Cultural Reflection

أنا لا أتكلم العربية

That says, "I do not speak Arabic," in Arabic.

On Sunday, I attended the 10th Branch. It's the Spanish speaking branch in our stake and we were attending for their ward conference. (I don't think I ever mentioned to the blog world that I got a new calling a couple of months ago to the Stake Primary.) It was an interesting experience because other than recognizing some salutations and numbers, I can't understand a lick of Spanish. I would love to learn, but haven't made it a priority to do so at this point.

It's actually a pretty humbling experience to be immersed into a culture where you know nothing about what's going on. It was humbling because I realize what many of my students go through when they come to the United States and are expected to start learning math, science, literature, etc., in a language and culture that they don't understand. I survived three hours in this environment, but I'm not sure how well I would survive it permanently.

Today, I decided to make my math students write an essay. Stevan came into 5th period, saw the laptop carts and nervously asked, "What are we doing?" I told him that today we were going to write! He very quietly replied, "I don't want to do it."

Stevan is from Baghdad, Iraq. He's been in the United States for around 1-2 years (if I remember correctly) and is a really great, hard working, sincere kid. He tries very hard to learn what we are doing and turns in all of his assignments without fail, except that he skips all word problems. He writes on the back of his paper (holes punched on the right side instead of the left) and very carefully centers all of his work on the lines of his paper, instead of the spaces. He has pretty good conversational skills, but struggles with academic language and will just put his head down if the class gets off on a tangent, talking about something unrelated to math. Also, he doesn't really want anything to do with Shayan from Iran, another student in the class. The dumb American math teacher assumes that Middle Eastern kids would gravitate towards one another since a lot of Hispanic kids do as well as African kids, even though they are from different countries. However, these two kids come from extremely different cultures, plus Stevan speaks Arabic and Shayan speaks Farsi. Stevan and Shayan don't really have much more in common than Stevan and say . . . Jose.

So, what am I writing about? Just as it was humbling for me to sit in the Spanish Branch on Sunday, it was humbling for me to view Stevan's response today in class. I asked him to not worry about the essay, but please try it. He obliged and I watched as he stressed over it. He was using a google Arabic translator and copying and pasting text. He didn't stop working for the entire 45 minutes he had to do it.

Here is what he came up with (the writing prompt, by the way, was to write an essay on whether we are too dependent on calculators):

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INTRODUCTON

We use the Calculator to do the hard work Many use it to resolve it, such as Calculator Riziat in engineering and other things we use the calculator just to work hard or difficult to be a question.Use the calculator only to those who have a question difficult.Or used by those who have digits long.Or to work fast homwork.

body1

We use the calculator just to work hard or difficult to be a question.Use the calculator only to those who have a question difficult becouse.Lessons in order to work fast without dont one halp me with my homwork and to do the hard work i dont kown how to What I know.

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I think we sometimes forget to put these types of experiences into perspective. How difficult would it be if any of us were in Stevan's shoes? Do we realize how easy we all have it? Do we realize how hard kids like Stevan are working to try to get a piece of what the rest of us take for granted? I forget sometimes.

Editorial

I know my blog is boring. In a month or so, I'll fill it with pictures of a little baby, but until then, I'm going to continue to bore whoever is reading this.

I like to write editorials. I used to write them to the newspaper. The first one I remember well because I was in high school and it caused a bit of a stir. The others (2 or 3), I had kind of forgotten about until my Grandma Petersen passed away and we found that she had carefully clipped them all from the newspaper and saved them in a manila envelope.

I would like to write a political editorial about health care, but honestly, I feel like I need to study a bit first. I'm not sure what's really in the new health care document that President Obama signed this week. I feel like I haven't done my homework like I should and therefore I am suspending opinion until I have accomplished further research.

That said, however, I do think the process of coming to an end (relatively speaking) of this health care debate has been, well, healthy. I like the fact that there are so many opinions out there and that congress has been debating it for months upon months. It has been very partisan, but at least the people in the Capitol are arguing. Isn't that the point of our two party system - argue and compromise to find the best solution for the public? Too bad there wasn't this much debate when we decided to go to war with Iraq. It may have saved lives, deficits, and bad decisions. I'm sure you'll all be patiently awaiting my blog-dissertation on health care, coming to a Bing Blog near you!

Reflections on March Madness

It's here!! It's the best weekend of the year for basketball fans. It's the first rounds of the NCAA tournament!

Here are some of my comments on the season:

1. Yes, BYU won a game. Apparently it's been 17 years since they last won an NCAA tourney game. It's great for the conference. It's great for the west. Blah. Blah. Blah. It's still BYU and well . . . Do you think Jimmer looks like this guy from "Father of the Bride?"

2. I got an e-mail/text from James yesterday afternoon. It said, ". . . P.S. Byu is 47 Florida 42 14:24 in 2nd half. I hope they don't win. It would mess up all of my brackets." I was so proud of James. I don't think he had ever really participated in this yearly ritual until he started hanging out with me and now he is totally into it. (Note to self: brainwashing successful.)

