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| went to the university of adelaide open day today, got many freebies and discovered many of the new courses offered, like media studies and chinese translating courses. like how cool is that :) it teaches you how to professionally translate english texts to chinese, and chinese texts to english. it's pretty amazing :) we went today with aunty grace, uncle colin, tim, nat and kim, and a. grace made us some amazing sandwiches with pickles in them, first time eating pickles, i though they were anchovies!! :) kim and i took the brown bread sandwiches, i love my brown bread!! sorry for the lack of updates. been busy with my real life ahahahh :) don't check this space, i won't be updating much, there's a serious overload of assignments, like right now i have to do a toy for child studies. like what?!!!? haha who does toys for assignments. but, well, i guess it's alright :) daddy just went home! hope he'll have a fantastic time back there. well, it's gonna be bonding time with my sisters :) i haven't been updating my twitter as well, have i!!! loved today and the wonderful dinner (and thank you a. grace for the lunch - CHICKPEAS!!!!!) I love chickpeas!!!!! Chickpeas are like, the best things ever. waaay better than lentils or borlotti beans or all those. :) will end off here for now, have a good week babes!!! xx | | |
| Chapter 4
By the time Ivan went to high school, he could only speak English but managed to understand a phrase, here and there, in the kitchen language repertoire of his family. Grandmother Sophia, who joined them from the old country, was heartbroken about this because she needed a interpreter to speak to her own grandson, whom she worshipped. Slav grandmothers are crazy about their grandchildren. Grandma considered it her duty to take part in her grandson's upbringing. That activity would have made her feel needed, useful and wanted. But since she could not communicate with Ivan, she was unable to discharge her perceived obligation, therefore she felt useless, unwanted and a burden. She had to content herself with helping with the housework. Without the means of passing on the accumulated wisdom of her years, she felt relegated from the position of honoured matriarch, to a kitchen help.
At least, that is how Grandma Sophia felt about the matter.
Kosta Borisov was busy preparing fish tackle and bait, one weekend, and said enthusiastically to Ivan, "We are going to Rapid Bay tomorrow. It's about time you and I went fishing together."
"No thanks, Dad. I am going surfing with my friends from school." Ivan said.
Kosta was taken aback by the reply, as this was the first time that Ivan had refused to go fishing with him. Fishing was the one activity left that the two of them had been sharing lately. His son was growing further and further away from him. Fishing for Kosta was really only a kind of ritual of sharing an activity with his son. Back in the old country, they could have tilled the fields together, attended to the animals on their farm, joined in the men's get-together after dusk around the coffee shop to exchange stories and gossip, planned the next day's work. Their relationship would have been tied not only with the bond of blood but with the bond of a way of life. Here in Australia, their way of life was heading further and further in different directions.
In Adelaide, Kosta's ambitions for his son were being realised. Ivan was a good student and he would go far in his education. But the achievement of a dream was expanding the gap between Ivan and his family. Conversation with Ivan was getting more and more difficult, and Kosta found himself searching his mind for a topic that would at least allow him to exchange words with his son, that would pass for communication. The events, or non-events, during and after fishing, had always supplied Kosta with a point of contact with his son. Kosta didn't care about catching fish, but he did care about talking to Ivan about it. And now, the last point of contact was to go. Ivan was going surfing with his friends, not fishing with his father. Kosta did not mind that as such, the boy was entitled to enjoy himself with his friends, but he had a feeling that Ivan wasn't coming with him this time - or any other time. Kosta felt rejected and it hurt. How would he start the next conversation with Ivan? He could just hear it all.
"How is school, Ivan?"
"All right."
"What did you learn in school today?"
"You wouldn't understand if I told you, Dad."
"How was surfing?
"All right."
End of conversation, kraj, konjec, finito. Kosta would not even be able to say, "How about that big trevally we almost caught off the jetty at Rapid Bay?" There would be no reference point of a shared experience.
Kosta sighed. He thought sadly, "Well there is always the weather. May God be thanked for providing the weather for a conversation topic. Who knows, maybe a spar and a response could be drawn from my son by a mundane topic like the weather." But Kosta knew that he was only kidding himself.
