prettylittlebanana

musings on life beyond the pursuit of double happiness

01 May 2012
2 Comments

It’s Not About the Monet

I came across a time-lapse video documenting the building of One World Trade Center this morning. I grew teary-eyed as I watched. The images hurtled me back to the events of September 11, 2001 and reminded me of why I became a teacher.

I did not aspire to be a teacher in college. I wanted to stand out and do something different. I consumed art, and it consumed me. I interned at fine art museums and pursued art restoration in Florence, Italy. My first career I landed a job in the Exhibitions Department of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. My hectic days filled with negotiating loan contracts, overseeing installations and deinstallations, organizing shipments and schmoozing with artists and celebrities at art openings. I lived for the thrill of courier trips and traveling with art. A hand carry of a crated Frida Kahlo painting in first class, where the posh painting earned its own seat. A trip across the country in a climate-controlled tractor trailer sans shower to escort millions of dollars worth of Legers to the Modern Museum of Art. I will never forget the shock of watching crates of fine art loaded into the belly of planes alongside shrinkwrapped bodies and exotic animals.

But there is more to life than chasing money, fame and prestige. And I cashed this life in the day the World Trade Center collapsed. I remember that day with perturbing clarity. I woke up to my typical routine of watching the news while I dressed and prepared to sit in 90 minutes of traffic on my 12 mile commute to the museum. The morning moved about in slow motion as I watched in helpless horror as the first tower collapsed live on television. Sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway surrounded by the towers of downtown Los Angeles to my left and right, the crumpled faces of commuters around me squeezed out endless tears as we all listened to the second tower shatter in solidarity alone in our cars.

That Tuesday I recall business as usual and a slew of meetings with no acknowledgements as to the events that had transpired, save a few stranded couriers and pieces of art that needed to be tracked down. I forced myself to sit through meetings as I contemplated how human beings could be so robotic at a time like this. Later that morning I received a phone call from a shipper headed out of New York City with an anticipated contemporary art exhibition. No trucks could get out of the city. The show would install late, and the next phone call would change my life forever. Sitting on the phone listening to a curator belligerently yell at me because I could not find a way to get the show to LACMA on time, it was all I could do not to scream back, “You heartless bitch! Don’t you realize how many Americans just died? Who gives a shit about the art! They’re fucking oversized tents for crying out loud!”

It was then that I decided to become a teacher. In that moment I realized that my life revolved around preserving dead art and pandering to the elite. I wanted more. I wanted to do something that made a damn difference in the world. I wanted to surround myself with human beings who would give a damn when another 9/11 happened. That is why I decided to become a teacher.

I entered the teaching profession ten years ago. Ten years and almost 1,000 students, and I have yet to regret the choice I made on 9/11. Teaching is hard, but at the end of the day you know you have made a difference in the lives of your students. You know you’ve saved lives intervening as a mandated reporter when a piece of writing falls into your hands containing accounts of abuse, rape, addiction or suicidal tendencies. You know that you are blessed to work with others who are just as selfless and compassionate as you. And even some of the most challenging students, the ones broken by dysfunctional families and society’s failures, seek you out years later to let you know just how much of a difference you made in their lives and how you contributed to build them into the men and women they are today.

Life is not about the Monet. It’s not about chasing fame, fortune or glamour. It’s not about focusing on the past and what we’ve lost.  It’s about giving back and working with a relentless fervor to build a better world. It’s about investing in people, not things. And it starts with our children.

Posted in America, Art Museums, California, Education, Los Angeles, Memory, New York City, One World Trade Center, September 11, Teaching, Time-lapse Videos, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , ,
01 Mar 2012
2 Comments

March Forth: Photo Challenge

A word of advice when it comes to selecting courses as an undergraduate: Just because it sounds fun, doesn’t mean it is fun. I learned this the hard way when I signed up for astronomy freshman year and suffered through painful physics equations for weeks. I faced a similar fate just three credits shy of graduation at UC Santa Barbara. Having fulfilled the requirements for my major and minor, I decided to take photography for fun.

The first day of class the professor walked in with a nametag that read HELLO My Name is Satan. Satan glared at us and said, “Nothing any of you will do during my class this quarter will be unique or original. Now here is a list of 300 subjects you may not photograph.” The antichrist then proceeded to set his minions, I mean teaching assistants, to work distributing these lists to us. His list included subjects such as kittens, puppies, sunsets, the ocean, couples holding hands, couples kissing, fruit bowls, trees, insects and architecture. Our dreams of calendar photography went up in flames.

