The book "Funny in Farsi" appeals me more than "The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency". The book “Funny in Farsi” mainly talks about the author’s, who is an Iranian, memoir growing up in America. The theme has a little bit relation with my situation. I want to know how is the author's life like, so it attracts me more. Moreover some of the chapters are funny.
The "The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency" makes me confuse some time. It jumps in contextual chapters. For example, I read chapter six but cannot know what happens then, and the following chapters almost have no connection with that till the end of the story. That is very different from the books I have read in the past. Most of the books I have read before tell a big story in the whole book or more than one book. Things going on in order of time in all. Few of them tell different little story in each chapter, like the "Funny in Farsi". I feel satisfaction after reading the two books. It is not very hard to understand the stories. And I feel that my English improved a little after reading the books. But sometimes the details are not clear. I think I will try to read more books like “Funny in Farsi”.
There is no comparison between the two books, “The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” and “Interpreter of Maladies”. When the previous book is a chocolate bar, the next book is curry. I do like both chocolate and curry. Let me more explain about curry. First of all, the author of the second book is Indian-American, so this reminds me curry, which is the most famous Indian food in the world. It is so delicious and tasty food, and easy to make. Although it is not a fancy menu at a restaurant, I have been always with it unconsciously while I do not realize that curry is wonderful. Most characters in the book are Indian-Americans who have a self-conflict in themselves. They have been looking forward to chichi lifestyle, American culture, but they have been neglecting their inherent lifestyle, Indian culture. Their behavior can be explained by eating curry. They eat curry and another their traditional food at home, but they do not know that eating curry means they play and succeed their native culture. The previous book is funnier, easier, and more amusing than the second book. The second book is more impressive, considerable, and inspiring than the first book. Hence, I cannot compare the two books, but I have learned a lesson that reading a book is like eating rich food. Whenever I ingest carbohydrate, protein, and vitamin, my organs automatically take care of the ingredients and make me physically alive. Then, whenever I read fiction, non-fiction, and even textbooks, my brain spontaneously performs thinking and let me psychologically alive. Reading the two books in fourteen weeks gives me a chance improving my reading skills in both quality ways and quantity ways.
We live in the world which is getting closer and closer. And this book describes the lives of people who live in America as strangers. There are nine chapters, and each story is short and different. Frankly speaking, I don’t like the atmosphere of this book because every story is too depressing and melancholy, and this book always treats depressing and gloomy topics. But the stories are around our lives, so I can understand their emotions and lives. Even though the stories are too sad, the end of every story is happy end. And I could think about lots of emotions and my life. The part of what I read the most impressive is chapter nine “The third and final continent.” There is a guy who is from Calcutta, and he lives in New York now. He lived in London for a while, so he has had a vague loneliness in his whole life. He got marry with a woman whose name is Mala by the arranged match, and as time goes by, they are accustomed to each other and new life.
I’m not sure which book is better than the other one. Both book’s characters are humane, and they give me something to think about this world. The background of “No.1 detective” was so special, so I could get lots of interesting facts. And Indians of “Interpreter of Maladies” has their own religion and culture, so it gives me attractive facts too.
I’ve never read any other English novel before I began this semester. I tried to read “Life of Pi” because I’m really interested in religion, but it was not easy to read. I used to be stuck on some vocabularies, so I couldn’t keep reading. However, I’m going to read it again after this semester. I got some confidence to read English novel, and I’m sure it was really helpful to me.
The final reflection about interpreter of maladies.
“Interpreter of maladies “by Jhumpa Lahiri was very impresses and sad at the same time. The interpreter of maladies is a young writer. That captures the contexts lives of immigrants, traveling India to America and discussion the journey about people lives as an immigrant in India and America cultural. At the beginning it is very depressing story and sad. However, the story continue it get better each episode. In somehow I personally did not like the book. However I prefer the # one private detective agency, which means I was more connected to Mma Ramotswe story. And she had great story, and she is very independent women and educated has well.Even though the book consists of different small stories, they are all connected together, and the last story explains more about the point of view on life and relationship between people.
Have you ever had family members that belonged to a political group organization in any country? Do you know how it feels to have most of your family involved in politics? This is my story. I was born into a family that had political connections and an organization that my uncle just has in Guinea. Before my uncle started his political groups, our family usedto be a happy family. However, my family fell a part because of his activities with the government of Guinea. My uncle was the leader of the RPG, which stands for Rassemblement du People of Guinea. My family belonged to that one political group organization in my country, and this relationship to the R P G had profound effects onmy family.
