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“linguistic aspects”. Body language,

Pakistan is another Islamic country and in Muslim cultures verses a non-Islamic country because religious beliefs play a role as well. Looks and hand signals that are considered friendly in the United States but they are aggressive in Pakistan culture. You have to be very careful about looks and specially hand signals because it is impolite and inappropriate. In addition, eye contact is appropriate, a handshake polite in the U.S but they both considered as rude in Pakistani culture. You are not suppose to look at people directly to their eyes or make an eye contact especially when you are talking to apposite gender. Sometimes it is even offensive for a man to look a woman in the eye or even to glance at her.

My learning plan goes well and i have been working on the structure of making sentence this week with my language partner. I am alot more comfortable with the reading the sentences and mostly i can figure out the meanings and the words as well. One thing that i have noticed to really work hard on is my conversation and speaking because i found out the having a conversation is alot more difficult than the reading. I have learned many good words from the sentence that we did and some other words that i targeted to learn this week in order to improve my vocabulary. In addition, my writing is getting pretty good too. I will be focusing on speaking and having more conversation with my language partner in order to accomplish my next goal.

I think the video is very interesting and thought provoking. It has brought up a lot of points I haven't thought about; even the smallest of things can cause the biggest issues. It is also making me rethink the way I criticize international students and making sense of their misunderstandings. 

Orientation: how overwhelming! That is a lot to handle coming into the country. I feel comforted by being so busy and having plans all of the time but many of the international students do not like to learn and experience so much so quickly to feel comfortable. 

Classroom culture: not speaking in class seems to be the norm outside of the US. When other students do not speak up in class I tend to think poorly of them but knowing that it is the way of their culture makes more sense. I thought it might be a confidence matter but it is simply unnatural for them. They are also intimidated because of language barriers and that their ideas may not be worth sharing. 

Reading, writing, and thinking in another language: this is incredibly hard. I experienced this when I took a class at the Sorbonne in Paris and the professor cut us a lot of slack (luckily). I was not fluent in french and really needed that. If my professor expected the same quality of work from us as from the french students I would not have done well in the class because it took so much effort to even read the assignment, writing a term paper at the end of the semester was another story. I now have a lot more respect for international students after taking that course and being in their positions. I know that most international students here are fluent in english so it is not exactly the same situation but I can understand how hard it is to keep up with the rigor of work. 

The problems that people are having about the smallest things is so interesting. The way that americans aren't comfortable with silence, language connotations and colloquialisms, and other things I would never think about. A topic they brought up that I have actually been thinking about a lot lately is that americans are always so busy, and it is desirable to be busy. That can be very difficult to deal with on a day to day basis and a huge difference in culture. Adjusting to the way people act, manage their time, and plan their social lives is focused on staying busy. Coming from a laid back culture to this uptight, structured society must be unnerving. 

It makes a lot of sense that international students would get along better with each other than americans because they have more in common. Their biggest common point is that they are different from the culture they are in and can bond over their differences from their one similarity. 

As promised in my fourth bi-weekly report, here are some of the short paragraphs that I wrote. Like I noted before, I did not know some of these words beforehand and much of my ability to write them was due in large part to guidance from my language partner.

Note, I typed them out as means to build my typing skills in Dari; unfortunately, for me, this took much longer than compared to when I originally wrote it by hand, and the keyboard I used often messed up some of the characters. Luckily, my language partner was able to email me a revised copy of my typed paragraphs in order to show me my mistakes - I made some errors transcribing my written work to digital. Nevertheless, here it is:

هر کس حق دارد که از آموزش و پرورش بهره‌مند شود. آموزش و پرورش لااقل تا حدودی که مربوط بتعلیمات ابتدائی و اساسی است باید مجانی باشد. آموزش ابتدائی اجباری است. آموزش حرفه‌ای باید با شرایط تساوی کامل بروی همه باز باشد تا همه بنا باستعداد خود بتوانند از آن بهره‌مند گردند.

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

آموزش و پرورش باید طوری هدایت شود که شخصیت انسانی هر کس را بحد اکمل رشد آن برساند و احترام حقوق و آزادی‌های بشر را تقویت کند. آموزش و پرورش باید حسن تفاهم، گذشت و احترام عقاید مخالف و دوستی بین تمام ملل و جمعیتهای نژادی یا مذهبی و همچنین توسعه فعالیتهای ملل متحد را در راه حفظ صلح تسهیل نماید.