Finding myself desperate to do something original, I did everything from reenacting traumatizing scenes from my childhood underwater to photographing subjects eating different types of food in an effort to transform the ugly into something beautiful. And one of my photographs of blogger prettygirlsmakegravy slurping spaghetti made it into a show on campus. The problem was I wanted to photograph hundreds of the subjects on Satan’s list.

Imagine my delight when I came across blogger Fat Mum Slim’s March Photo a Day Challenge. I have always loved the month of March simply because March 4th reminds me to March forth. Each March I choose a different aspect of my life where I can March forth. This March I think I’ll move past my fear of photography and have fun taking pictures of many of the subjects on Satan’s shitlist. Here is my photograph for March 1st based on the word Up.

Up

I’ll be posting the photos on my facebook page and Twitter, so you’ll have to “like” prettylittlebanana on facebook or follow me on Twitter @ErikaBTV. I look forward to this challenge and hope some of you will join me on this journey to finding the beauty in the mundane and ordinary in our world and telling Satan to shove it.

Posted in California, Education, facebook, Fat Mum Slim, March Photo a Day Challenge, Photography, prettygirlsmakegravy, Twitter, UC Santa Barbara, Uncategorized, Vermont
28 Feb 2012
2 Comments

The Greatest Leap of All

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”  - Rumi, Persian poet from 13th century

This year marks a Leap Year. Like others who have joined The Leapyear Project, I am ready to take a risk that will change my world. I have never feared change, but embraced it. I welcome new challenges with zeal and gusto. I know what it is to drive across the country or backpack through Europe on my own.  I have changed careers and followed new passions in the blink of an eye. And I know what it means to risk it all and lose it all for the chance of a better life. Yet there is one aspect of my life where I have relentlessly guarded and taken practical measures to avoid taking risks: my heart.

For centuries human beings have risked it all for the greatest gift of all: love. One need only look at the myriad of temples erected out of love and hearts bled onto the page as evidence. I convinced myself that this love did not exist, despite the fact that I spend my life reading and dissecting these poems, plays and novels as a teacher of the written word.

Now I realize that the more I think I know about love, the more I discover how little I do know. I recently discovered a Ted Talk by Helen Fisher, who is a professor at Rutgers University and one of the most prominent anthropologists in the United States. She has dedicated the past few decades to studying the science, psychology and anthropology of human love. Her most recent experiments have included placing subjects in MRIs to scan the human brain in love. She has tested everyone from couples in the honeymoon phase to couples who continue to remain madly in love after thirty years of marriage. She has also tested those scorned and rejected by love. The results all point to the same conclusions: love is a very real and scientific phenomenon. It is not merely a matter of the heart.

Fisher found evidence that the brain in love exhibits the same characteristics as the brain on cocaine. Love is addictive and carries the same three aspects of addiction: tolerance, withdrawal and relapse. In other words, love is one of the most addictive substances on Earth. The only difference is that you can come down from a cocaine high, while love is another matter. She has broken major ground in understanding the brain in love, and her new project seeks to discover why we fall in love with one person versus another.

The last man I dated told me I was the most logical and rational woman he had ever dated.  Some of my longest relationships have been built on foundations of logic, reason and complacency. But that is not love. And I find it ironic that when I try to understand love I seek out the brain science of it all. Fisher’s research is fascinating, but I now find myself ruminating over Rumi’s words. What barriers within myself have I built against finding this sort of love that Fisher has proven exists? How do I learn to listen to my heart and not just my head?

And suddenly it is so clear to me: lack of trust. After a childhood and lifetime of having men lie to me, my lack of trust prevents me from taking that true leap of faith and love. I have built a huge fortress wall around my heart to keep it protected, and sometimes it feels as though I will never be able to disassemble that wall.  It is so much easier to stay protected behind the confines of that wall, but there is so much lost by staying behind it.  An unguarded heart opens one up to vulnerability and pain, but it also opens one up to joy and love.

This year is a Leap Year. In the British Isles of the 5th century, it was the one year where it was appropriate for women to take charge of their own love lives. So this year I find myself ready not to seek for love, but to seek within myself and work on myself in a way that I have never done before. This is the year that I work on breaking down those barriers brick by brick and taking risks with my heart for the greatest gift of all: love.

