Seventh Meeting with Paula

Today Paula and I met for lunch for the first time since Thanksgiving break. We talked a little bit about what she and I each did over the break. She went to her mother-in-law's house and watched the Cowboys game for Thanksgiving. She asked me how my break was and I told her about how my first night at home started with a truck being set on fire down our street. She was shocked by this but then told me about how a teenager had once driven a truck into their neighbor's house because she didn't know how to drive it.

After this crazy storing telling, we talked about how much we love Christmas time. Paula loves decorating for Christmas, and she is on one of those rare streets that still goes all out when decorating their homes. She told me about her plans to go to Hawaii with her husband for New Year's. This would be her second time going, and she is excited for the warmer climate. She asked me if I was going to visit any of my friends over the break and I told her I wasn't exactly sure but I would like to. 

After we were done with our lunches we grabbed ourselves a cookie from the dessert table and both agreed that sweets are the best way to help stress. I had a group meeting so we unfortunately had to cut our meeting a little shorter than usual but while walking down the stairs Paula started frat-snapping. I don't even know what the real name of this is called but it's basically putting your thumb and middle finger together and then flicking your wrist so that your pointer finger hits the other two fingers. I thought this was so funny and she didn't get why I was so surprised that she could do it but I told her I'd been trying to figure out how to do that for a year now, so maybe next time she'll teach me. 

Response #5: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

To be honest, I've never read much Mark Twain in the past. I've read little things here and there in some of my classes but I've never read the classics like Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer. From these previous stories I think I've gotten a good grasp of what Twain's humor is like.

Being a graphic design major who is hoping to do work in the advertising field, I found the bit on Advertising on page 3 and 4 funny. I never knew that this strategy was invented by Twain, and it's funny because we've learned in our visual communications that although this might be an effective strategy, it is a cheap shot. It's good to know that it was originally done as a joke to fool people.

Also I really liked the piece of Facts, on page 73. I was expecting the whole "get your facts straight before you spread them" or something that we hear nowadays. But I thought it was funny how he suggests the reader to distort them  after, as if the truth never even mattered in the first place.

Overall, I'm excited to go through this book because I like the way it is arranged by topic, and it's interesting to see how Twain's mind and his humor work.

Response #4: Tales of Juha

I've decided I like the stories of Juha where he is perceived as witty and smart. I'm not a fan of the stories of him being stupid, selfish, or cowardly. I think it could be because finding stupid people funny is very common so I find it a little boring, especially when the culture is a little different. However, laughing at someone's ability to outwit someone is pretty funny to me because I don't see it a lot. The circumstances found in the stories also are humorous to me because a lot of times they involve things that are uncommon in our current time and place. For example, there seems to be a mule or a king of some sort mentioned in the majority of the stories, and obviously this is not something we can relate to, so I guess it is a nice change to read about situations that I am not as familiar with.

Also, although I have been enjoying these stories because each one is different and they are easy to follow, I kind of don't like the range of personalities Juha has. It bothers me that he can be a very smart and witty man but at the same time can be seen as a stupid and oblivious man. I feel like in more Western literature, there is a partnership between two people, one who is smart and one who is stupid. So reading that this single character has this huge range of personalities is a very unfamiliar and maybe even bothersome thing for me.

Lastly, the very first story of chapter 8 (page 121) was this:

"Juha married a woman who was very fat, and he was afraid she'd be too strong for him and do him harm. One day, when she was chasing after him with a cane in her hand, he hid under the bed, where she was too fat to follow him.
'Come here after me,' he yelled, feeling safe at last. 'If you're man enough!'"

This story bothered me a lot. Coming from family with Middle Eastern mindsets, I understand that a marriage can be a very unbalanced bond in terms of who is more dominant. However, I think this story is ridiculous in the way he scrutinizes her at the end of the story. Even though this is supposed to be a funny story, it just came off as sad to me and nothing else. I usually don't mind jokes making fun of women mildly but for some reason this one just seemed very cruel to me, even though the wife was supposedly trying to cane him.