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

During these last two weeks I had focused on trying to write and type a larger amount of text, as opposed to just medium length sentences. As mentioned in my previous bi-weekly reports, I wanted to be able to take my newly strengthened ability to write moderately long sentences and push myself towards writing short paragraphs. Much of my ability to do this was reliant upon me working with my language partner to get a better understanding of what to write about and also to have someone check my work.

Admittedly, while I felt comfortable writing long sentences, I was almost certain - which was the right sentiment in hindsight - that I would make a few mistakes in writing  paragraphs. The task I used to begin writing short paragraphs was based off of a reading assignment - interestingly, although not entirely relevant, this assignment was based on some of the articles that comprise part of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights - my language partner found from a Dari language instruction website. She read the paragraphs to me, albeit in a slower than fluent tone as I did not know some of the words, and I wrote them down. The primary challenge in writing the short paragraphs was trying to determine how to spell the words I did not know, while still trying to comprehend and write everything else that I was hearing. To get a better a sense of what I did, refer to my third artifact. 

My Hebrew learning has not gone as planed. I used to know how to read and write hebrew no problem when I was 12 years old. Did I understand what anything meant? No. But at least I knew the written and pronunciation part. Since my Bat Mitzvah I have done little to no Hebrew reading and writing so I decided to take this self directed course to get back my skills and hopefully learned what some of it actually means. 

Unfortunately I had a rude awakening when none of it seemed to come back to me. I couldn't even remember the alphabet song! Something so basic! I spent a couple of weeks deciding to learn script or print since no one really writes in print anymore and the alphabets are very different (for me at least). I decided I want to learn print since most of the signage in Israel is in print and so are most religious texts. When you learn the alphabet you also have to learn the vowels. There are over 10 vowel signs in addition to the alphabet that you need to learn when starting to learn Hebrew but after about first grade they are never written. I have not take the step of not using vowels and do not know if I will be able to do that this semester. 

So now I finally relearned the alphabet, vowels, and some basic words. Hebrew is much more specific than English in many ways; for example there are 4 ways to say you (one for a singular female, plural females, singular male, and plural males). Learning these basic words have also not been easy but I think we are about to start learning some more words to put together basic phrases. I am excited to get more conversational but it is not a walk in the park. 

Belirtili:

- Aysenin ayakkabisi beyaz. 

- Otelin odasinda geliyorum. 

- Evimin mutfagi cok temiz. 

- Odanin bilgisayari kulaniyorum. 

- Arabamin rengi siyah. 

Belirtisiz: 

- Benim kitabim cocuk odasinda.

- Gunes gozlugumi nerede?

- Yatak odasinda geliyorum. 

- Matematik kursu gidiyorum.

- Cocuklar cocuk parkinda oynuyorlar. 

Zincirleme

- Bilgisayarin masanin icini.

- Okulun ogretmenin arabasi. 

- Okulun sinifinin sandalyesi gidiyorum. 

- Aysenin annesinin ogrencileri okuyorlar. 

- Universitenin sinavinin ustu. 

Something that I always find interesting about different cultures is what they deem to be polite and how they address each other respectfully, etc. I've probably already mentioned that Sweden is a very egalitarian country and so it would be uncommon in your workplace to call your boss Mr. or Mrs. because you would refer to them by their first names. In general people don't use the Swedish equivalents to ma'am, madam, sire, sir, miss, etc. because you are just much more likely to call someone by their name. That said, because I grew up in the states and we are taught to say please and thank you for everything, I found it interesting that Swedish has words for both please and thank you but that only thank you is ever used. A lot of times I find that my boyfriend and his family omit saying those words in general because it is assumed that if they are asking for something that they are doing it politely and are appreciative- so for them it would be unnecessary and redundant to say please and thank you. The word for please, as I said earlier, is never used. You could say "snälla" if you really wanted to but it's equated with begging in Sweden. A Swede is much more likely to say "thank you" at the end of a request rather than starting with the word please. So instead of saying "please, can you pass the bread?" or "can you please pass the bread", they would say "can you pass the bread, thanks?" And in fact, just like kids in the states are taught to say "please and thank you", Swedish children are taught to say the phrase "tack för maten" which means thanks for the food at the end of every meal and especially if someone else cooked for them or is picking up the check.

