How to Improve Conversation Partner for Next Year

After having so many difficulties with meeting with my conversation partner, I have a couple ideas of how you can improve it for next year.  First, I definitely agree with lowering the amount of meetings to 5-6.  College students have such a hectic schedule and that is double for honors students.  My days are always filled with meetings, studying, and trying to get to bed at a decent hour.  In addition, it is extremely important that the partners that sign up for mentoring actually want to do it.  After watching my partner continue to cancel on me the day of, I realized that she probably did not want to meet up with me.  This made sense considering she had a long day and probably just wanted to go home and get some rest.  Another way to improve conversation partners is to possibly to meet in groups.  Having 2 ESL students and 2 from our class get together would allow the ESL students to not be so intimidated.  I observed that my partner was often nervous speaking in front of me, but if she had someone from her class with her, she would not be a scared.

A Foreign Experience

In my family we have 3 generations of Air Force.  I've been to more Air Force Academy football games than I could count, and even wore their cheerleading uniform.  It was destiny that my older brother, Blair, would attend the academy and then become a pilot.  While I was in high school, Blair and his wife, Holly, were stationed in Yokota, Japan, which is about an hour train ride outside of Tokyo.  I was fortunate enough to be able to go visit them the summer before my senior year of high school.  It was one of the best vacations I have ever been on, and coming from a daughter of a United pilot, that says a lot.

Once my parents and I arrived in Seattle, waiting to board our flight to Tokyo, I noticed a culture change.  First, half of the plane was Japanese or Asian.  As I walked around, I was hearing languages that did not sound remotely like English or even Spanish, which I studied in high school.  On the plane (which is 10 hours!) I was offered sushi for a meal.  I definitely knew I was no longer in Colorado.  Walking the streets of Tokyo, I stuck out like a sore thumb with my bright blond hair and blue eyes.  It seemed like everyone looked the same and were all heading in some important direction.  Tokyo was such a blast, yet I constantly would have people staring at me, wondering why in the world I was there and in their way.

Once we met up with my brother and sister-in-law,we headed out towards Yokota.  One of the places my brother took us to was a Saki factory.  Being 17, I had no idea what Saki was.  Sitting at the table while my parents tasted the various types of Saki, I was absorbing the atmosphere.  Japan is such a lush country and they take so much care with their gardening.  As I was sitting there, some older Japanese men (who were clearly drunk) came up to me and started rambling in Japanese and patted my head.  To be honest, I was freaked out.  Looking back on it, I find it quite humorous and know that they were probably shocked to see American there.  Overall, my trip to Japan was a eye-opening experience.  I saw how different cultures are and lived outside my comfort zone.

Hills Like White Elephants - Boy/Girl Communication

Hills Like White Elephants is the typical Ernest Hemingway short story.  The male protagonist is the normal macho character that he uses in many of his stories.  He is successful and acts with full authority.  The girl, who was called Jig at one point, must always have his stamp of approval for everything she does.  The part that intrigued me the most was their communication styles and how these are still present today.

Without  reading closely and "reading between the lines" of the dialog between the American and the girl, a reader would never know that the girl is talking about getting an abortion.  The girl is constantly implying that she does not want to have the operation even though she is not saying it directly.  That is always how girls talk about conflicts with not only men, but also their friends and family.  Women never want to say something directly because they fear of the person getting angry or holding a grudge against them.  So, naturally they poke around at what they actually want to say and imply it with their tone and facial expressions.  Now with technology, miscommunication is constantly occurring.  Girls will try to bring up touch subjects over texting or e-mail and they can be taken the wrong way.  The girl in the short story is trying to talk about the "elephant" in the room, but her mate does not acknowledge it.

Men, however, are quite blunt with the way the express themselves.  They speak their minds without knowing the implications that can happen.  This is normally fine when they are talking with other men, but can cause friction if it is with a woman.  In their conversation, the American knows fully that the girl wants to keep the baby, but keeps insisting that it is a simple operation and that everything will go back to normal.  He never acknowledges her pleas to keep it.  This is common in any girl/boy conversation.  Men tend to avoid the underlying message and continue with whatever they want, causing the girl to eventually go along with it.

Conversation Partner Update

Totally spaced about blogging about my last meeting with my conversation partner, Young Kim.  Last week before fall break we met in the library again.  I helped her with her English homework which was working on saying negative sentences.  I forgot how hard it is to explain what "should not" means!  Some words that we use everyday can be extremely hard to explain, especially not knowing any Korean.  Anyways, I also worked with her on her pronounciation skills.  She read a little story to me and did really well!  The difficult parts were pronoucing spanish words like San Antonio and El Paso.  Totally understandable since she's trying to learn English and not Spanish!  That just made me realize how cultures can just intermix and now those words become a part of our everyday language.  Thank goodness that Mexico and the US shared some of their cultures, what would I do without queso?!

First Meeting with Conversation Partner

        Monday was my first meeting with my conversation partner, Young Kim.  We met in the cafe part of the library since it was the easiest place for her to find.  I found out that she is from South Korea and decided to come to Texas since her older sister lives in Weatherford.  The crazy thing is, she wakes up every morning at 5am to have her brother-in-law drop her off at TCU then he heads to work.  I could not imagine having to wake up that early every morning!  I asked if she took naps during the day since she was up so early, but she said that instead  she goes to bed early, at 10pm.  I would be exhausted!

     We also chatted about the differences she sees in America vs. South Korea.  I think the main thing she dislikes is the food.  She misses the Korean food, since she fished back home.  Her favorite dish is kimchi, which she had to spell out for me so I could look it up on Google images (best invention ever).  She described it as being very spicy and containing different vegetables.  I showed her some of my favorite things to eat and discovered she isn't a fan of Mexican food, such a shame since the Tex-Mex food here is so good!