Inthe 1990’s my uncle was arrested and imprisoned by the Guinean government. I believed that was because he was trying to change the country. His political program was focused on the Guinean, economy and the development of Guinea. The reason why he was focusing on those elements was because the country has all the natural resource but the population was poor. He mission was to focus on the development of Guinea. Because we needed it at that time. Since Guinea became independent in 1954, the country only had two presidents. Because they were selfish and they did not care about welfare of their citizens, he started talking about the economy in Guinea, but no one was willing to consider his word. Guinea Conakry supplies water to all of African continent and the country is very rich in natural resources; he wanted to changes many things which would have benefits people in Guinea. Somehow, the government found it out that my father was the financial supporter of my uncle activities, so they came after him. The reason why my father was helping my uncle was because my uncle had the vision for the development of Guinea .However my father had opportunity to help the country, and he love his country; He also had the money to give him.
When the government came after my father, they arrested him and later they killed by Guinean government. There is nothing that my mother can do about it, so she became depressed, and she became ill. My aunt take care us while my mother were sick. I was only too young when it happened. Now the only thing I know that my uncle was a politician, and my father was his financial supporter .Now I know what it means to be a politician in Africa because it means putting your family in danger. For example Celiou Dalien Diallo now is running for president in Guinea. In 2008, he was beaten almost to death and sent to France, later that night the military armed came after he family while he was at hospital in France.
Another consequence of my uncle involvement was that my father young sister was arrested too and sent to prison. However, she managed to escape from the prison. Finally, my family was exiled to Senegal. After my family had the problems with the government. And my father was killed, my uncle still in prison. That meant, we did not families have anybody to stay with in Guinea. My mother, my aunt and my other five siblings went to Senegal to stay with my mother family. Since my mother was born in Senegal capital Dakar and she still has family there it was perfect place for us to live. Thankfully my aunt was there to take care of us, while mother was sick. My brothers and sisters and I went to school in Dakar. My aunt left us with our mother and she went to Europe. Three years later, she got my oldest sister a visa. I believed they worked extra hard to bring my oldest brother and me. Unfortunately, not all my siblings have been lucky an enough to go to Europe. We still have two more there in Senegal, because it is hard to get a visa now.
In conclusion, these political connections meant that my family experienced an inordinate amount of beating, and killing that effect our childhood. I think that our family fears harm or mistreatment if we return to Guinea. We don’t have anything to do in Guinea. Unfortunately, we still have my young brother and my young sister in Dakar. My uncle was released in December 2003and he is now running a business in Senegal. He is no longer a politician. We all hope, however my country will become better country in the future.
I prefer ‘Red Azalea’ than ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’. Actually, I can’t compare those two books for ‘Red Azalea’ is much better than the other one. When I read ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’, I couldn’t feel any interesting facts. It was extremely ordinary book to me. I just read the book for finish my homework. The story couldn’t reach of my expectation. On the other hand, I couldn’t stop reading ‘Red Azalea’. It was very interesting book, and I learned many things about china’s history. Sometimes, the author made me happy and sad. Her un-normal experiences made her strong and smart. That’s why I really love her character. There are bunch of difficult word, which I have never seen, but I just ignored difficult words and I kept reading. I really love to read like books, magazines and newspaper. I would keep reading until I understand books without dictionary.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Donna Krol ESL 100 (Writing First) November 26, 2010
Final Reflection – Funny in Farsi
I like better book “Funny in Farsi” than “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”. I feel closer to the author Firoozeh Dumas. I experienced so many similar situations to her life in the USA as an immigrant. From perspective some of them now look funny but at that time incidents felt more like tragedy. In first book I learned about life in Botswana which was very interesting. I didn’t know much about Africa, so it was very enlightening for me. I learned many interesting episodes from life of Mma Ramotswe, first lady detective in her country. Everything for me was very exotic. However book “Funny in Farsi” is closer to my heart. For many people of different nationality life of Firoozeh in the U.S. is somehow familiar. I think a lot of immigrants experienced alike situations. Book was fascinating and written with humor, which is a big advantage. Those two books are very diverse from what I used to read. When I was at school, I had to read book assigned by a teachers. Those books were written by classic writers and poets from different countries. They were meant to teach us about history of literature of the world. I hated Greek tragedies like “Antigone” by Sophocles and I hated Shakespeare, because of old, hard to understand language. My first book in English when I came to Chicago was “Islands of the Stream” by Earnest Hemmingway, when I learned spelling of all bad words. For my pleasure I was reading mysteries and romances. I don’t have much time for reading books but I love to read magazines like “National Geographic”, “Prevention”, and ladies journals. If I have to read book assigned in school I will do it gladly. I know that I learn something new and interesting.