This week in Swedish:

Well this was an interesting week for my language learning because most of it was spent in fall break. I went out of the country with my language partner to visit her brother (my boyfriend) where he is attending graduate school. Their parents also joined us for some of the weekend so I was able to hear and interpret a lot of Swedish being spoken! I was happy to discover that I could follow along with their conversations and pick up on individual words that I had already learned. Their accents are really thick so it made understanding specific words challenging!

The best moment of the trip was when I was able to make a discovery about grammar and colloquialism! The word in Swedish for "a museum" is "ett museum". I noticed, however, that when the Anderssons were saying "the museum" that instead of saying "museumet" (like what it would be if you followed the grammar rule), they said "museet". I was able to talk to them about this phenomenon and we figured out that technically you should say "museumet" but that's such a mouthful that Swedes typically just say "museet". 

I am confident after this weekend that my Swedish studies are advancing quickly and I'm excited about adding new words to my vocabulary and expanding the list of things I can talk about in the future.

This past week (before fall break) we watched the culture shock video and I thought it was really informative. I don't often think about what it would be like to study abroad in another country and especially if you are not going to be studying in your native tongue. The part that I found most interesting was the issue with how Americans communicate. I've talked to my exchange friends in the past and they've all said that one thing that really frustrates them in the beginning of their abroad experience is the way people on campus will say "hey, how are you?" to them and then walk away without actually hearing how they are. There is an expectation in the states that you are going to say "great" or "fine" or something like that and then continue walking. It is does not often happen with my American friends on campus that we greet each other in that manner and then stick around to hear the actual answer. I think it can be hand for international students because they don't realize that "hey, how are you?" basically just means "hey"!!!

I also thought it was interesting how many of the international students (and the exchange students I know) say that the amount of work they have here at Richmond is much more than they would have at home. This actually doesn't surprise me to hear because I know for the most part that when Richmond students study abroad there is typically not expectation that they have to attend all of their classes, most don't start studying until days before the final, and there is very little participation in classes (so you don't necessarily have to do the reading before class like you do at UR). I just find this very interesting! I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing or just completely neutral.

Fifth Cultural Post:  Identify a topic for your culture project and your learning goals for your topic.

South Korea is the gaming capital of the world with 30 millions out of 50 millions citizens playing video games on a weekly basis. The first multiplayer games that became played by millions of fans online were Starcraft and Warcraft in the early 2000s. Asia received the games particularly well since the scenario, the environment as well as the characters were very mystical and resembled a lot to the manga-like ambiances. Some players became extremely good and soon some gaming tournaments were organized to determine the best player. With the success and the popularity of these tournaments, more and more players started to exclusively play on these two games in order to perfect their skills. That is the point were cash prizes started to become more and more usual and important.

With the mix of high skilled players and high cash prizes, a new profession was born: professional gamers. Some gamers, actually became so popular that they have fan clubs reaching up to one million fan and an annual income of 350,000$.

My goals are to be able to determine if professional gaming is an actual profession and wether or not it is possible to make a living from it.

This week due to break and missing my flight home on Wednesday, we had to meet for double the time on Friday. We focused on transportation words today. We have a ton of words to memorize by Wednesday for our weekly test. But in this word list we are focusing a lot on nouns, which is good because I don't know too many of them. I think what I need to start doing is looking up more grammar on my own. Perhaps each week when we have the vocabulary test with Louise on Wednesday, Ill start giving myself a grammar test then as well. Because I know words but I am not the best at putting together coherent sentences. The thing that is frustrating with that is when I look up grammatical terms, I don't know what the terms even mean in English, none the less Swedish. Maybe I will look into youtube videos to see if that helps with the explanation.

