Learning Chinese to fix the language barrier that leaves parents and son near-strangers. Daniel Chen with his mother, Xiao Juan Liu, and father, Ajun Chen, in their Brooklyn apartment. Daniel speaks primarily English; his parents speak primarily Shanghainese. Patrick Marion Bradley The first time I meet Daniel Chen, it’s the fall of 2011, and he’s a freshman at American University. For my work there as a communications writer, I’ve invited him to my office to chat about being the first in his family to attend college. Before I can start my recorder, Daniel — with earnestness that grabs my attention — says, “No one’s really asked me to talk about my life before.”
So, I do. He cradles a cup of water in his hands at the wide conference room table. At first mention of the language barrier, it doesn’t strike me what he’s actually saying. Daniel was born in Brooklyn to Chinese immigrant parents. Returning to the States would change everything. Once in Brooklyn’s public school system, Daniel found himself in an English-only situation. After that, Daniel says he shut his parents out. What Color is Your Rainbow? DIY Totoro Plush Tutorial : cheek and stitch.
32.9KEmailShare Hello all! Today, I put together a fun tutorial for you: DIY Totoro Plush Tutorial. It’s a little different than the Totoros I made earlier, but still just as cute. The pattern I created is more simple and the materials are cheap and easy to find. The finished plush will be 6.5″ wide and 8″ tall (not including ears or arms). I hope you find this tutorial enjoyable and make a Totoro plush for yourself or as a gift! To make your own Totoro, keep reading… Materials you Will Need 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1 Needle 7. 8. 9. These materials can be found at your local craft store like Michaels, Joann, etc… Ready?
Step 1: Download the Totoro Pattern (See materials) and print it out Step 2. Step 3: Cut out cardstock templates: Step 4: Trace templates on felt with pen or chalk pencil: Step 5: Cut out belly, eyes, nose, and belly marks directly on traced line: Step 6: Pin 2 sheets of gray felt (for body) inside traced line before cutting. Step 10: Sew eyes onto body with white thread. 46 Awesome String Light DIYs For Any Occasion. How To Break Up With A Friend. Feel a familiar itch to break free that you had previously thought only arose in romantic relationships. The tedium, the emotional drain, the fundamental feeling that this isn’t good for you all abound, but as you are not in some qualified “relationship,” how to go about removing yourself from it seems a vague, unrealistic concept.
You’d never before considered having to break things off with a friend, but efforts to find common ground becoming more and more futile, it seems the only thing left to do. Realize, in a moment of profound sadness, how much we actually do have tied up emotionally with our friends, even if we don’t realize it. The things that we experience together, though not bookended by marriage or children or even sex, are such an enormous part of the people we are today. Life pulls us in different directions, and you realize that having become incompatible with someone is not necessarily a good or bad thing, only a truth of relationships.
So, You’re An Adult. How Do You Make Friends Now? Let’s be honest: school is a never-ending merry-go-round of potential friends and relationships. From pre-school to college, all of the essential ingredients for building lasting, open friendships are all around us at all times. We have the constant proximity, the ability to let loose and be ourselves in social settings, the lubrication of alcohol (towards the later years of our studies, I should hope), and a certain fearlessness about trying new things. We are still in a part of our life that we expect will be changed and molded each day; there is almost nothing about us that is completely settled. And it seems that the friendships formed during these years are often imbued with an inexplicable but incredibly powerful durability.
But as we launch into the worlds of professionalism, propriety, responsibility, bills, and sensible happy hours — where do our new platonic love affairs come from? This year, I made a very good friend by simply meeting her in a bar. Do The Green Thing: The DIY fridge that runs on dirty water. 3 Reasons to Travel While You're Young. Lacrimosa Chapter 1: Act One: Andante, a harry potter fanfic. Lacrimosa Summary: semi-historical AU. Only enslaved Mudblood Hermione knows the famous composer Voldemort's darkest secret. TMR/HG/DM Author's Note: so, confession: I suck at fending off the plotbunnies. *feeds one a fanfiction-carrot* Hopefully it'll only be a few chapters, but I say that every time. Disclaimer: the HP universe does not belong to me; I am just borrowing.