Posted in Helen Fisher, Leap Year, Leapyear Project, Love, Rumi, TED Talk, Trust, Uncategorized and tagged , , ,
15 Feb 2012
1 Comment

Not to Suffer Uselessly

A dear friend shared this essay with me a few days ago. Her words immediately touched me as I too strive to maintain a classroom environment based on tolerance and mutual respect. We have come far in Vermont and as a country when it comes to fighting ignorance, but as a teacher the occasional insensitive incident witnessed at school reminds me that teaching tolerance needs to remain an everyday practice.

I invited the author to pen her thoughts on my blog though she wished to remain anonymous. The author is a high school English teacher at a public school in Vermont. She finds the daily battle against ignorance exhausting but worthwhile. She thanks her gay parents for teaching her to have an open mind and an abundant heart.

I have no existence     apart from you 

                                                                               2.

   I believe I am choosing something new

Not to suffer uselessly    yet still to feel

                                                       from “Splittings” by Adrienne Rich 1974

Loosely we must hold onto ourselves in order not to suffer. A light touch, a thin veil, nothing too much. Not to want more than we can have. Not to love more than we can bear. The pain washes in when we want the world to be different than it is. Wanting some people to want other than they do, wanting some things that aren’t to be.

Like the boy in my class who says that “gay stuff” makes him uncomfortable, he doesn’t believe in it, it’s not how he was raised. And no one is asking him to be gay, no one is telling him to even think about what it means in this world to love against a current that promises to crush you, that threatens to destroy you inside and out. We only ask that he keep his hate, if he is so set on hating, to himself. If not to choose love over hate, then at least a silence that allows others to exist. Because no one is telling him he can’t exist.

And I want to ask him, as he rails against the posters in the hallway that announce there is a place for the gay kids in our school to meet other gay kids, (and straight kids too, for that matter, the ones who think we all have a right to exist, the ones who are choosing love over hate), I want to ask him if he would rather that they kill themselves. Because that’s what happens too many times when, in our schools, kids get to spout their own anger at the very existence of their gay peers, not even aware that they are sitting there, next to them, suffering in silence.

But because my parents are gay, and because if they had killed themselves in those impressionable years of high school and college I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, it is personal. And so I don’t say anything, except please, let us choose not to suffer uselessly. There is no reason for this, apart from you. And so I let go, useless, as I feel myself to be.


Posted in Adrienne Rich, Education, Gay, Human Rights, Teaching, Tolerance, Vermont, Writing
17 Jan 2012
4 Comments

Bookapocalypse

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

Ten years ago when I first pursued a teaching license in California, a professor introduced me to Jonathon Kozol’s Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. Kozol’s book painted a brutal picture of the disparities between public schools of different social classes and race. It made quite an impact on me and solidified my desire to teach.  It is one of the reasons why I choose to teach at the most diverse school in the second whitest state in the country where 45% of the students live at or below the federal poverty level.

Kozol’s book just earned a spot on the Tucson Unified School District’s Banned Reading List.  In 2010, Arizona passed legislation banning ethnic studies courses in public schools claiming the curriculum caused racial resentment and division. This shocked the H – E – double chopsticks out of me. But now the Tuscon School District has taken the law to an alarming new level removing a slew of multicultural nonfiction and fiction books from classrooms. Teachers now have to get prior approval from the school district in order to use books in their classrooms by individuals who have not even read the texts in question.

Some of the banned books include books by authors Sherman Alexie, Sandra Cisneros and Matt de la Peña, whose books often contain themes of cultural conflict and racial tension The shame is these books also have a reputation for engaging even the most resistive of readers. Among the most ridiculous texts banned include William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Now if a Shakespearean play has the potential to cause a race riot, THAT is a play worth reading.

It appalls me to see so many inspiring books on the Tuscon School District’s Banned Reading List. And I can’t help but conjure images from Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 or George Orwell’s 1984 through all of the media mayhem covering this new racist tide. But while situation may look bleak in Tucson right now, there is one light at the end of the tunnel. All of these authors are getting a ton of free publicity right now.

