Fam-bam

While reading many blogs from my peer's, I encountered a thought-provoking post published by, Jessica Chen:

Part of my mom’s family was from Lima, Peru where they could only speak Spanish and Chinese. It was tough to have family members that could speak Spanish because all my cousins would talk to each other in Spanish. I know... I know I took Spanish class in sixth grade for a half year, however; I still don’t understand a word they were saying, they speak too fast. Sometimes I feel like they were talking about me because they would say my Chinese name during their conversation. It was irritating to hear them talk in Spanish.

Jessica's relation with her family members is closely related to a few of my family's experience. Considering that I am first generation born in the United States, I have a different interpretation about life, school, activities, and entertainments. And while we have conversations with one another, I can see that difference between us. 

Family members come from different places; they may know more that you culturally, traditionally, and religiously, especially if it is one of your younger cousins, this may make you feel depressed or remorseful about yourself. I totally do.  For example, when my cousins, Layla, five years old, and Hanna, eleven years old from Saudi Arabia came to visit my family, they know how to speak Tigrinya (the Eritrean language) AND Arabic. I felt humiliated and guilty. This is because my little cousins, who are still in elementary school, know how to read, write, and speak in three languages, which includes English, and I can barely understand Tigrinya and Arabic. Shame, shame, shame. That is all I can say...

And during the three-weeks they visited for, my brother, sister, and I had to start reading the Holy Quarn (the Islamic Bible) and we were amateurs compared to those experts, and I felt disturbed. This is because they were assisting us. It was like a baby nurturing their mother. It's just wrong. That was a pretty good analogy, by the way...

All in all, family is family. You may have your ups and downs, but the love will remove the acrimony. People cannot change others because of their dissimilarities; you just have to work around it.