When Ivan was little, he used to go along with his parents to visit friends and relations. He went to weddings and christenings, name-days and birthdays. He used to go to the community hall, too, on special occasions like the Feast of Kyril and Methody, and joined in the traditional ethnic dances of his community, where young and old, boys and girls, men and women, all joined in. It was tremendous fun. He could play with children of his own age, while his Mum and Dad danced or talked to their friends only feet away from him. They went together and returned home together. Many a time a tired but happy Ivancho fell asleep in the car and his parents would gently put him to bed. On waking in the morning, he could never remember how he had got into bed.
Ivan came home excitedly from school one day, after his sixteenth birthday.
"I've been invited to a show tonight," he said.
"What picture are you going to see?" his mother asked.
"Not a picture," he said irritably. "I am going to a party. One of the guys at school has a birthday."
Argira could sense the irritation in his voice.
Grandmother Sophia commented, "I could not understand what Ivancho said, but I didn't like the way he said it."
Argira said soothingly, "The boy is excited about his first party, where he goes on his own, that's why he is a little impatient. He didn't mean to be nasty." Unconvinced by the explanation. Grandmother Sophia shook her head, sighed and went on with her knitting.
After the evening meal and Ivan's shower, there was a flurry on what Ivan was to wear to the party. He flatly turned down every suggestion his mother made, until she withdrew to the kitchen, sighing, "He has plenty of nice clothes to choose from. Let him decide."
A long time seemed to go by before Ivan came out of his room ready to go. His mother stared and Grandma Sophia's jaw dropped. Ivan stood there wearing his faded blue jeans and a well worn T-shirt. Slung over his shoulder was his old blue jumper. True, everything was clean and neatly pressed.
Argira was going to say something, but she stopped herself. Then she ventured tentatively, in a soft voice, "Aren't you at least going to wear that nice pullover that grandma knitted for you?"
"I am not wearing any poofy pullovers," said Ivan. Now it was Ivan's turn to lower his voice. Shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot, he said more humbly, "Do you think Dad will let me have the car?"
His mother nodded and went out. A murmur of voices was heard. Kosta came in, handed Ivan the car keys and said, "Enjoy yourself, but drive carefully."
That night Argira learnt what it was like to lie awake, listening to every approaching car, holding her breath periodically, in order to hear better. There was a tightness in her stomach that prevented her from breathing normally. She found herself taking shallow, rapid breaths, that seemed to engage only the top of her lungs. She was listening to every approaching car, hoping it was Ivan coming home safe and sound. She learnt to recognise fear, that icy twist in the pit of her stomach.
This experience was to be repeated many times over the next few years, until she became an expert in recognising not only the noise made by a Holden engine, but the engine noise of their particular Holden, from a mile away. The air was unusually still at three or four in the morning and she could hear noises from a long distance away in the silence of the night. That's not the only activity she became an expert in. She also learnt to recognise in her the symptoms of stress and worry, but she kept the discovery to herself. There was no point in telling anyone that when her son was away in the car, she felt sick, had palpitations of the heart, had clammy palms, a dry mouth, was short of breath and had to sigh constantly in order to fill her lungs with the necessary air until he came home. Had she said anything, everyone would have told her not to worry. But you do not simply stop worrying, just because you are told not to worry. She didn't bother to go to the doctor, because she knew that his pills wouldn't cure her. When everyone she loved was safe, happy and well, she had no symptoms. Argira was simple and uneducated but she possessed acute powers of observation and deduction, and acted accordingly.
One by one, Ivan gave up all the activities that he had shared with his family and those that had related him to his parents' community. He stopped going to ethnic dancing and refused to go to any function organised by the community. He became moody and distant and spent a lot of his time with his football club mates. He always went to their parties. Argira, somehow, had the impression that all these parties were rather joyless events. They seemed more like an obligatory 'roaming with the pack' ritual, as though, by detaching himself from one social contact, Ivan had to attach himself to another. There was a compulsion here that came from a set of rules and values she was not familiar with.
One Sunday lunchtime, just after Ivan got up after a party, she asked him, "Did you enjoy yourself last night?"
"Oh - yeah," he said without enthusiasm.
"What do you do at a party?" she asked rather naively.
"Oh - we have a few drinks and listen to records."
"Is that all?" She knew that she was asking for trouble now, but braced herself either for a rebuff or the answer you get when asking a stupid question.
Surprisingly, neither came. Ivan said matter of factly, "Oh, we just muck around. Some get glassy-eyed around the keg, and won't budge while there is any beer left in it."
