there and gives the reader a look into a world most of us know nothing about but should learn more. An easy read with many touching and funny moments.Product details
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Fake Smiles and Lasagna one high school teacher two Rwandan refugees and a three year journey of selfdiscovery eBook Christine Jenkins Reviews
This memoir by new author, Christine Jenkins, chronicles a 3-year journey of self-discovery through her friendship with brother and sister refugees from Africa.
When high school math and psychology teacher, Christine Jenkins, commits to helping Rwandan refugees, Sonia and Eugene, acclimate to their new lives in the U.S., she has clear goals for the outcome feel good about what she's done, grow her sense of purpose, and increase her own self-esteem. What she doesn't expect is the measure of impact her two young friends will have on her own life, filled with its own unexpected challenges.
Just 17 and 18 years old, respectively, Eugene and Sonia arrive in Rhode Island with no friends or relatives to support them. The local international support center sponsors them for 3 months, after which they are expected to be gainfully employed and self-sufficient. What Christine finds are two brave survivors who have been transplanted to a foreign land knowing little English or anything about navigating their new life. She makes it her mission, with the help of her husband and two young daughters, to be mother, advocate, friend and mentor to Sonia and Eugene. The experience will be positive and rewarding for all, no matter what, filled with trips to the beach and local activities. Christine soon finds that she is using all her resources to help the brother and sister allay their anxieties about school and jobs and adjust their expectations of this new life, all the while herself being immersed in a new culture--the community of African refugees.
With refreshingly candid self-analysis, Jenkins shares her path of personal unfoldment, catalyzed by her new Rwandan friends and hardship within her own family. She brings the reader closely into her experience, using a casual tone and parenthetical self-reflections of her own anxieties and awkward moments. By the end, we feel as if we've made a new friend, one who would empathize with our own plights of personal growth and change.
The title of this book, “Fake Smiles and Lasagna” intrigued me, and was probably the initial impetus to read it. I’m glad I did, as I learned a great deal about the difficulties refugees face adjusting to new lives in a strange country, all the while carrying around momentous emotional baggage from their (often) war-torn homelands. But I also learned a lot about the ups and downs of volunteerism, of finding the “right fit,” and the great responsibility that comes along with committing to being a volunteer.
“Fake Smiles and Lasagna” also left up to interpretation as to who the true protagonist was; at times it was the author/narrator, at other times it was one of the other main characters. In the end, I found myself consistently rooting for Ms. Jenkins, who time and time again had to deal with both the everyday stresses of life, juggling career, family and now extended family, as well as coming to terms with more than her share of emotional hardships throughout her life. She is never “preachy;” she just tells her sometimes complicated, self-deprecating, funny story and lets the reader take it from there.
One of things that I enjoyed most about reading this book was that I felt a lot of anticipation in wanting to know what would happen next. This was because Ms. Jenkins very cleverly and consistently intertwined her personal story with that of the Rwandan refugees she was becoming friends with. There were times where these stories overlapped, and times where they didn’t - and all for sound reasons. One chapter would talk about an activity the family had with the Rwandan refugees – something as simple as bowling, or going to the Olive Garden, but Ms. Jenkins adds the details necessary to understand that even every day activities like these take on great weight given the circumstances. Next would be a chapter that contained childhood memories on Cape Cod; also somewhat commonplace in the abstract, but again, Ms. Jenkins use of recurring symbols, such as crossing over the Sagamore Bridge onto Cape Cod, and the dissolution of stress all adds resonance and depth to even lighthearted passages. Particularly touching for me were two story lines in the book; one, where Ms. Jenkins gains the trust of the elusive and bottled-up Eugene, and the other, where through the course of multiple chapters she deals with her mother’s cancer diagnosis and outcome.
“Fake Smiles and Lasagna” is filled with humorous family anecdotes, often describing personality quirks that we can all relate to. It also contains a great deal of sadness, something not always easy to write or read about, but Ms. Jenkins does so without pretense or melodrama, and the end result is a sincere and heartfelt memoir about self-acceptance, family and friendship.
Great read!
I felt it was well written . I like the personal part that Christine added and how truthful she was about how she was felling at the time each
encounter whit her new friends. I would love to read more from her.
Loxi Ellingwood
I found this book very inspirational and thought evoking. It made me examine my own life and what I am doing with it. It was super easy reading and a page turner. I would recommend it to anyone at a crossroad.
A wonderful and insightful look at your soul. This story highlights how the really small events in our lives have such a deep and lasting impact. It reflects on how a strong family and foundation is one of the greatest gifts to be shared.
Full disclosure first; I graduated high school with the author but we didn't hang out together. I enjoyed the references to places I knew of course but Christine really puts herself out there and gives the reader a look into a world most of us know nothing about but should learn more. An easy read with many touching and funny moments.
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