The Wives of International Graduate Students: Session 1

Today was a very special day for me. I got the oppurtunity to listen to the women intently as they answered some of my questions. I told Sylvia it was my second last day doing service learning, so she game me the wonderful oppurtunity to question the women in the meeting. I asked them about how they felt regarding accepting a new culture and traditions, coming from a very different background. I further went to tell them that I myself still have a hard time trying to assimilare myself into the American culture, and what thier experinces have been. I was very eager to see that many women wanted to answer my quediotns. A lady from Taiwan disccused that her seven year old daughter knew very good english having been to the elementary school in Montegommery county for the past few months. She went to describe how difficult it was for her to teach her duaghter about the Taiwaneese culture and tradition, when her dauther was constantly being influenced by American pop culture. SHe stressed that her daughter was forgetting taiwanense slowly, making it harder for the mother to communicate with her own child. Another woman described her own loneliness in a foreign country. SHe talked about her fear in bieng in a new country in which she was not very familiar with the language and was of different ethinicity. SHe was afraid that people were ignoring her becasue of the lack of her ability to speak proper english, and perhpads for being Korean. SHe admitted that she at times still feels alienated in this society beucase of her supposed lack of english proficiency. It was very ironic that the Arabic women expressed that she was very happy and found a good communtiy to live and she her troubles with. She went to describe the fact that she had a storng community of friends and that she felt very welcome in this country. Although I would have percienved that perhaps people woul quesiotn her about her hijab and the conservatism in thier culture, but she seemed quite well adapted to a culture that was quite opposite of her own more conservative society.