Argira had found him in a rare moment when he was apparently prepared to talk, be it ever so little. Should she press her luck and ask about girls? She weighed up the possibility of him crawling back into his shell as a result of that question, but took the risk. "Did you meet any nice girls?" she said.
Ivan shot hr a glance of such ferocity that she thought to herself, "My God, now I've done it. It will be at least three months before he will be drawn out in any way again."
"Yes, there were girls there," he said and left the room.
Chapter 5
A succession of years followed that were marked by 'wins' and 'losses' for the Borisovs. Ivan did well at school, university and medical school. The wins were for all those who were impressed by achievement and the losses for all those who loved. Argira did everything for the young stranger in the house. He ate with them, lived with them, but he was not one of them.
Then one day Ivan informed Argira that he wanted to leave home and go flatting. She was too numb with shock to respond. The sky fell in on her. She put on a brave face and explained to Grandma Sophia that it was the custom in Australia for young people to leave their comfortable homes and go and live in some hovel for a while.
Grandma Sophia would not be consoled. She pulled her black head scarf from her head and, clutching it, started rocking on her chair, clasping her hands and sobbing. It had been a long time since Argira had seen an old woman in a pose close to that adopted when keening for the dead.
Suddenly Grandma stopped and said, "In the old days, you had to prove you were a man, by performing all kinds of feats of endurance. I suppose, in Australia, you prove your manhood by leaving home and living in a dump. It's a weird form of initiation. Now I understand."
Instantly, she stopped crying and went about her business. Argira was so happy that Grandma had worked out a theory of consolation for herself that she did not enlighten her about the custom of young girls also leaving their parents' place to go flatting. She was curious about Grandma's response, but decided it was safer to withhold that information from her. For Argira, much of life's meaning went with Ivan. It was not his absence, as such, that bothered her. She had expected him to set up his own household some day. It was the lack of communication that hurt: real communication, a meaningful conversation, not just small-talk.
She told Kosta that she was both looking forward to, and dreading his graduation day from medical school. He smiled sadly and said, "Oh, you mean the gain-a-doctor, lose-a-son day?"
"Yes," she said, choking with emotion.
It was a proud day for Kosta and Argira Borisov. They sat up in the gallery of Bonython Hall at Adelaide University, straining their eyes to pick out Ivan among the black-robed graduates. The ceremony was impressive. They took in every detail, so they could tell Grandma Sophia all about it.
When they met Ivan later on the Elder Conservatorium lawn, they felt pleased, but awkward and inarticulate. All those clever, sophisticated people, and Ivan was part of their world! Ivan was fussing over a pretty young woman, also dressed in a graduation fown.
"Will he introduce her to us?" wondered Argira.
A group of friend around the young woman asked Ivan out to dinner. He looked embarrassed, but Kosta helped his indecision by saying, "That's all right. You go along with your friends. Your mother and I have some business in town anyway."
Kosta was driving home, his face composed. Only a faint twitch of the muscle above his jaw gave any indication of emotional struggle. Argira sat next to him in silence. There was pride of achievement in her mind, and the pain of rejection in her heart. She wondered vaguely what explanation she would offer to Vaniel and Sevda, who were coming to the family dinner at home, that she and Grandma Sophia had been preparing for the last two days.
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| The Young Stranger by Victoria Zabukovec
Chapter 1
One the first day of entering infant school Ivan concluded what he had long suspected, namely, that there was something wrong with his parents. He had felt uneasily, for some time, that they were different from the parents of the other children in the street.
To start with, they spoke differently at home. Rodney, the kid next door, called it 'jabbering in a foreign lingo'. That was the day Ivan stopped answering his parents in Bulgarian when there was someone around, because he wanted to talk in English, not jabber in Bulgarian. On the first day of school, he felt awkward when his mother was trying to explain something to the stern looking, bespectacled lady, who later turned out to be his teacher. He wished she were like other mothers, who did not speak haltingly, groping for words. He was not sympathetic to her predicament. He was embarrassed and learned for the first time what it was like to feel ashamed. That was an emotion he was to get to know well in the coming years.
He shuffled his feet and looked on the ground at an imaginary spot in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the other kids, some of whom were watching him. It was painful. His mother was gesticulating, as gestures helped her to express herself, but Ivan could not know that. All he knew was that his mother was waving her arms about, nodding her head, pointing to something and in general was drawing attention to herself - and him - and he didn't like that at all.