For this first post I read a recent article and looked on two different websites:  

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Israel-approved-just-4-refugee-requests-out-of-2593-in-2013-328783

http://ardc-israel.org/en/content/refugees-israel

http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e4864b6.html

     I found these articles very interesting.   Israel and Yemen are the only two states in the Middle East to have signed the 1951 Refugee Convention.  This document defines a refugee, gives the refugee rights and gives the state certain obligations towards the refugee.   Other countries in the Middle East take in refugees because of similar religious affiliations and hospitality towards other Arab nations; however not all of the time do these refugee camps meet the 1951 Refugee Convention guidelines or standards.

    Although Israel has signed the 1951 document, Israel still has many difficulties handling the refugee population.  One of the solution was called "Hot Returns", which in June 2011 was challenged to be against basic human rights.  For one of these "Hot Returns", refugees seeking asylum would be rounded up and deported back to their country of origin.   In 2012 hundreds of people originating from South Sudan and the Ivory Coast were deported back to their country once the country was deemed safe by the State of Israel.  

    Many refugees seeking asylum come to Israel by walking across the Sinai desert through Egypt and arrive in Israel dehydrated and starving.   They come to Israel seeking jobs and place to live.  Already facing difficulties with water and self sustaining food, Israel is caught in a catch 22.   In January of 2013 a fence was built on the Sinai border greatly reducing the number of refugees coming across the border seeking shelter in Israel.  If a refugee makes it across to Israel then they are thrown into a legal limbo that can span the course of over five years.  The anti-infiltration law in 2012, which was revoked in September of 2013 by the Supreme Court as a violation of human rights, allowed the government to jail refugees for three years until they decide to do something with the refugees.  

      Out of the 2,593 refugees requests for 2013 only 4 people were granted refugee status.   Out of the 1,133 humanitarian refugee requests since 2009 only 540 people have been given refugee status.   Evidently the dilemna of what to do with the numerous refugees from Africa and Syria is a growing problem that Israel is trying to figure out right now. 

Culture shock video.

The video appeared to me like an accurate representation of my own experience. It shows that cultural shock and home sickness affect some people more than others but definitely underlines the fact that moving to an unknown culture definitely require some degree of open mindedness. 

The "honeymoon phase" described in the video is somewhat what I experienced when I first arrive in the USA. There is always some curiosity and excitement going along with a new experience, however once the new experience is not that new anymore and that it starts looking more like a routine, the excitement definitely comes down. People might realize that the culture they were part of their entire life is not there anymore. The fact that ones' bases and fundamentals are not present may represent a trap that can be scary to be in.
It is possible to overcome this feeling by realizing that it is just another way of living and that adaptation is not impossible. Accepting and understanding a foreign culture is the first step towards adaptation. Some people may have more difficulties than other to adapt, which makes the transition harder, but the key is to stay open minded.

Muslims attitudes towards time in Pakistan is very different than the West. Their attitudes towards times differs in different occasion. For instance, in a family gathering, it does not matter to be late. People are usually late for half hour to two hours because it is expected from the host sometimes. If you need to attend an official meeting, interview, class, then you need to be on time and if you be late for half or one hour, you will definitely miss out alot and it will be inappropriate. In this case, mostly they are not counting time or taking time so serious unless it something very official and important. Whereas, in the West, you have to be very careful about timing and schedules. 

Ben Turk yemekleri cok seviyorum. Turk ve Bosnanin yemekleri cok benziyor. Biz doner ve sarma var. Ayni isim var. Bizde bunlar yemegi ayni isim verdik. Hicbir zaman, kizarmis dondurma denmedim, ama ona denmek istiyorum. Sarma cok seviyorum. Sarma hemen hemen en sevdigim yemegi.  Istanbulda kalktim, cok Turk yemekleri yedim. Yogurt cok sevdim. Biliyorum, Turkler cok iyi baklava yapiyor. Turk baklava dendim ve cok sevdim. Baklava cok geleneksel bir yemek Bosnada. Biz baklava Bayram icin yapiyorum. Ben de Turk yemekleri arkadaslarima her zaman oneriyorum.

Bir gunun nasil geciyor?

Her gun saat yedide kalkiyorum. Her gun derslerimi var. Bazi gunler sadece iki dersim var, ama bazi gunler dort ve bes dersim var. Saat yedi bucukta kahvalti yiyorum. Kahvalti sonra, derslerime gidiyorum. Derslerden sonra, isim var. Kutuphanede calisiyorum. Ara sira isimde odevim yapiyorum. Saat birde uyuyorum. 

