The Switch.

Due to schedule conflicts, I was no longer able to meet with the three men from Burma, therefore I made a switch to the Ling family. Not to say that I did not enjoy working with the men from Burma but I was extremely excited to get the opportunity to work with an entire family and be able to see the differences between the two groups, not only taking into consideration their relational roles but their geographical variation as well. The Ling family recently moved to America from Malaysia. Their family consists of the father Lion, Mother Ester, Daughter Cindy and Son Ram. At first everyone thought Cindy and I had the same name because of the closeness in pronunciation which I thought was super cool, even after realizing our names aren't quit the same, it was interesting to see the similarity coming from different parts of the world. A cultural difference I noticed right away was the fact that they took their shoes off and left them in the hallway of the apartment, displaying a trust in others they lived with, where in America we would not feel comfortable leaving our shoes in a semi-public area. They also retrieved a mat from the closet, upon our arrival made from a bamboo type material, and placed it on the floor for everyone to sit on rather than sitting directly on the carpet or on the furniture. Upon my first arrival to the Ling families' apartment, they were very timid towards me at first because they had worked with Andie and Liz prior to my first visit, but as time has passed they have warmed up to me. On my last visit, we watched the movie Finding Nemo. Before playing the movie, we described what the movie entailed and if they had any questions about what was happening through out they could feel free to ask. We discussed the movie at the end as well. It was interesting seeing the reaction of each of the family members throughout the of the movie. I hadn't noticed before watching this film the other night, the amount of jokes related to language and stereotypes there were within the film. These jokes are comparable to idioms, they are only funny if you understand and have knowledge of the language. With this in mind, it was terrific to see Ester laughing at different jokes throughout the movie. She especially liked "he touched the butt" rather than he touched the boat. With this though, no one, except for we girls, caught on to the suffer, care free stereotype given to the turtles some of the characters come in contact with which is normal because that is something the family has yet to learn or come in contact with. I feel as though Ester was the most understanding of the film because she showed the most emotion; laughing, smiling, gasping, etc. Cindy is exceptionally good at English and was very content and engaged in the movie. Her body language told me she understood the film because I know I personally could never be that content watching a film in another language not being able to understand it. Ram is young and as many children his age, he gets bored quickly, and played with toys instead. Lion was happy at the thought that we were all enjoying ourselves, looking at us and our reactions almost more than the movie. This shows that across cultures, for the most part the father ultimately wants to see his family happy.