Finally, after what seemed ages, the bespectacled lady nodded with benign condescension and said, "Leave everything to us ...er ... Mrs....er...." She looked into the nominal roll she was carrying. "Leave it all to us, Mrs. Borisov," she said. "We will deal with him."
Mrs. Borisov made a friendly bow to the teacher, said goodbye smilingly and bent towards Ivan, telling him in Bulgarian that he was to be a good boy, not to forget to eat his lunch and that she would pick him up at the end of the day. Ivan tried not to look at her. He imagined that all eyes were on him. He wished that his mother would just go away and leave him alone. And he wished that she had not spoken to him in that other language. The kids all heard it!
The day passed in a whirl of new impressions. Lining up in rows. The new classroom. Getting to know other children. Singing, playing, activities. He couldn't remember much of this first day, except the drinking taps that spouted water upwards, and the wobble of Mrs. Speck's double chin as she spoke.
When his mother came to pick him up, she took him by the hand, as she had always done. He pulled his hand away with determination and merely walked beside her. She looked surprised, but said nothing.
Chapter 2
It was not that Ivan was not fond of his parents. He was. His mother and his older sister, Veska, showered him with affection, cuddled and kissed him. His father used to ruffle up his hair and slap him on his back, while grinning with a smile in his eyes, not just on his lips. His Uncle Vaniel would slip him twenty cents every time he saw him. On church feast days, or someone's name day, he would slip him a two dollar note. Come birthday time, Ivan knew that he would get ten dollars from Uncle Vaniel, who would wink impishly at him, slap him on the shoulder with a force enough to dislocate his shoulder joint, and whisper in his ear so that everyone around could hear, "Here, buy yourself something, but don't tell anyone how much I gave you."
Ivan's Aunt Sevda was a good sort too, always brought him chocolates and sweets. The one thing he didn't like about her was that she used to give him a big sloppy kiss on the cheek, which felt wet, and he always had to wipe his cheek with his sleeve afterwards.
In general, he had his fair share of cuddles, kisses, squeezes, pummelling, slapping, hair ruffling, and being fussed over in cooing voices. When he was little, all this made him feel good inside. While his father's eyes smiled with a mellow blue glow, Ivan's eyes scattered blue sparks when they lit up with happiness. At home they called him 'Ivancho', with the 'i' pronounced as in 'inside'. Ivancho meant 'little Ivan', and was used as a term of endearment. For over five years, that is the name he had been answering to, until one day at school the other kids heard his mother call him Ivancho, when she came to pick him up. A big, freckle-faced, red-haired boy, called Darryl, picked up the name and started yelling: "Ivancho! Ivancho!" while laughing with derision. A few other kids joined in. Before long, a chorus of laughing kids were chanting in unison, "Ivancho, Ivancho."
Ivan was petrified. Tears of fear, anger, embarrassment and confusion welled up in his eyes.
"Why are they shouting your name like that?" asked his mother. "Have you done something wrong?"
"It is you who have done something wrong," he said to his mother. "You must not call me Ivancho when there are others around."
His mother looked sad and perplexed, but said nothing.
That day became a kind of landmark, a point of divergence in Ivan's life. The experience with his name merely confirmed a string of previous impressions, which has vaguely put him on guard. The Ivancho episode finally sounded the alarm in his mind. There had been other incidents, for which he had developed self-defence mechanisms. Like the school lunches his mother prepared for him. He enjoyed his mother's cooking - things like stuffed capsicums with meat and rice, grilled aubergine and pepper salad, moussaka, stuffed wine leaves, savoury rice pilaf and many other delicious dishes, but she didn't seem to be able to cut a decent school lunch. She cut the bread too thick, and piled on so much salami, cheese and tomatoes into it that he had just about had to dislocate his jaw to take a bite. The first time he did that, the kids laughed at him. He solved that problem pretty neatly. The first thing he did on arriving at school was to go to the nearest rubbish tin and throw his cut lunch away. He only kept the fruit his mother gave him. Since that did not stop the pangs of hunger in his belly, he spent his pocket money in the school tuckshop and bought the things he saw the other kids buying: potato crisps, toffies, lollies and ice blocks. Even Mrs. Speck noticed it and commented to the other teachers, "Some of these women are so ignorant, they wouldn't know what a nutritious lunch is. Or maybe they just don't care."