The book “Interpreter of maladies “by Jhumpa Lahiri left me with a nice, puzzled impression, which is the aim of the author – to make you think about simple and at the same time incomprehensible meaning of the life. Even though the book consists of different small stories, they are all connected together, and the last story explains more about Lahiri’s point of view on life and relationship between people. In all stories Lahiri writes about Indian people connected to the American culture. The author describes characters and events through the eyes of one character. The interesting thing is that those character usually a man. The author of the book, Indian origin, goes deep into her main character’s thoughts and feeling, revealing his, sometimes uncomfortable and frustrating, inner world. Lahiry pay a lot of attention on the most ordinary, subtle thoughts and fears, which occurs in the head of the main characters. She is bringing the unsweetened inner micro cosmoses of the main characters, showing their doubts and mental struggle to understand and except the world and people around them. As I was reading the stories, I didn’t stop to be surprised and captured by the accuracy of Lahiry observation of man’s thoughts and behavior. Sometimes it was really frustrating for me to realized that I also have similar experience in life, besides I don’t know what kind of thoughts my husband has. I noticed that the main characters usually possessed strengs, but at the same time they very weak and don’t know what love is, they see their spouse like a stranger, intruder in their life, however excepting them altogether like a necessary, inevitable event in life, similar to death or a birth. The most disappointing part in all the stories for me was an absence of any romantic feelings, passion, or attraction of characters to each other. Such attitude related to the peculiarities of Indian Culture, to the Hindu religion of acceptance and not questioning your destiny, life and circumstances. The man, like a main character, also is the clever way to show the male dominance in Indian culture. Women’s happiness and wellbeing depends on man, and it makes man’s doubts and weaknesses loom bigger in the eyes of the reader.
Author used humorous writing skill to tell us what her life is. The stories in her life are funny. They always made me laugh. I also felt there is so much love and happy in her life. It is a great book for people who immigrated to the United States and learning English, like me. Through the book, I was not only reading a funny story, but also let me got a model of how to handle two cultures when they were shocking. Reader can have fun to know more about American culture and immigrants’ experiences from reading this book.
Interpreter of melodies The book the Interpreter of melodies is constructed of many short depressing stories which are based on true life. Although, all the stories that I read were very impressive the one that interested me the most was “The treatment of Bibi Holder”. The story began describing how Bibi Holder suffered from an ailment, which no one was able to cure or figure out. In the book Bibi was also described as a woman who had lost her father and was living and sleeping in the corridor from the Holder Family. One day the Holder Family toked het to one of the best doctors, and the doctor said that all she needed to be cure was a husband. After that Bibi was taught how to talk to man, but she was never able to find one. Soon after tha,t the family which she use to live with abandon her, At the end of the story Bibi became a single mother and was happy at last, although the father of the baby remain a mystery.
The book ”The Joy Luck Club” written by Amy Tam talks about four Chinese women-drawn together by the shadow of their past-begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and 'say' stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club. I enjoyed this book immensely. All four of the mothers had such high hopes for their daughters that they wouldn’t have to deal with any of the disasters to survive in their childhoods. It was so interesting. Then, their daughters thought of their mothers’ old-fashioned, old school Chinese ways; how they felt they could never live up to their mothers’ high expectations and creating incredible internal conflicts for all four daughters. This is the first book of Amy tam that I have read, and I really enjoyed the way she wrote it, or may because I am also Chinese. But sometimes the book seems a little bore. It totally talks about common lift of people. I still recommend this people for college students. It is easy to understand and close to lift.
