Language

mandarin is... interesting!
this week when class started i was instantly confused! joyce came in and right off the bat was talking to us in mandarin, i was so confused! i had no idea what was going on!  but after a bit i started to catch on to what she was saying. in about half an hour she had taught us 20-25 words. and they were tricky for me to learn.. i dont really remember most of them but i wrote them down so i can practice before i go to china.  the hardest part for me will be the fact that the language is very tonal. i get why people think if people are speaking a different language around them those people are talking about them i've thought the same thing on more than one occasion. but if i was in japan studying abroad with a couple friends i would speak english with them so we could communicate A LOT more easily.

movie:
i thought the movie was very interesting. the headrolling thing in india was... different... it means yes there but maybe here.  and i dont think i could be a aborigine in australia. theres no way i could go months without talking, i can barely go 10 mins being quite! i think tattoos are a reflection of a persons personality. it says something about who they are.its a nod to their creativity and uniqueness, and its like wearing their hearts on their sleeves everyday of thier life. i have one tattoo and i plan on getting another after i get back from china.

bishop article:
i personally believe that language classes should be mandatory. i beleive they should be because we have to be able to effectively communicate with each otherwise things would never get done. communication is a vital part of life. it may compromise other cultures to a certain extent, but it can also richen them. think how much smarter our culture would be or how much more efficinent it would be if every person knew a second language. i think we would all be much better off.

languishing languages article:
i don't really know what makes languages disappear. people not being allowed to speak their language? thats the only thing i can really think of. we can preserve languages by recording them and encouraging people to keep speaking them. i had no idea that there are 6700 languages being spoken in the world and its crazy that that many of them are on the verge of dying.  i never mentioned this in class, but i dont think language is the only thing that shapes our culture. the food we eat, the clother we wear, and the traditions we practice also shape our culture and make us who we are. no, i dont think we are trying to create an aryan race. i believe that we are just trying to enrich other cultures and spread knowledge. we aren't trying to take certain languages away from anyone we are just trying to spread another. plain and simple.

king article:
i think that america should ahve an official language and i believe it should be english. i think we should have an official language so that everyone can communicate more efficiently, and i believe it should be english because thats the language that has been spoken here since this country was founded. i would like to do like kim did and learn a language of my ancestors, italian sounds like a good one to me! i think it would also help me uncover part of who i am, along with the fact that i also want to travel to italy some day!

My Snack, Yo

SNACK
this week was my turn to bring a snack. i brought wasabi peas. they are dried peas coated in wasabi and come from the asian culture. i found out about them from my oldest sister, she is always finding cool new foods to try. when i found out we had to bring an intercultural snack and i instanly asked her because i knew she could help me.

SPEAKER
lauren yellow bird sr was our guest speaker this week. i was really facinated by his talk. i guess i didn't really relize that some native people really dont like white people. thats what has stuck out most to me. and also how cruel white people were to the native people. i have the picture of the white people throwing boiling water on a native women while she was digging through the trash for food stuck in my head. :(

OTHER STUFF
i didnt think that reservations were as poor as they appear to be. the pictures that we saw of the pine ridge reservation were astounding. i didnt know people lived like that on the reservation. it seems like a very scary place and a tough place to grow up in.
 

Norweigan Snack?!

this week was kara's turn to bring an intercultural snack. i don't know how to spell it's name and i'm not even gonna try! haha the snack was very good though! i even brought one back for my boyfriend!!

The vidoes we watched in class were kind of interesting, but i loved what we talked about! the conversation was very interesting to me! i love talking and learning about other cultures!

 i can't wait til class next week!
<3 Brittany