Talk to your parents, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, distant relatives, etc. Have them tell you their story because I promise you it'll be worth it.
Hope you enjoyed the blog! :)
Have a fantastic day,
Janet
Through His Lens |
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Talk to your parents, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, distant relatives, etc. Have them tell you their story because I promise you it'll be worth it. Hope you enjoyed the blog! :) Have a fantastic day, Janet
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Progress: I've decided to make a compilation of videos and photos of what it was like growing up in America and Vietnam in his eyes. I think this is a more visual sense of what he has gone through compared to the interview questions. I sat down and asked him for different songs that he enjoyed listening to, what type of activities he enjoyed doing during his past time, and the type of stuff that he saw during the 70s. Since all of his pictures are in Texas, and we are not going back to Texas any time soon- I had to google search all of these pictures with him and ask him which pictures had the closest representation of what things looked like from his memory. Songs that he listened: Love Is A Battlefield, Pat Benator "This is what I thought teenagers of this time acted." Power of Love, Air Supply "I can go to sleep with this song. It gives me a good night sleep or a great start to start my day." Fashion "I think we all looked very cool if you ask me." Social Media: "We didn't have anything to communicate with. We only had one phone of the desk. It had cords. We have to drive to their house. Our entertainment at that time was basically movies. We had movie theaters. We didn't own CDs. We had arcades. We had to go through the game room or the supermarket to play games. 5 cents per game. My favorite game was the galaxy. The spaceship. Pinball is really fun." Favorite places to go to: "Six Flags, Water Parks, the beach to swim and go fishing." Reflection:
This had turned out to be such a fun activity to do! We shared a lot of laughter and giggles. He thought all of these pictures were cool, I thought they were beyond hilarious! I mean, look at those Bell Bottom Jeans! Hahaha. I couldn't believe that they didn't have cell phones. For some reasons I keep thinking that they had some form of social media back then. But they didn't. He had to use a home phone with chords attached like shown in the picture. He claims that, that phone looks exactly like what they had. I think this was a really fun activity to do with your parents because you get to go through some funny pictures and listen to some good ol' 70s music while surfing the net. Even though in my eyes, my Dad is still fairly young, I can't believe how far we have come...I'm literally looking at the 70s through this laptop. Oh, the irony. Progress:
To further dissect my Dad's experiences in America, I want to go through comparisons of distinct culture. Such as foods, TV shows, social media, fashion. I thought it would be interesting to compare fashion and social norms between the Vietnamese and Americans. I am hoping to get some more fun facts about Viets through this interview. I wanted to see how he has adapted to the American society and whether he enjoyed American traditions and favorite past times such as watching TV. I don't have enough time to interview family members so I've decided to change my plans from interviewing others to interviewing what he did for fun. I wanted to get into the more fun aspect of immigrating here. Most people don't see this when someone is interviewed about their trail over to a new nation. I think this is all very important to the process of adaptation. Interview Questions: What's your favorite American food and your least favorite American food? "I really like steak. I don't like American food to be honest. I think it's okay. I think it tastes so plain and salty. Too much seasoning sometimes. I don't like hot dogs. It's not real meat. It tastes like rubber. It tastes terrible. I don't like it. I don't know what they use. The cheese is weird too." Did you grow up watching a lot of TV? "Yes, I did. I really liked the news, history channel, discovery, and game shows. I liked the Price is Right. Easy and simple gameshow. Don't need much English to understand. You just have to understand the values on the screen. Cooooome on down. Can you give me a number. Anything number. How much does it cost? Hahah. I think that's my favorite." Was the fashion over here different from Vietnam? Did you think it was weird or cool? "Fashion in America was long hair, high platform shoes, bell bottom pants. The fashion was pretty much the same. We had long hair and weird outfits. I think that fashion back then was very cool. We wore a lot of stripes and plaid too." Did you play any sports or watch a lot of sports on TV? "I played a lot of sports. I did soccer. I started learning baseball and football on the TV when I came here. First time watching it, I thought it was very boring. I thought it was too much wrestling and violence. You can basically break everything on a person. It causes a lot of action for me. I learned how to play and watch it. It's really fun to watch. I think baseball is kind of boring but sometimes it is really fun to watch that. I don't know a lot about baseball. I know Randy White. I love the Cowboy team. I am a true Texan. I am still a big fan." Reflection: Everyone is so similar. After this interview, I've realized that people are not very different. People are people. We all share the same hobbies in a way. We all tend to do things that are similar to each other. Which draws my attention to racial discrimination. I don't get why people make someone else's "color" a huge deal. Because of this interview, I've learned that my Dad is just about like everyone else. He enjoys TV, eating good food, and sharing his time with his family. We all have the same intentions. We all do our own business and we don't tend to attack anyone at our leisure. This interview shows that even though someone may have different nationalities, it shouldn't make them inferior. I look at myself as Janet. There isn't a time where I think to myself that I am Vietnamese-American unless I have to fill out a standardized test form. "Nationality (optional)." What's the point? My Dad and I may be from different generations but we are all so similar in the same ways. I am puzzled by how the world treats each other. This interview has opened up a new perspective for me on how similar people really are in general. Progress:
In this post, I will ask my Dad what he thinks about American culture and the experiences of getting used to all-American traditions. What he thought was bizarre or cool. Compare it to Asian cultures as well. I hope to gain some insight on the culturally different stuff that he had to go through and how it compares to his home country. I think that this is very important as the process of moving from one country to another. It's hard to adapt. Once you get acquired to a certain taste, it's very weird to taste something out of your norm. Plus, I've always wanted to know what he thought about his semi-Americaness. Interview Questions: What's the most American thing you learned when you stepped onto American soil? "The first thing I learned is that people are very quiet. They live in family units. There are communities but it's not as noisy in Vietnam. There weren't a lot of trash either. It's more organized here. You have more crosswalks here. There are a lot of beautiful houses. We lived wall to wall in Vietnam. There weren't a lot of spaces either." Did you have any American friends? "Yeah, I did. They treated me really nice. They tried to help me on English, writing, and reading. They taught me the American culture. They taught me mannerisms and they told me that there are malls. He taught me how to go shopping oddly enough. Every time on the holidays, Americans would gather together at different houses. It was interesting." How's American culture different from Viet? "They live in a single family house. In Vietnam, we live in a big family with uncle, grandparents, cousins. But in America we live in single families. They live in different houses and they move out when they get married. In Vietnam it is very different. We stick together all the time." What's the most shocking American tradition for you? "The most shocking is that when their kids turn 18, they can kick them out. It was scary. I was afraid my Dad would kick me out when I'm 18. I don't see many, but I hear a lot of people say that. My American friend got kicked out when he was 18 so I was scared. It's weird knowing that you can be on your own at the age of 18." Reflection: I've learned through this interview that Americans and Vietnamese people are very different in how the family units are set up. In America, we have a house of a single family. Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Pet. In Vietnam, a family house is full of: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, pets, brothers, sisters, once removed cousins, and the list goes on. It must've been so lonely for him to just live with his Dad and brothers. He told me how it was weird to not have all of his family members near him or a house down the street away. I think this is a big difference in Americans and Vietnamese. It makes sense why most Vietnamese-Americans I know have a house full of 12 people! It has never dawned on me that this is the lifestyle that Vietnamese people are accustomed to. As more and more come over to America, I've started to see trends of people moving out into smaller family units. In the process of immigrating, one has to learn how to adapt. Progress:
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