His mother, however, was delighted with his appetite when he came home from school. When his sister Veska said, "Anyone would think you haven't been fed for a week," his mother would say good-naturedly, "But he is a growing boy, he must eat."
As time went by, Ivan set several self-defence mechanisms into action. One was the two-world mechanism. As he discovered that certain things were approved by the world outside his home and family, and others were not, he acted accordingly. Children are very logical creatures and Ivan was no exception.
Ivan realized vaguely that behaviours the kids and his teacher approved of were not the same as those that his mother and the rest of his family approved of. He resolved that problem with his customary logic. He adopted one kind of behaviour at home, and another kind outside it. At home he sat with the adults, listened to their stories, climbed on his mother's lap, allowed his sister to spoil him, enjoyed the jokes of Uncle Vaniel, went fishing with his father, stuffed himself with his mother's good cooking and, in general, was a happy, delightful little boy.
Outside, however, he never went near a member of his family, for fear that they might speak to him in that foreign language in front of others, did not wish to be around when his mother spoke broken English. He associated only with kids roughly his own age. He ate pies, pasties, chips and lollies from the shop and learnt to swear in the obligatory manner. Swearing was required in the boyhood hierarchy because it showed you were independent, defiant, aggressive, contemptuous and a man.
He had heard his uncle swear, but never his father. Ivan even wondered whether he ought to draw a conclusion from that. Most of the boys, and some of the girls at school, swore, in order to show that they could do what the adults did, for emphasis and as a status symbol. All the adult threats of, "I'll wash your mouth out with soap," didn't do any good, because every kid knew that they needed the soap for themselves first.
Ivan's neat little formula of living in two worlds actually worked for a few years - until his teens, that is. Then the outside world started reaching into his inside world; tearing at it, shaking it, and fighting to displace it. The battle for Ivan's mind, soul, allegiance, loyalty, values that shaped his life, in short, his identity, was on. The victims of the battle were numerous, and it is still being disputed whether there were any winners - apart from the powerful outside world, that is.
Chapter 3
Ivan was in grade three when Mrs. Speck, whom he had the misfortune to have as a teacher for the third consecutive year, informed him that if he wanted to do well at school, he had to make his parents speak English at home. She told him that his essays showed a limited vocabulary, a faulty sentence structure and a lack of punctuation. Speaking English at home would improve all that.
Now Ivan did agree in principle with Mrs. Speck that his parents ought to speak good English. What he couldn't quite see was how their broken and incorrect English, much worse than his own, would improve his English. Another thing that puzzled him was that Mrs. Speck had told at least twenty other kids in the class that they had a limited vocabulary, faulty sentence structure and non-existent punctuation. And their parents could only speak English, - at home or anywhere else.
However, he did comply partly with Mrs. Speck's order. When his parents spoke to him in Bulgarian, Ivan answered in English. After doing that for a while, he couldn't have answered in his mother tongue, even if he wanted to. His knowledge of two languages was successfully reduced to one.
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| just finished work experience at k-mart, and it was a new experience. usually when i tried on a shoe or two, i would just throw it by the side and leave it there. now i really know how it feels like to go around picking all these shoes thrown everywhere - which is why i'm never ever going to throw them by the side again. just got back home, and got lindt chocolate from k-mart :> feeling so tired now. haha, i was going around picking shoes, pasting price-tags and packing boots by colour - and miss. cavell came to see me, and she just stood by my side super quietly and asked, "is there a boot in my size?" when i was on the pedestal and i was in the kids section. people even asked me whether i found work experience fun. hahahah, oh yeah.... fun ;) i can't wait for the school week to be over. even if i have a break of only two weeks, that's more than enough. i need a break for the term, feeling so exhausted. i rushed all my assignments and made sure the teachers got it by last friday so i didn't need to rush anything this week + work experience, that's more than enough!
gonna make dakjuk for my family once work experience is over...
haven't been updating for long, i guess. just a quick update, and popiah for dinner :> nomnomnom | | |
| it's one more month (or maybe less than a month) approaching to my birthday and i don't feel the same.... but it still will be the sexycrab month. love you amanda wee ♥ | | |
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