Sabahlari ne yapiyorsun?

Sabahlari kahvalti yiyorum ve derslerimi gidiyorum. Cumartesi sabah calisiyorum, ama pazar gunu uyuyorum. Pazar gunu calismiyorum. 

Oglenleri ne yapiyorsun?

Oglenleri ogle yemegi arkadaslarim ile yiyorum. Ogle yemegi sonra, tekrar derslerimi gidiyorum ya da calisiyorum. 

Hafta sonlari ne yapiyorsun? 

Hafta sonlari kutuphanede calisiyorum ya da odevimi yapiyorum. If I have sinavim gelecek hafta, ozaman sinavim icin cok okuyorum.  

I spoke with my language partner today about Israeli culture. Something I did not think about is how the army draft affects the culture. It is a topic for small talk, you will probably be asked about it in an interview, and it changes their high education. Once you finish high school you are drafted into the army for two or three years (2 for women, three for men). Then people typically work at a restaurant or a cashier to save up some money for a couple of years. Then they travel, typically around Southeast Asia because it is less expensive, for a couple of years before heading to a university. So by the time they start their higher education they are around 23-25. Their universities are also focused on a profession; for example if you want to be a doctor you wouldn't have to get an undergraduate degree before going to med school, you would just go straight to med school. 

Israelis are know to be straight-forward and aggressive so I wanted to read a bit into it. The first blog post I read had a more negative experience it seems but the next article I found explains it all. Their culture is simply different and things they view as the norm we, as Americans, think are rude. It is important to make sure to understand the people before making any judgements. The second article hits a lot of key differences between Israelis and Americans and made me reflect on a lot of interactions I have had with Israeli people I know and how they may have perceived me as well. 

In Hebrew there is script and and print writing, most signage is in print but everyone writes in script so it is important to know both. Something I find interesting is that words like the,  to, from, at, etc are not typically their own words but an addition to another word. For example putting a lamed (L sound) in front of a word means "to" and then whatever word you say. It is very different from English in many ways: first of all it is written from right to left, many of their sentences start with the verb and then the subject, and it has sounds that we do not have in English (like the chhhhh sound in your throat). There are many more differences between the languages that are difficult to adjust to. 

http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2008/12/two-looks-at-typical-israeli.html

http://israelnewsagency.com/crossculturaltipsdosdontsdoingbusinessisraelus489051207.html

Reading Hebrew is different than any type of romance language because, for the most part, the vowels are not in the alphabet; they are their own category of signs and are only use in writing for kindergarten level. So i guess I am a kindergartner. It does not make sense to me how you can see a word and know what letters will make what sounds. For example, when you see a "bet", you know it will make some sort of sound that begins with a B but you do not know if it will sounds like ba, bu boo, bo, bi, be, bee, etc. In Hebrew they just know because of context and different patterns in the language. As a beginner, this is way over my head. So I am sticking with the vowels for now. 

When reading "Figuring Foreigners Out" I thought of a class I took with Professor Scinicariello called "French at Work". It was a class about how the business world works in France. We learned about many cultural differences which ranged from eating dinner to giving gifts to punctuality. That class really showed me how important it is to be culturally aware when interacting with people from other places and that actions you may find rude or inappropriate are commonplace for them. 

For Israelis specifically there are a few main differences to be aware of: their straightforward and blunt attitude, their concept (or lack) of being politically correct and their informality. Attire for a wedding in Israel consists of jeans and naots (the Israeli version of birkenstocks). That is unheard of in the US and would be insulting unless you understood where someone else is coming from; it is also good to know if you are going to a wedding in Israel (it would be awkward to be the fanciest person there!). 

This reading enforces the importance of cultural relativism and being self aware. Two things that are not only important when living in such a global and interconnected society like we do today but also important for those of us learning another language and wanting to travel to new places. 

Both weeks Emily and I met up and I worked on my book some more.   I was able to skype with Emily's mother and speak to her mother.  This opportunity allowed me to speak with someone else in Hebrew.  In addition writing out my vocabulary words, allows me to work on my Hebrew typing skills and I realized this week while typing that I had the general layout of the Hebrew keyboard memorized.