The book “The Joy luck club” by Amy Tam review about four woman and their daughters in “The joy luck club” and telling how to guide each other in in America. When I first time to read the book, it was not easy to understand because I didn’t who was talking about the story. After you read a few page, you could easy to understand what was talking about. The major purpose of the book is telling the culture between China and America. At the begin of four stories, they always statement their relationship whit mother and daughter. Women all will think about the future of their as a mother. They might think what their children do and teach what they do. In the story, they created a club in America, they party among themselves, play mahjong, and share secrets and gossips about their lives and other things. At the end, this is a good book for book club; it is not too hard and not too easy. If you understand some Chinese world and name in the story, you might easy to understand it.
“Why we are not living in china if we are Chinese?”It was the question that my brother asked my grandmother some years ago when I was in junior high school.My grandparents’ parents are originally from China, and they moved to Indonesia because they thought that in Indonesia they may have a better life than in China.However around the 1960s, there was a huge moment for Chinese-Indonesians that changed their lives.At that time, there was a war between Chinese-Indonesians and native Indonesians. The rumor was that many Indonesians didn’t like Chinese immigrants; they were envious because Chinese-Indonesians could have better jobs than them.Furthermore, the Indonesian government sent out a warning that all Chinese-Indonesians have to go back to China within a week.On the day that my grandparents were going to leave, there was an announcement from the USA that Indonesian government was not fair and should not make a decision without a clear explanation. The US governments believed that Chinese-Indonesian should be treated equally and have the same rights like the native Indonesian citizens. therefore, the rest of Chinese immigrants who had not gone back to China could prefer either to go back to China or to live in Indonesia.However, if they decided to stay in Indonesia, the Indonesian government could not guarantee their security and safety.My grandparents decided to stay in Indonesia because going back to China meant starting from “zero” because they had nothing over there.From this point forward, my grandparents’ decision has affected our family’s life.
We lost ome family members because of my grandparents’ decision.My grandfather has two sisters that were already married and have children in 1960s.When there was an announcement that Chinese had to go back to China within one week, all of my grandfather’s family had decided it to go back to China. Everything was already planned; my grandfather’s sisters would be going first and my grandfather would go the next day after them because he needed to take care his business before he went.However because of the US announcement, my grandparents decided to stay in Indonesia which meant that they could lose contact with their families.My grandfather didn’t know where his sisters were in China.His sisters’ family who moved to China had nothing over there, there is no house and business/job.Furthermore, there was no technology for communication at that time.Now, it has been a half of century since they went back to China, yet my grandfather still never heard news about his sisters or their whereabouts.
The worst effect of this policy for Chinese-Indonesians happened in June 1998.At that time, the situation for the Indonesian government was really bad. They couldn’t control the native Indonesian communities. This was a big chance for Indonesians to discriminate against Chinese immigrants.They went crazy and became really violent; they burnt Chinese immigrant’s houses and cars, killed Chinese-Indonesians, robbed things that were in the houses and stores, and raped the women.I was seven years old at that time and I remember seeing a lot of smoke around my house area from my balcony.I also heard news from my father and neighbors that a lot of bad things happened around my neighborhood. Luckily, all of my family lived in the safe area, so we survived.However, we had a big traumatic experience from that has been hard to forget.
My family can’t speak Chinese language.Before 2001, there isn’t any Chinese course in Indonesia even though there are a lot of Chinese immigrants over there but no one was allowed to teach or learn the Chinese language.The reason the Indonesia government closed down the Chinese courses, even the small Chinese courses, was because they don’t want to have more Chinese culture spreading around Indonesia.However in 2001, there was finally a change. The new government gave permission to open some small Chinese courses.In the following years there are a lot of big and small Chinese courses in Indonesia; it even spread to some schools.I finally got a chance to have Chinese lesson when I still lived in Indonesia. Even though it was just the basic lesson, I am still grateful to see part of my culture finally come out of the shadow. Right now, even though none of my family can speak Chinese fluently, but all my younger cousins and sister are still learning it at school. My older cousins and brother is the same thing like me, just know the basic. My parents, my uncles and aunts have already felt tired to study so it meant that they won’t be able to learn to speak Chinese.