Act One: Andante "Hurry up! Red in the face and admittedly a bit out of breath, Hermione jammed her feet into the plain black shoes that she wore every day that were much too small, and stumbled out of her quarters that she shared with all of the other maids. "Miss Pansy's going to have a fit when she sees your hair," warned another maid, Angelina, a bit crossly. It was the arrival of the infamous new composer of the court, who went by the name of Voldemort, that was really stirring up things. "I heard he's beautiful," gossiped Angelina as they tumbled out of the side entrance into the muddy alleyway. "Damned Mudblood. Empire's 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time.
100 Healthy Study Snacks You Should Reach For Instead. November 16th, 2010 Studying can be hard work, and you’ll need some serious brain fuel to get you through acing that exam and breezing through getting your degree. Yet the foods many students reach for when they’re deep in a study session are often not only unhealthy, but not exactly ideal choices for energy, concentration and boosting your brainpower. Instead of going for salty, sweet or fatty snacks — however satisfying they may be — try these healthy alternatives instead. Your grades, your brain and your waistline will thank you.
Instead of Potato Chips Those crispy taters are delicious, but these snacks are healthier and pack more of a nutritional punch. Popcorn. Instead of Unhealthy Dips and Spreads Just because you’re not loading stuff up with heaps of Cheese Whiz and ranch dressing doesn’t mean you have to go without. Salsa. Instead of Pre-Packaged, Processed Snacks These snacks may be convenient, but they’re often packed with sodium, sugar and a wide range of chemicals. Cheese. Moon For Sale: A Confession. When I was young, I thought that I would be able to breathe underwater. Water was, to me, just a thin film that covered an area of air, until I decided to fill my bathroom sink with water.
In the end, I ended up inhaling water and figured out that water takes up space and is not just a thin film that sat above air. When I was a bit older living in California, I held on to the side of a swimming pool and took a lap around the pool until my hands slipped and I fell into the deep end and when I woke up, I was on the floor beside the pool coughing up water. I am scared of swimming. I am not afraid of eating alone. I have been in fights. Writing is a way for me to forget that I exist even if I write about myself. I know more about Chinese history than I do about Korean history.
I love you. Tagged Atomic Bomb, Bolano, Breathing under water, China, Confessions, Death, Drowning, Fear, growing up, Hemingway, Life, loxe-sex, north korea, NYU, Poe, Uncategorized, Westchester. Ten gemstones that are rarer than diamond. M.guardian.co.uk. A palliative nurse has recorded the top five regrets of the dying. Photograph: Montgomery Martin/Alamy There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'.
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware: 1. "This was the most common regret of all. 2. "This came from every male patient that I nursed. 3. "Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. 4. 5. "This is a surprisingly common one. Soraya Chemaly: 10 Reasons the Rest of the World Thinks the U.S. Is Nuts. This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they "naturally" go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy for pregnant cows and pigs in the same situation.
I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too. Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden. The right to life. Nostalgia For Everything. December 21, 1992|By ANDREI CODRESCU This time of the year for some reason I get filled with nostalgia like a Jules Verne balloon. I'm like Marcel Proust who smelled a cookie and couldn't stop remembering.
Wood fires are my cookie. I remember walking through an old square in my hometown in Romania, late fall 1958, kicking leaves with my feet and feeling as nostalgic as I do now for something I remembered then. I remember sitting on the step of the Santa Maria Maggiore cathedral in Rome in 1965 eating an apple while everything turned to nostalgic gold around me. I sat in a steamy cafe by the Spanish Steps later with a bitter hot espresso looking wistfully on the fashions of the year 1965, miniskirts and polka dots, and feeling so terribly young and alone.
I remember the wind whistling with snowflakes in it down Woodward Avenue in Detroit as I looked for a warm place to sit and contemplate the future year 1967, for which I already felt nostalgic though it hadn't even happened.