Posted in Arizona, Banned Books, California, Censorship, Racism, Teaching, Vermont and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
23 Dec 2011

Guest Post: Reuben Jackson

I first met poet Reuben Jackson this fall when he took on a teaching position in Vermont. It did not take long for me to discover a kind of kindred spirit in him. We both grew up in diverse metropolitan cities and moved on to pursue teaching careers after working as museum professionals. But most of all we share a common sometimes surreal sense of home living in slow paced not-so-diverse Vermont.

Jackson has lived in Washington, D.C since 1958. For 20 years, he was Curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s Duke Ellington Collection, which is housed at the National Museum of American History. His poetry has been published in journals such as The Indiana Review, Chelsea, Gargoyle and Callaloo, in 30 anthologies, and in an award-winning volume of poetry entitled Fingering the Keys. He was also a music critic for The Washington Post, Jazz Times and Jazziz magazines. He would like to be reincarnated as a bass clarinet.

Coming Home “Again”

Thirty three years after graduating from Goddard College in Central Vermont, the questions linger. Sometimes they take a semi-cryptic, circuitous route. Not sometimes, mostly. For rarely has anyone come right out and asked, “What in the hell was a black man from Washington, D.C. doing in very distant, very white Vermont?” The fact that I made it through four years and loved it never failed to confuse them more.

Apparently there is no statute of limitations on said confusion. I’m now in the midst of a one-year teaching position in Burlington, Vermont, and a lot of people, black and white, Washingtonians and Vermonters, wonder if I am crazy. For while Vermont is no longer the whitest state in the U.S., it is a close second. And while I feel a strong sense of collegial warmth from many colleagues, the cool social winds of racial tension continue to blow.

So why would a 55 -year-old black man want to return to this place-even for a year? Well, quiet as I kept it for 33 years, I have always loved this beautiful and sometimes depressingly American place. I always have.

I’ve never been a lot of things in this life: rich, Swedish, skinny. I could go on. But I have also never been what an old friend calls a “Central Casting Negro.” This has led to, among other things, another kind of racial isolation. A cultural homelessness. I guess that like Vermont, I am, warts and all, just me. And warts and all, I am grateful for the chance to teach AND reside (Dear Santa-Please find me another gig in 2012!) in this weirdly comforting home.

You can reach Reuben Jackson via email at reubjcks@aol.com.

Posted in Home, Poetry, Race, Teaching, Vermont, Washington D.C. and tagged , | Leave a Comment
05 Dec 2011
1 Comment

The Art of Being Alone

There is no better feeling than standing alone at the top of a snow covered mountain with nothing but the deafening sound of snowflakes hitting my goggles and the chilly wind blowing past my frozen cheeks. Winter means getting to hear the sweet sound of my snowboard or skis carving through snow or whispering in fresh powder. I prefer to ride the lifts solo where I can be alone with my thoughts as I contemplate the forest and not the trees, focus on the big picture rather than the little details in life. When I find an isolated spot on the mountain, life becomes a blank canvas where I can carve any path I choose.

I savor time alone. One of the best years of my life I lived out of a backpack. It was a time when I learned what truly matters in life. I spent a year in Italy apprenticing in art restoration working with frescoes, gilded objects and paintings. I drank homemade grappa with monks and broke bread with cloistered nuns. It was the first time I lived alone and had only myself to rely on in times of need. In Italy I learned how to survive on very little, get lost for hours in art museums, stroll a piazza by myself, explore cemeteries and meditate in a cathedral for hours at a time. I lived without a television, the internet or a cell phone to distract me. It was magical and time stopped.

It was some years before I found that kind of solace again. I found it amongst the Green Mountains of Vermont. Life moves at a slower pace in the Green Mountain State and feels like a retreat to a valley girl from California. There is a fine line between loneliness, isolation and the art of being alone. A distinct difference exists between being alone and being lonely. At times society pities and shirks away from the idea of being alone. I like to think of it as a kind of art and freedom.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not an introvert by nature, but an extrovert who flourishes from interactions with others and meeting new people. Though I have come to learn that when I spend time alone, I often encounter intriguing people I may not have met had I not been alone at the time. When I retreat from the chaos and technology of everyday life, there is room for my inner voice and thoughts to come to the forefront. There is time to rediscover me. And even social butterflies need to stop and refuel from time to time.

Perhaps no poet better expresses the art of being alone than Tanya Davis, who collaborated with the filmmaker and animator Andrya Dorfman to create How to Be Alone. Davis sums it up perfectly when she conveys that “lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.”