In conclusion, Indonesia is a beautiful country that has a lot of natural resources; everything is also cheap over there such as worker and life expenses.Those were the reasons why Chinese wanted to stay over there.However, we never expected that native Indonesia could do crazy things like that to us.That moment has become part of history and life changing experience that will be hard to be forgotten. Luckily, things have changed as there is less discrimination to Chinese-Indonesian. But the wound is still there and it is hard for Chinese-Indonesian to be completely healed from that traumatic tragedy.This is the reason why some of my families have decided to rather spend the rest of their life in United States than in Indonesia.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
One Child, Unlimited Burden
Many people said that people who were born after the 1980s were the beginning of a nightmare. This is because in the 1970s in China, the government had a new policy, which was to promote that one couple have only one child. The emergence of this policy affected everyone after 1980’s. In the old society, every average family had four children, so China had become the most populous country in the world. This family planning was ordered to control population growth so that it can improve the living standards and economic prosperity. After this policy was fully implemented, it really influenced a lot of Chinese people who were born after 1980. I was born after 1980, so has this policy influenced me a lot lack of affection, personality and pressure. First of all, when the family planning was implemented, it let me feel the lack of affection and gave me too much special attention. Each family could have one child, and my family was no exception. My parents only have me. This began my lonely childhood. Since I was conscious that I knew I do not have any brothers or sisters, I realized I had nobody to play with me. In fact, I just played with dolls solitarily and played multiple roles by myself every day. This has caused me never know how to share anything with others in my life. It is because as the only child of my parents and grandparents, they have always treated me as a precious pearl. Without any siblings to share their love, I have been as “a little queen” in this family. They have always helped me do anything and make concessions for me. Specifically, they helped me to wash the clothes all the time. As a result, when I was thirteen years old, I still did not know how to wash my clothes. The whole family spoiled me such as the small flower in a greenhouse. This didn’t allow me to learn to be independent.
Moreover, this policy has always made me have some problems with my personality. Growing up, I began to have my own social circles and began to have a boyfriend. Nevertheless, we haven’t known how to tolerate or get along with each other. We have always had a lot of arguments when we got together. It is because we both grew up in one child family. Sometimes we have hurt each other because we have treated everything with apathy and we had mood swings such as a change in the weather, sometimes sunny and sometimes rainy. In love, I have always liked to do what I want; I haven’t cared about him a lot. We both have been self- centered people; and have had a hard time considering the other. We plan to get married and have a child in the future, but if we keep going in this situation, we will divorce and this will not be good for our child. This problem cannot be ignored. Finally, this policy has given me a lot of family stress. In the future, if I get married, my family will become a”421” family which has become popular family style since 1980s. A “421” family means my parents, my parents in-law, my husband, my child and me in the family. We only have one child, so we will have high expectations for him/her. Having a good job is very important to my husband and me because we will be the ones to take care of the burden of family maintenance. We need to make a lot of money to let our child get into top school and have a good education in the future. Therefore, my husband and I have to assume all the cost of this family. We have to consider a lot, not only give them a good living condition but also the mortgage of the house and cars. This is as a heavy cloth wrapper. It is endless. We both are in one child families, so no any siblings can share this great responsibility.
In conclusion, after this one child policy was implemented, it always has given Chinese who were born after 1980s a lot of problems. When numerous problems arise, I as most people who were born after 1980’s, haven’t wanted to grow up and I hope I can always live under the protection of our parents. Indeed, family planning was the burden for the previous generation, but at the same time, it brings a heavier burden to next generation. Many of our generation have lost confidence in our life and love. I hope this legislation will change so that it can solve many lonely childhoods, character effects and family pressure. Let us live more exciting lives.
In 1975, many people were unemployed because of the bad economy in Brazil. At the time, my family`s restaurant had money problems, and because of that my family had to lower the prices to attract more people to come.. In the 1980s and 1990s, Brazil went through a period of high inflation, and because of that, the government decided to change the money plan from the cruzeiro to the real. After the new currency, Brazil started has a better job market and economy. The change in currency helped my family business, helped my family to attain their needs, and helped my relatives to get a better life.
When the currency changed, my family had more money to invest in the business. But before the currency changed, the job market and the economy were so bad. My family tried in so many ways to keep the restaurant running, such as lowering the prices, passing out the flyers, and making advertisements in the news paper. We eventually attracted some people to the restaurant. After the money plan changed from cruzeiro to real, my family took advantage of it to earn money in the restaurant. Then, they became more successful after the economy changed. They also had the chance to expand their restaurant.
