1/30/13

Today we had Martha and Day from the Burma Center in Springfield, MI as our guest speakers.  A big population of the workforce at JBS is of Burmese or Hispanic descent.  This being the case, it is important to have a little knowledge of the people we will be working with.

                                                                   Martha

Burma, currently called Myanmar, borders China, Laos, and Thailand and is about the size of Texas.  There has been a lot of unrest and many of the 40,000 Burmese Americans originally came here as refugees. Martha showed a video of the Buddhist monks protesting the army-run government in the early part of the 2000s. As we were watching the video, Day prepared a traditional snack of tea leaves, nuts, and spices which I enjoyed (though it wasn't to everyone's taste).  I found today's class very interesting, as I didn't have a clue about Burma.

                                                                         Day

After lunch we went to Richland Meats.  Jim, who is a 4th generation butcher and the owner, was great.  He gave us a demonstration by butchering a pig.  As this was the first live demonstration of meat cutting, we were all full of questions for him.  He also described the differences between large processing plants such as JBS, large retailers as Meijer and Kroger, and the smaller retail shops such as his.  Overall it was a very informative day.

                                                                     Jim and the Guys

 

Another day closer to going to MSU and then employment.  So as they would say in Burmese, Mang tha (goodbye or good dreams).