Lost in Translation
I received My Visa for The United States and bought the ticket come to America. America is huge and it has different culture and language. I wasn’t worried at first until I came here. I was confused. I found many different problems when I lived here. I have to bring my own language, culture and custom to America. I have many friends come from many countries. I learned how to communicate with other people. I’m not confident when I talk with American people. In the same time, I have encountered many problems with communication, culture and respect in America.
Being respectful is an important thing for Thai people. In Thailand we have to respect people who older than us. When we go to school every morning, we have to “Wai”. This means we have to put two hands together and bow our head to the teacher. We have “Wai Khru Ceremony” on the first semester in school. At on that day all of students at my school have to go to the hall and do an activity together. The students bring flowers to teachers and pay our respect to them and say “thank you”. In America, I think it is difficult to do this kind of activity because we have many students that are from different countries.
Thailand Festival and New Year Thai style is what I miss most. When I was in Thailand, I worked in Bangkok. I had to come back to my home town every New Year to celebrate it with my family. I have a party with my family in New Year Eve. We cook dinner and eat together before New Year comes. In the early hours of the morning is when we celebrate the first day of New Year. Hundreds people in my hometown present food and flowers to the monks. On opposite side of the road we have to stand behind the table. We start at 6.00 am. Everybody prepare food for the monks. Each monk has a person to help them prepare for the festival at the temple. After the monks finished eating their food, they have to bring food to poor people. I think this activity makes people in our community join together. When I came to the US, I didn’t celebrate New Year Thai style anymore because New Year is celebrated differently.
The last important thing is communicating with other people. Before I came here, I learned English language at school. When I came here, I found it very different. I started working at a Thai restaurant. There are many times when the customer wants me to explain the food on the menu but when I tried to explain they were still confused. I was very upset that day. Thai language is not the same language anywhere else in the world. Often times people think Asian speak the same language. It’s hard for me to explain to people that we speak different languages.
Many times when a person wants me to explain something about my country and I try to explain but sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s hard for them to understand me. When I work at the Thai restaurant, I find many grammar mistakes with my co-worker. All of those problems are happen when you move to another country. I have to learn more how to improve myself in different ways and adopt to my new life.
4 comments:
When I visited Thailand, I remember my Thai friend swept a bill with her hand politely, when she dropped it. She said it's because The King of Thai was drawn on it. I was surprised Thai people's strong respects to the King and elder people.
I have always thought that to approach a monk could be an amazing moment to experience because they do really follow every or most of the rules a temple can have. Since it’s very hard for people to follow what our religion are offering us.
I also found interesting how you had problems in the Thai restaurant mainly because the language. Reminds me when I came here I also worked in a restaurant and I used to tell people we didn’t have certain saucers, but not because we didn’t but because I couldn’t understand them.
So far, you’re still having problems with customers at the Thai restaurant?
I really know that you are I had to adapt my life to new culture and new language,even now, that is very hard to me.However, you have to try survay in any situation.
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