     Overall, my first meeting with Young went really well! She's really sweet and seems interested in the culture around her.  Her english isn't so good, but she is willing to learn.  What I had to focus on was speaking a little slower so that she could understand what I was saying.  That is quite the challenge for me since I talk fast.  We don't realize how fast we speak and how we blend words so much until we encounter someone who does not know the language very well.  It reminded me of being back in high school trying to learn spanish and doing listening activities.  They were always so difficult when the speaker spoke quickly or had a different accent than my teacher.  I can only imagine how difficult it is for Young to try and figure out what everyone is saying all the time!  I, for one, am completely guilty of blending or abbreviating words, creating my own new dialect that at times does not sound like normal English!

Curious Case of Benjamin Button

                These pas t two day have been really hectic for me since I had 3 tests in 2 days.  I wasn’t going to read super in depth into this story but after reading some analysis of this story, I stayed up a little later than expected and read.  The impression that I got from the story was that a common theme was fitting in.

                It seemed like all the Button family wanted was for Benjamin to fit in, but considering his condition, that would never happen.  When he was “younger” but looked like an old man, his father wanted him to act like a baby and play with a rattle and when he was older but looked like a child, his son wanted him to act like an old man and wear whiskers.  It seemed like the outside world wanted Benjamin to fit in, but he never was going to.  That is really common today also.  Children are constantly trying to get along with their peers by playing the same games and wearing the same outfits.  It only gets worse when kids try their hardest to be in the “popular crowd”.  Girls start buying expensive clothing, wearing more makeup than necessary, and develop eating disorders to be skinny.  The saddest part is, this process continues throughout adult life.  You see more and more people getting plastic surgery so they can look better and change for society.  People are constantly trying to be like everyone else, but not Benjamin.  He accepted the fact that he was different from everyone else and embraced his differences.  The only problem was, the people around him would not accept those differences.

                This short story also brings up the fantasy that everyone has; the idea of aging in reverse, getting younger as you get older.  He was the envy of everyone is society.  Yet, Fitzgerald puts a twist on this story where his early years as an old man and later years as a child are filled with annoyance.  His father was ashamed of him because he looked like an old man but should be a baby and Benjamin’s son, Roscoe, was annoyed since Benjamin looked like a boy but should be a grandfather.  Clearly, Benjamin’s peak years were from 50-20 where he met his wife, Hildegard.  Yet, that became troubled too when Benjamin kept getting younger but his wife got older.  He became to hate how she wanted to stay in at night and became more of a chaperone at parties whereas he was the life of it.  Their marriage ended when she moved to France because of their differences due to maturity and technically age.  It seemed like from then on everything that Benjamin began ended badly.  His time at Harvard started off great and he was the star football player and top of his class, but as he got younger he got scrawnier and could barely make the team, schoolwork also became much more difficult.  Basically, Benjamin did life backwards and was never quite at the right place at the right time, making aging oppositely more of a curse than a blessing.

The Yellow Wallpaper

Every time one reads The Yellow Wall Paper you find a different interpretation.  The stream of consciousness type writing allows the reader to really feel like they are a part of the story.  When the narrator began describing the house is such complimenting terms, I assumed this story was going to be completely different from some of the darker stories we have read.  She begins with stating that the house is, “The most beautiful place!” and goes on to describe the delicious garden and beautiful lawns.  Yet, as soon as she says that the house is beautiful, there is always something that one does not like.  For the narrator it was the wallpaper in the master bedroom.  I feel like that is true today in American society.  We can never be happy with what we have.  People are always striving to be the best; have the best car, biggest house, most talented children, etc.  The “keeping up with the Jones’s” mantra is still in full swing in 2010.

                The yellow wallpaper that the narrator describes really becomes a character itself.  It is described in every section of the short story, typically at the beginning or end, leaving the reader with this image of life-like walls controlling this barren room.  As the story continues, the narrator describes the wallpaper more and more, showing that it is consuming her every thought.  The narrator becomes so engrossed in the wallpaper she quits sleeping at night, claiming that the wallpaper shakes and changes direction sense there is a woman trapped behind it.  In my opinion, that describes the narrator.  She feels trapped in her home where her husband keeps her contained in the house, stating that she needs her rest to get better from “nervous depression”.  She is also far away from any civilization, causing her to create a civilization in the wallpaper.  The woman who hides behind the wallpaper and comes out at night is the narrator expressing herself when no one else is watching her.

                As the narrator becomes more involved with the wallpaper it is easy for the reader to realize she is becoming more and more mentally ill.  From reading a couple of analysis’ some people believe she has postpartum depression since it alludes to her having a young baby and her husband telling her to get better for their child’s sake.  Unfortunately, leaving her alone to analyze that wallpaper for hours leads to her mental demise.   Her husband had good intentions, but with the Victorian references care of mentally ill patients was a guessing game.  They were often sent to institutions where they were given drugs and shock therapy which did no good whatsoever.  A common theme during this time was frontal lobotomy, which is absolutely grotesque. 

                From my first reading, I had no idea what to think with the last passage.  But after some thinking, I think that the narrator tries to liberate herself from the wallpaper and tears it off like an animal.  When her husband walks in and sees her “creeping” he faints, knowing that his wife has clearly gone insane.  Another thought that I had was that the narrator hanged herself since Gilman mentioned a rope and that the narrator wrapped herself in the rope so that she could catch the woman in the wallpaper.  Clearly, this short story shows the horrors of mental illness and depression, culminating in a complete mental breakdown.