Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation

I received My Visa for The United States and bought the ticket come to America. America is huge and it has different culture and language. I wasn’t worried at first until I came here. I was confused. I found many different problems when I lived here. I have to bring my own language, culture and custom to America. I have many friends come from many countries. I learned how to communicate with other people. I’m not confident when I talk with American people. In the same time, I have encountered many problems with communication, culture and respect in America.

Being respectful is an important thing for Thai people. In Thailand we have to respect people who older than us. When we go to school every morning, we have to “Wai”. This means we have to put two hands together and bow our head to the teacher. We have “Wai Khru Ceremony” on the first semester in school. At on that day all of students at my school have to go to the hall and do an activity together. The students bring flowers to teachers and pay our respect to them and say “thank you”. In America, I think it is difficult to do this kind of activity because we have many students that are from different countries.

Thailand Festival and New Year Thai style is what I miss most. When I was in Thailand, I worked in Bangkok. I had to come back to my home town every New Year to celebrate it with my family. I have a party with my family in New Year Eve. We cook dinner and eat together before New Year comes. In the early hours of the morning is when we celebrate the first day of New Year. Hundreds people in my hometown present food and flowers to the monks. On opposite side of the road we have to stand behind the table. We start at 6.00 am. Everybody prepare food for the monks. Each monk has a person to help them prepare for the festival at the temple. After the monks finished eating their food, they have to bring food to poor people. I think this activity makes people in our community join together. When I came to the US, I didn’t celebrate New Year Thai style anymore because New Year is celebrated differently.

The last important thing is communicating with other people. Before I came here, I learned English language at school. When I came here, I found it very different. I started working at a Thai restaurant. There are many times when the customer wants me to explain the food on the menu but when I tried to explain they were still confused. I was very upset that day. Thai language is not the same language anywhere else in the world. Often times people think Asian speak the same language. It’s hard for me to explain to people that we speak different languages.

Many times when a person wants me to explain something about my country and I try to explain but sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s hard for them to understand me. When I work at the Thai restaurant, I find many grammar mistakes with my co-worker. All of those problems are happen when you move to another country. I have to learn more how to improve myself in different ways and adopt to my new life.

Funny in Farsi

We recommend you to read this book “ Funny in Farsi” by Firoozen Dumas. It was a memoir of growing up Iranian in America. This book is very interesting and easy to understand. This book talked about Firoozen and her family moved from Iraq to America. She told us about how is the different between Iraq culture and America culture and struggle from the language. For example, on the first chapter “ Leffingwell Elementary School “ she tried to tell us about how hard to communicate with other students at the first day of her school because she cannot speak any of English. The way that the writer used for write very attract us. She put part of she funny story , so it made her book doesn’t boring. For the international people this book bring us closer to discovering what it mean to be an American. It is a good idea for everyone who like to read because this book is very Fantastic, wonderful and amazing.

The Joy Luck Club

According to the book, which is called "The Joy Luck Club", by Amy Tam. It explains about four women who have formed this club since they moved to the U.S. First, they started to eat and play mahjong together. Then, it became a place that they shared the mysterious, darkness, and happiness of their lives of the old days in China. These women and their daughters form a complicated quilt of what it means to be a Chinese-American, whether born in China or in the United States, and they highlight the difficulties of bridging two cultures. That is why they can’t communicate with each other because of the generation gap. The mother had adopted the customs in China and the daughter had a hard time to understand or explain the mother’s straight actions to the others.

We highly recommend this book for teenagers to read because it is an inspired book that can make adolescences to think about their lives and observe their surroundings.

Members: Heben, Kylie, Kung, Yannie

-=[The Joy Luck Club]=-

[The Joy Luck Club]

(Martin, Yan, Beni, Miyuky)

Reflection:

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between these four women and their American-born daughters. As each reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined…

Frase:

“Like the Angel / “Why u don’t like me the way / “Why’d you cook it if you

Of light” / I am? I am not a genius” / knew it was already dead?"

-=[Recommendation]=-

“funny / serious / diverse / beautiful”

-=[go and buy it!!!]=-

Red Azalea

This story takes place during the Socio Cultural Revolution in China. Anchee Min tells her personal experience during this time. This book reflects a lot of emotions and while you read this book, you can easily feel a deep sympathy with the character and all the things that she goes through as a child and later as an adult. While you read this book, you will feel that you are inside of this story with Anchee Min; you will go through her suffering and even cry with her situation. Therefore, if you are looking for an emotional book and want to study more about history of China, this is the right book for you. For that reason we recommend that you read this book. We expect that you will follow our advice and consider this book as you next option when you go to the bookstore or borrow this from one of your friends. Go get this book and read it.

The tears of the giraffe

We are recommending the book“The tears of giraffe” because everyone in the group loves it. We

even recommend you to read the whole series of “Detective agency” which has nine individual books in it. “The tears of giraffe” might be little slower than “The no.1 Ladies detective agency” but is more touching and deep. Are you wondering about the name of the book? If you read the book you will find an answer to your question. Also you will find about Mma Ramotswe’s engagement to Mr. Matekoni, their two kids, and how she solves unfaithful wife’s, missing American’s and more and more interesting cases. The book has lot of useful vocabularies and it has lot information about many South African countries. So hopefully you will read the book and

we guarantee that it will be GOOD!!!

Manda, Zoe and Maria.

Read the book " Funny in Farsi" !

“Funny in Farsi” is a book written by a growing up Iranian in America, FIROOZEH DUMAS. Group members Sandy, Sammie, Juan and Wence have read it and found it very interesting. We would like to recommend it for several reasons. First, this book is rich in vocabulary and, at the same time, easy to understand. Especially English learners will meet, when reading it, a lot of new words to use in their current life. In addition, the book “Funny in Farsi” related real facts that happened in the life of the author and her immigrant family in America. If every immigrant must write their stories, there will be so many books to read that we won’t even be able to read them all. Therefore, immigrants should just read those who have already written. That way, they will learn from those immigrant writers’ experiences, and be aware of diverse situations they may encounter in their own life as immigrants. Moreover, the author, FIROOZEH used the funniest styles to narrate her experiences with her family when moving from Iran to America. Definitely, the book “Fanny in Farsi” is one of the most interesting books our group would recommend to all readers, and especially to all immigrants in America. We hope you’ll enjoy reading the book “Funny in Farsi”.