3. On Sunday night after dinner, we all sat around and filled out our brackets. Even Elliott is participating this year. Annie would read him the names of 2 schools and he would pick one. For a while yesterday, he only had 1 loss and was doing well. After tonight, though, my dad and Willie report that he's no longer being quite as successful.

4. I may have taken the March "madness" a little too far with some blog comments. My friend Brooke blogged about hanging their Duke flag on their house and I commented:

". . . Seriously, though, what is with this Duke obsession? I think they totally robbed the brackets. They don't even have any teams to contend with in their region. I think they are involved with the mob. Oh well."

Apparently I was out of line since Brooke responded in a post:

". . . As I have learned, people either love Duke, or hate it. We're Duke lovers (and no, Haley I don't think Duke has connections to the mafia. If that were the case we'd know Coach K as "Peach Lipinski" and JJ Redick would have been "Jackie the Lackey" or some nonsense like that). They are just consistently that good because of strategic coaching and talented players . . . I know each of these teams have "haters", but I think the negative comments just come because of sour grapes *cough- Tar Heel and Ute Fans-cough*."

I couldn't resist but comment again:

"Ouch - a stab in the heart!!

Just because my dear Utes have forgotten how to play ball and averaged more turnovers a game than rebounds this season doesn't mean I'm totally a "hater." I just hope we don't have to wait 17 years for another NCAA win.

For the record, I don't "hate" Duke. I just don't like them. I would cheer for them over Kentucky, though. And Coach Kryzermascheskewsilewki is only a suspected mafia man. Rick Pitino, on the other hand, definitely a godfather (interesting that he is connected to Kentucky, hmmm).

Oh, and Washington? Go Huskies!!! Purple! W! Woo-hoo!! (See, I can be positive!)"

5. That's it. I'm done with this post.

Teen Spirit

I came across this video while trying to find some new stuff for Chase, one of my guitar students. I thought it was kind of funny. I've never really understood what this song was about. My first introduction to Nirvana came from this girl named Fran in my 7th grade French class. She wore a Nirvana t-shirt at least every day.

Chase and I talked about how Cobain killed himself and was a major druggy and how that's not cool. We have discussions like this sometimes. Chase says "Yeah, like Jimi Hendrix and Bon Scott?" I said, "Yeah. Cool rock musicians sometimes do stupid things." Chase said, "yeah." It's important as the guitar teacher to teach good wholesome values. Learn to separate the rock-on music from the stupid decisions of some of it's makers.

Happy Anniversary #3

This week James and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary. The actual day was Tuesday, March 9th, but that was . . . well, a Tuesday. James was working. I was working and then had lessons. We both had homework and James had a test to take online. How did we celebrate? I think we probably told each other "Happy Anniversary" and then went about our days. I brought Arby's home for dinner after lessons. That was pretty exciting, especially when I ate mine and then James ate his a half hour later.

I did actually give James a gift. It's what he's always wanted . . . . a bookshelf! Believe me he was thrilled to get such a thoughtful and exciting gift (note sarcasm). We really needed another bookshelf, though. As you can see from the picture, it is nearly full already and that was just from simply picking books off the floor in one room. My goodness. Thank you James for putting it together and putting all of your books on it.


My spring break is in 2 more weeks and I am planning to clean and reorganize my house (including reorganizing and adding more to this bookshelf). I am getting the carpets cleaned and cleaning out a corner in our room for little Artichoke baby. I need to purchase a dresser/changing table type piece of furniture and set up the bassinet.

Back to the anniversary . . . James asked me if I wanted a gift. I said, "No, but can we go out to dinner sometime this weekend?" He, of course, obliged and we went to the Rio Grande and a movie on Friday night. The Rio Grande was delicious! We haven't been in quite a while. Then, we went to "the Green Zone." It was rated R and I feel guilty. I don't think I have purchased tickets to a rated R movie since "Saving Private Ryan," so perhaps I justify seeing R rated movies if they are war movies. We probably shouldn't have gone, but I didn't realize that's what it was rated until the tickets were purchased. It shows I don't get out much. It was a decent movie, though, full of conspiracy theories an shoot 'em up war action. James said the uniforms, equipment, and dialogue etc. were pretty accurate and he recognized some of the more prominent features filmed in Baghdad.

Before we left for dinner and a movie, I came home to these roses. They are pretty! Then, we took part of a dinner over to a family in our ward and visited with them for a minute. The mother had been hospitalized earlier in the week after passing out while driving. She is home, but having similar episodes and not doing well.

After we got home from our evening, my swollen feet had filled up the Crocs I was wearing, so I had to peel them off. Oh dear. Wednesday night was the worst puffy feet day this week. My calf's were the size of my thighs. At least it's just bad at night. As long as I'm able to still see my ankles in the morning, I'm not too worried.

Here's to another 3 years (and many more after that, of course)!!