I've spent the majority of the past week at home on Long Island looking after my mother since she broke her leg last sunday. It's proven to be a major learning experience for my family, but especially for myself I feel. The week began with the general stress of the situation, and I was dealing with it by myself from my dorm room in the city. My father called me monday evening to ask me to come back home for a couple of days to help out, which I was willing to do, but wished that I didn't have to, since I had made plans this week that might have had to be canceled.
After two days of helping my mother go about her daily routine and taking her to the hospital for a CT Scan, I was ready to leave on thursday, but as soon as I'd boarded the bus back to Manhattan, I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing, and that I needed to stay in Sag Harbor with my family and put my own plans aside. It wasn't until I had reached Manhattan that I called to apologize for leaving, and I felt like I had abandoned my family in a time of uncertainty. I am leaving out some personal details, but I assure you it was a very emotional day for everyone. Within two hours I was on another bus heading back home, and my conscience felt cleaner having done the right thing.
Maybe I've grown a lot more from this than I realize, but either way it was good for me to come home, because my mother has been having issues other than the leg. She's been on percocet as a painkiller, and has had a bad physical reaction to it, we believe. She's currently in the hospital after experiencing tremendous abdominal pain, but there's no sign that it's anything very serious.
I had a poor experience with percocet, as well, although it was prescribed for me after having three wisdom teeth taken out. It turns out, it is not uncommon for patients to have a dysphoric emotional reaction to it, which my mother and I both had. Hers was an extreme sadness, while mine was more of easily triggered aggression, although I was reduced to crying as well at one point, after which I took the rest of the percocet left in my pill bottle and threw it away. After she and I have both had those experiences from the regular prescription dosages, we cannot fathom why people would take it recreationally.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
Response to Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue":
I went to a high school with a lot of Chinese students. It was estimated that at least 50% of the population were Chinese, and because of this, communication with my classmates could be difficult at times, since few of them spoke what native English speakers would consider to be 'perfect English'. Like Amy Tan, I would also have to simplify what I was saying for a good portion of the time. I would have to break down sentences and find ways to explain a word or a phrase that would make sense. In this way, I can relate to what Tan describes as a separate form of English when she says, "It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with." However, since I did not always have to simplify my English, it would remain a challenge to communicate sometimes.
Many of the Chinese students would use simpler English the way that Tan's mother does, as shown in the conversation quoted in the reading.
"The local people call putong, the river east side, he belong to that side local people."
This is how a lot of conversations would be spoken. Sometimes I would understand perfectly what the students were trying to say, and sometimes I would have to ask them to repeat themselves several times. I would also sometimes forget to simplify my English, yet I found that many of the students that spoke in 'broken English' would not have much trouble understanding me. I think this is because they manage to pick through the sentences and put together the words and phrases that they did understand and determine a meaning from that form of translation.
The best way that I can relate to Tan's situation growing up would be to talk about my father. He was raised in England, and although he speaks English almost indistinguishable from our own, there are still certain barriers. Mainly these barriers lie in the meaning or pronunciation of a word, or it can be the lacking of entire phrases.
"...people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service..."
While my father's situation has never been as bad as that, there have been moments where I've had to resolve a situation quickly before it can turn into a mess. These situations however are usually comical. The best one I can think of at the moment was when my family went to the beach one day, and my father very loudly exclaimed something along the lines of, 'Next time we should take the kids water-boarding.' My father innocently meant boogie boarding in the water, without realizing that water-boarding is a form of torture, so it was easily shrugged off, and we now look at these little mistranslations as something funny that sometimes occurs.
I went to a high school with a lot of Chinese students. It was estimated that at least 50% of the population were Chinese, and because of this, communication with my classmates could be difficult at times, since few of them spoke what native English speakers would consider to be 'perfect English'. Like Amy Tan, I would also have to simplify what I was saying for a good portion of the time. I would have to break down sentences and find ways to explain a word or a phrase that would make sense. In this way, I can relate to what Tan describes as a separate form of English when she says, "It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with." However, since I did not always have to simplify my English, it would remain a challenge to communicate sometimes.
Many of the Chinese students would use simpler English the way that Tan's mother does, as shown in the conversation quoted in the reading.
"The local people call putong, the river east side, he belong to that side local people."
This is how a lot of conversations would be spoken. Sometimes I would understand perfectly what the students were trying to say, and sometimes I would have to ask them to repeat themselves several times. I would also sometimes forget to simplify my English, yet I found that many of the students that spoke in 'broken English' would not have much trouble understanding me. I think this is because they manage to pick through the sentences and put together the words and phrases that they did understand and determine a meaning from that form of translation.
The best way that I can relate to Tan's situation growing up would be to talk about my father. He was raised in England, and although he speaks English almost indistinguishable from our own, there are still certain barriers. Mainly these barriers lie in the meaning or pronunciation of a word, or it can be the lacking of entire phrases.
"...people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service..."
While my father's situation has never been as bad as that, there have been moments where I've had to resolve a situation quickly before it can turn into a mess. These situations however are usually comical. The best one I can think of at the moment was when my family went to the beach one day, and my father very loudly exclaimed something along the lines of, 'Next time we should take the kids water-boarding.' My father innocently meant boogie boarding in the water, without realizing that water-boarding is a form of torture, so it was easily shrugged off, and we now look at these little mistranslations as something funny that sometimes occurs.
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