Sixth Meeting with Paula

Because it's so close to Thanksgiving, Paula and I obviously had a conversation about what our plans were for the break! She is planning to stay here in Fort Worth for the week, while I am going back home to Houston. She asked if my parents were excited and I told her about how my mom can't help but overfeed me every time I come home.

We talked a little bit about how she is hoping to go home to Columbia for Christmas, but she is not sure if she can right now. I'm really hoping she can because I can tell it is something she really wants. She's been working super hard all semester and she definitely deserves to get to see her family again after such a long time.

She was also telling me about how she wants to improve her English so that she can get to go to college and become a dental hygienist. Once she does, she is planning on working with her husband, who is a dentist here in Fort Worth. This is the first time she had ever told me about why she is wanting to learn English (besides the fact that she lives in an English-speaking country), so it was great that I learned that about her.

Fifth Meeting with Paula

My last meeting with Paula included a few of her classmates as well. She had forgotten that we were meeting so she included me in her lunch she was having with three of her other classmates. They were from Rwanda, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. This was probably one of my favorite conversations I have had because there were so many perspectives on everything we talked about. They were interested to hear my take on things and asked if some of the things they have observed here in the U.S. were actually considered normal.

One of these things was clubbing and partying. Apparently in other parts of the world, people just don't stop partying until six in the morning. The classmates from Germany and Rwanda said they were both surprised when they got to clubs here at one in the morning only for it to be closed an hour later. According to them, 2 in the morning in the best time to party so they were surprised when people here want to go to bed by then.

Another thing they noticed was that people eat on the streets while walking here. Paula and all her classmates agreed that this isn't really something you see, except maybe in Germany. They said it was a bad habit and shows a lack of manner, which I can definitely see. I kind of had to explain that sometimes Americans forget what manners really are. On the same note about eating, they were also amazed about how low-class McDonald's is here. I thought this was funny because McDonald's is considered to be a high-class eatery in their countries while it has such a horrible reputation here.

I really enjoyed having lunch with Paula and some of her classmates because it was really interesting and also funny to here some of the things they were saying and to get that different perspective of everyday things.

Fourth Meeting with Paula

I actually had this meeting with Paula on Halloween day, but have forgotten to blog about it until now (oops). It was the first time Paula and I had met in a really long time because our schedules were so busy the few weeks before. So we definitely had some catching up to do at this point. Paula told me about how she had gone to Vegas for her birthday two or three weeks ago, and then later spent a weekend in Dallas with some of her Columbian friends.

Since it was Halloween I asked about Columbian Halloween traditions. I wasn't sure if Halloween was a big thing in that part of the world, or if the traditions were similar. Apparently it actually is pretty similar; everyone likes to dress up in crazy costumes and the kids go trick-or-treating while adults go to parties. So  that was an interesting piece of information to learn.

Other than that, we just caught up since the past few weeks. We talked a little bit about classes and all the stuff we've had to do recently. It was nice to finally see Paula again and have a conversation that could distract us from all our other school work.

Response #3: Adventures

I'm starting to realize that I mostly enjoy the short stories from Hokum that make you think in a different way. Obviously because the book is about African American humor and takes place in a completely different time, a lot of the logic and thinking behind each story is completely different from any school of thought I would have.

While reading Langston Hughes's Adventures, I came to this realization that these short stories are humorous because of the way they are completely opposite of what I am used to. I was a little confused at first when the narrator said that white people should go to the South to get adventure, because to me and my post-civil rights era mind, the South at that time would seem like a safe and boring environment to white people because they have so many liberties that the black community did not. However, that thought changed once the narrator stated that white people could not go to "Colored Only" zones, which in a way is humorous. Pointing this out makes white people look pretty dumb because they are so adamant about not associating with the black population that they are even willing to restrict themselves. It seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot because instead of having all the freedom in they want, they have actually made it harder on themselves.

I really like the social commentary found in the story, especially with such a different take on it. I honestly never thought of separated parts of cities in the South as a restriction to white people, but now that it has been pointed out, I can't help to think it's funny.