Posted in Alone, Andrya Dorfman, Solitude, Tanya Davis and tagged , , , , , , , ,
14 Nov 2011

Xie Xie, Amy Tan

The daughter of a Chinese father and white mother, the politically correct term for me is Eurasian American. Growing up some of the Asian girls at school labeled me white-washed, while some of the white girls refused to believe my blonde haired, blue-eyed mother conceived me.  The strangest title I earned? Banana – yellow on the outside and white on the inside.

The first time I heard the term banana it offended me. The fact that the Chinese man who called me a banana tried to follow up with “Oh, but you are a pretty banana” only fueled my anger as if a compliment made up for the diminishing nickname.

My understanding of the term banana evolved when I came across Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club during my American Literature class in high school. Mr. Smith assigned Tan’s novel during the second semester of my junior year.  As I traced my fingers over the shiny red raised title on the cover, I knew this book would differ from any other I had read during my academic career.

Deep within the woven vignettes of the lives of four Chinese mothers and their American raised daughters, I found a sense of self-understanding. This book was about me. Sitting at the table with the women of the Joy Luck Club I recognized the criticisms, concerns and coaxing of the matriarchs on my Chinese side. Banging away at the piano with Jing-Mei Woo, I recalled my own anxiety at piano competitions at the age of nine. Forced to flee to Shanghai from the Japanese invasion, Suyuan’s plight echoed my own family’s story of survival retold over and over at family reunions. And through The Joy Luck Club, I grew to understand the conflicts between first and second generation Chinese living in America, including the challenges of growing up Eurasian American.

Only five novels have survived the many moves since my high school graduation, The Joy Luck Club among them. The pages yellowed and browned with age, I can no longer see the highlighted passages, which have faded away with time. However, as I flip through my old copy, I find a single passage underlined in blue ink on the second to last page: “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood. After all these years, it can finally be let go.”

Others labeled and shaped my identity in my youth, whereas I began to define myself through literature and history classes in the 90’s at a time when Asians first gained more presence in American Literature, television, film and other media. Chinese writers like Amy Tan, Lisa See, Adeline Yeh Mah and Dai Sijie helped me to understand myself through their works.

Now as a writer of poetry and memoir, bits of my Chinese culture pop up in the most unexpected of places. Around 6,000 words into my novel for National Novel Writing Month, I discovered my protagonist was Chinese. And I had to let go of trying to control and quash that part of her identity, for it seems to me that in every work of fiction there are kernels of truth woven throughout the text. The further I delve into the world of writing, the closer I come to finding my own voice as a writer, which includes who I am today – a banana. How grateful I am for the opportunity many moons ago to read a book that started this journey of self-discovery.

Posted in Amy Tan, Banana, Biracial, Chinese, National Novel Writing Month, Reading, The Joy Luck Club, Writing and tagged , , , | Leave a Comment
27 Oct 2011
8 Comments

My First Fiction Tryst

November is stick season in Vermont. Naked branches shiver as temperatures drop. Sunlight fades. The ground grows muddy and slushy. Mother Nature ponders whether to rain, snow or sleet. And Vermonters wait in a sort of limbo between fiery foliage and winter wonderland.

What better time to participate in NaNoWriMo? NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a work of fiction with at least 50,000 words in just 30 days. Last year 200,000 brave souls pursued this endeavor. Only 15% finished. This year I will attempt to complete my first NaNoWriMo.

I am a teacher by day and single mom by night. Why in the world would I take on the colossal task of writing a novel in 30 days?

1)   Now is the Time. There is never time to write a novel when you are busy teaching, planning, grading papers, parenting a toddler and trying to keep your head above water. NaNoWriMo is an opportunity to make the time. Even if it does mean writing 200 words in the bathroom or while cooking dinner here and there.

2)   Practice Makes Perfect. One of the perks of being a teacher is working 185 days a year. I told myself I would write during vacations and summers when I started teaching nine years ago. Graduate school, teaching and motherhood trumped having any free time or writing for pleasure until I found a way to make the time this past summer. I am out of practice. And there is no better way to get back into shape than a writer’s boot camp.

