Intercultural Interview #1

For this interview I spoke with two students from Taiwan; a young man called Pony and a young lady called Felicia. We covered the usual routine of getting to know you questions and learned a little about each other. The questions were of the open and closed variety. Pony arrived in Canada last spring and attended high school in Kelowna prior to attending TRU in the fall semester of 2007. Pony’s family lives in Taiwan and has no plans to come to Canada. Felicia along with her parents and younger brother arrived in Vancouver at the end of summer in 2007; she started attending TRU in the fall semester of 2007. Her family currently lives in Vancouver.
Throughout the interview both students were very candid in their answers to my questions; any hesitation in answering a question was more a part of not having the language to adequately express themselves as opposed to not wanting to answer a question. Felicia always allowed Pony to answer a question first when a question was put to the two of them together. Considering their cultural background this should not be surprising.
Pony is a very outgoing individual; he seems very comfortable in our culture and has adopted many of our (youth) cultural attributes, professing an intense interest in break dancing and rock music. He played guitar and did vocals in a band in Taiwan and would like to get into a band here in Kamloops. Pony wants to pursue business courses with a view to returning to Taiwan and setting up a business to cater to young people who would like to make their own music videos and CD’s. Apparently it is very expensive to make these items in Taiwan.
Felicia appears much more reserved than Pony; this may be due to Pony’s superior language skills. Felicia would like to have a career in an art gallery or museum; however, her mother enrolled her in journalism classes (this speaks volumes in itself). She likes to draw and would like to pursue this hobby; she was surprised to hear that TRU has an excellent visual arts department. Felicia plans to remain in Canada. Her parents have a factory in Taiwan and she believes that her parents wish that she had been a boy so she could become part of the family business.
Pony and Felicia ended up in Kamloops for different reasons. Pony had a friend from Kelowna that was going to TRU and convinced him Kamloops was a good place to go to school. Felicia’s mother chose TRU for her, Felicia would have liked to gone to school in Quebec but that would have been much more expensive than TRU.
Pony seems to have very little contact with his parents; he has not seen them in about three years and has not spoken to them since last spring. I didn’t find this too surprising as Pony attended a boarding school in Taiwan and had little contact with them while he was in Taiwan. Felicia phones her parents when she feels the need; there is no fixed schedule for phone calls. Neither student utilizes the internet for home contact.
Both students feel that they have been treated well here in Kamloops. People are friendly and polite; they have not experienced any forms of discrimination to speak of. However, they find it very difficult to make friends with local young people. They both agree that when in conversation with local students the locals don’t really listen or try to understand what they are trying to say. As a consequence they have not made many new “local” friends. They both realize that their facility with the English language or lack thereof, is an impediment to social interaction. Pony especially feels shutout as he would like to get into a band but can’t seem to make any appropriate connections.
The most difficult aspect of living in Kamloops for both students is the lack of food choices. For them there is a real lack of good quality, reasonably priced, and varied food. The choice of restaurants is limited to take out or fast food, not what they were used to in Taiwan.
The students find the pace of life here in Kamloops much slower, Pony especially. He found he has had to make a conscious effort to slow himself down.
The students had a question for me which I found very interesting. I had told them I was a teacher and had taught many international students. They wondered what I thought of “Asian students”. I told them that I didn’t think of “Asian students” at all. This was not to be seen as being negative in any way but rather that I don’t treat them any differently than the other students in my classes. Each student is an individual and deserves to be treated as such. This prompted me to ask why they had asked that particular question. They indicated that they often felt that they were being treated as elementary students in their ESAL classes. They were being treated as unintelligent people, rather than intelligent people operating within the confines of a limited knowledge of English which hampers their ability to express themselves. I was quite surprised that they would tell me this. I told them that I found this quite disturbing and that I would pass this message along to someone in the department, Jason was the lucky recipient of this bombshell. I think the students related this information to me as a way of venting their frustration; they could tell me as I am not in a position to do them harm. Perhaps some good might come out of this revelation.
Both Pony and Felicia seem to be fitting into our culture quite well, they don’t exhibit any obvious signs of what could be termed “culture shock”. Their social network is restricted to mostly international students as of now; however, both students express an interest in expanding their social network outside the international student community. They both realize that more effort must be made to establish contacts with the rest of the campus community; this will be difficult to do as language presents a very real obstacle to social interaction.

My first blog

This is my first attempt at utilizing cyberspace. This blog is part of an assignment for a course I am taking.
What gets my goat is people talking on cell phones while driving.