In addition, before the currency changed, my family had to borrow money from my uncle and aunt to pay the electricity, gas and water for the restaurant. The money that we borrowed from my uncle and aunt did not only help us in the expenses for the restaurant, but in our daily needs also. After the money changed from the cruzeiro to the real, my family started to earn money from the restaurant. Due to that reason, my family`s finances got better, and were be able to pay back to my uncle and aunt. Eventually, my family got extra money for our daily needs. On other hand, even though my family had financial problems, my relatives started to lose their jobs because of the bad economic situation at that time. Before the currency changed, most of my relatives were working at the restaurant as waiters, cooks or bus boys. Since the economy was bad and many people were unemployed, people chose to eat at home instead of in restaurants. After Brazil changed the money from cruzeiro to real, things started to get better for my relatives. More companies started hire people who were unemployed. As a result, most of my relatives got back their job as waiters,
and cooks.
During this time, my family took the benefits of the new currency to work hard in the restaurant in order to earn more money. Indeed, this really helped my family and my relatives with the financial problems. That also brought my family and my relative a better life too because it gave us a stable life and improvement in the business. I am so proud of them for doing well in their business and maintaining a better life. Otherwise, I wouldn`t feel as happy as I am now.
Serbia is a small country in Eastern Europe, and for me it has always been recognized in the world for sports. However, talking with foreign people since I came into the U.S., what identifies Serbia for them is war. No matter how hard it is for me to accept that, when I really think about, it might be the truth. Through history, Serbia has been involved in so many wars. Only during my lifetime in Serbia, which was the member of the former Yugoslavia, the country passed through two wars. One of them happened in a neighboring country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the second one we could feel on our land. Although it was not directly on our territory, the first one affected my family and me more. That war and the consequences during and after the war put fear in all of us, and made my family struggle for the food and money for a couple of years.
As a child, the first thing that was on my mind talking about the war was my father. What if he has to go there? I thought as a kid, I still didn't know that much about it, but I was old enough to see what was going on on the TV, what people can do to each other. Just in the beginning of the war, my family and I visited our relatives, who lived right on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country where the war started. The war was going on literally just over the hill. At night when everything became quiet, we could hear the bombs and the guns shooting. It was so scary. I knew people that went to war and never came back. My great-grandfather was a member of The Second World War. He was held in Germany for a couple of years even after the war ended. He came back home after all of my family thought that he was dead. That's why I was afraid. I was aware that if my father went over there, I could never see him again.
During that war and a long time after it, we had to deal with the devaluation of the currency. At that time, Serbia was the only country in the world where every citizen was a multi-millionaire. However, you couldn't even buy bread with those millions. The value of currency was changing every day. It would happen that people had to work the whole month for only ten dollars. I remember one day when our cousin visited us, he gave me some money to buy whatever I wanted. Even though I usually kept all money that I received from the others, I decided to go and buy something. I bought a big box of chocolate, but I guess I picked the wrong day. My mother wanted to kill me. Probably because the day after we could have bought ten of those. I just couldn't understand that. Some people took advantage of that situation and became rich, but many, like my family, didn't. Like a lot of other people, we had to struggle for months, even years.
Finally, what follows every war is the lack of food and the rest of the things that you need for normal life like gas and clothing. It is not that we really didn’t have enough to eat or that we had to suffer, but it was very hard to get to buy a bread or oil for example. There was a specific time during the day when they would deliver bread in the stores, so we had to wait in a line for maybe an hour or even two in order to get it. For oil, we had to wait for even couple of days. Besides that, stores were empty. There were not more than ten to fifteen articles that you could buy in the whole store. We also had to wait in a line to buy gas. Lines were long for miles. It was not easy and our borders were closed, so we couldn’t go out of country in order to get what we need. Therefore, some people started buying and selling on the black market because that was the only way for them to survive and help us survive as well.
In summary, can war bring you anything good? Definitely not! I felt it twice. I was scared like never before, and I hope I will never have to struggle with it again. Instead of playing at the playground or doing homework, I was spending my free time with my friends in the line for bread, oil or milk, cheering up other kids whose fathers were in the war. For me that war was just a sick game of three people, the leaders who wanted to take advantage of something that other countries had, and his country hadn’t. A game where thousands of people were killed and thousands of lives were destroyed. It took so many years for Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to recover after the war. I would not wish that to even my worst enemy.