3)   Learning for Learning’s Sake. I am not only a teacher, but a lifelong learner. At the very least I will learn something about myself as a writer by participating in this contest.  I also believe in being transparent about the writing process with my students. Three colleagues and I are working with 50 students for NaNoWriMo. What a unique opportunity to engage in the writing process with students!

4)   Conquer my Fear. I am a poet, blogger and memoir writer. I have always had a fear of fiction. What better way to conquer my fear than to dive right into it?

5)   I am Stubborn. I do not like to be told I cannot do something. When I was 13, a classmate boasted I could never eat more pizza than him in one sitting. A dozen slices later, I won. Tell me I cannot do something, and I will kick ass at it. The very fact that 15% of the participants in NaNoWriMo do not finish is motivation enough for me to prove I will write my way to the finish line.

I just learned about NaNoWriMo a few weeks ago. There has been no time to prepare, but I am okay with that. I tend to follow the advice of writers like Natalie Goldberg or Stephen King who attack the written word head on. There will be no Freytag’s Pyramid or detailed character sketches for me. This being my first NaNoWriMo, I have three strategies:

1) The Stephen King Strategy. This summer I read King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. King often starts his novels with a single question in mind. My question? What happens when you cross Sophie Kinsella with Chuck Palahniuk? I want to marry chick lit with transgressional fiction. King often starts with a single question and lets his characters take over. I plan to do the same.

2) Show Up for the Job. I have read and used many books on writing in the classroom. The best advice for my students and myself has always been to simply show up for the job. My plan is to write at least 1700 words (roughly three pages) each day in the month of November. Breaking tasks into chunks works for me. Bestselling writer Elizabeth Gilbert offers some great advice in letting go of the creative genius and just trudging your way to the page.

3) Let Go. I write best when I let go and do not edit myself or worry about what my reader will think. As King says, “the scariest moment is always just before you start.” I plan to put pen to paper or type at full speed. Nobody has to see this novel but me. So why not go for it and write with full literary adandon? Natalie Goldberg used this process for her first novel and suggests NaNoWriMo participants try the same strategy.


I do not like to lose. But I know how to lose with grace. Even if I do not finish what I set out to do, I know I will learn a lot about myself as a writer in the process. And that is worth one sleepless month. If you are interested in tracking my progress over the month of November, I plan to update my word count and post my thoughts. I may even post an excerpt from my novel here and there. And if you are a former NaNoWriMo participant, I welcome any sage advice!

Posted in Fiction, NaNoWriMo, Natalie Goldberg, Parenting, Procrastination, Stephen King, Teaching, Vermont, Writing and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
21 Oct 2011
1 Comment

Like Totally, You Know?

I like totally could not string one sentence together without using the word like until I was like 23 or something. It drove my teachers and parents up the wall, but I was always like whatever. As if it matters, you know? Then I like graduated from college, and it was like a totally gnarly world out there trying to land a job. I began to work diligently on my elocution and verbal syntax. I learned to slow down my speech and enunciate my consonants and vowels. It did not take long for me to learn to communicate with coherent professionalism. And now eleven years later I am an English teacher. Totally bitchin’, right?!

A blogger friend at Pretty Girls Make Gravy recommended that I participate in an accent vlog circulating the internet right now. My first instinct was to cringe, as I deplore the sound of my own voice. I think I sound like a small child. I also tend to regress into Valleyspeak when I am on camera or get nervous. But after checking out some other vlogs on the web, I decided to join the party. What happens when a former valley girl migrates to Vermont? Check it out.

Here are the lists you will need should you choose to participate in the accent vlog:

The Words:

Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting Image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught, Roof (Pretty Girls Make Gravy addition) and Oregon (prettylittlebanana addition).

The Questions:

  1. What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
  2. What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
  3. What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
  4. What do you call gym shoes?
  5. What do you say to address a group of people?
  6. What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
  7. What do you call your grandparents?
  8. What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
  9. What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
  10. What is the thing you change the TV channel with?
  11. What do you call the item that women use to carry their wallets and keys in? (prettylittlebanana addition)

I adapt my speech and code switch now that I am a teacher, but every once in awhile when I get excited about something or return home to California, I revert back to my old valley girl self. And then I’m all, like, you know, totally me again.

Try your own accent vlog. I want to know how your accent has evolved over time or how code switching plays a role in your life.

Posted in Accent Vlog, Code Switching, Valley Girl, Vermont, Vlog and tagged , , ,

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