Business in America project

 Michelle and I chose to do a video explaining the views about the essential question of “What causes systematic and individual change” and by providing a video is how we felt would be a creative and fun way to provide our expressions and answers relating to the question. In the video Michelle and I placed the question into a discussion between the current president and the government and relating it to past historical presidents and their policies in relations with the government to make change for the future.

“What causes systematic and individual change”?

-       - Systematic change is an opportunity to enact change on a situation that needs to be taken into consideration to enable change for the better. Individual change the hold out for the president to insure these problems and react to their actions by making change to better the economy and providing stability.

 What questions do you still have about “Business in America”?

 - How can the value of money in America be compared throughout history? 



Vannary Podcast

​For this project, Mr. Block told us to interview someone that are particularly outside of school for 45 minutes and told us to put together and finalise the interview with at least 8-10 minutes.

For my interview, I interviewed my mom and she had many stories to tell us about the time her and her family had struggled during her childhood years and the hassle of transitioning from a country to another country. 
Interview with Mom 2

Danielle Podcast

My podcast focuses on the relationship between best friends. I deeply explain what a best friend means, and how they impact your life. I interviewed many people, and talked to them about their best friends.

Link to podcast: https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/Interveiw.m4a?w=7da15ba7 ​

Podcast Drue Boccuti.

​In this project we had to interview someone who didnt go to our school. The interview had to be 45 minutes long and then cut it to 8 minutes. We got in our assigned groups and then we had to figure out what we're doing on our own.

I interviewed my mom because I always talk to her about everything so I wanted to hear her take on the questions I had. 


interviewblockdrue

Boundary Interview

For this project, Mr. Block asked us to interview someone for forty-five minutes about boundaries and specifically crossing boundaries. He left the project pretty open so that we could interpret it anyway we wanted.

I interviewed my eighty-four year old grandmother, Baci. I chose her because she is always telling me stories that I think other people should hear.

Everyone started out with forty-five minutes of rough interview, but as the project process continued, we were cutting it down to the nitty gritty. 

In the end, we all found ourselves with eight to ten minutes of interview. Here is my final individual product. 
Baci

Kenny Le Passing Interview

In this interview, I interviewed two Asian-American females on how education is a boundary in their life. I interviewed my two cousins, because they had a lot of experience in the family with their education. They are both in college, so they had experience from when they were young until now.
kle.PassingInterviewMP3

Starting Over.

​This podcast is about a man who immigrates from Vietnam from America and is learning to start his life all over again. He goes through life learning and adapting to a new culture while juggling a family and work.

Dropbox Podcast Link
http://db.tt/2FQhUCuB

Crossing Into a New Life

 This is a journey interview with my dad. He talks about the struggles he faced in Vietnam when North Vietnam invaded, bits and pieces of the journey coming over here and finding his own place in this new country: 

LINK TO AUDIO FILE

D = my dad

E = Ellen 

D: At home, the most trouble was…uh…daddy laughs

 

E: My dad and his family came over from South Vietnam, fleeing the once communist country. He fled the gunshots, hair shaving, and the inequality but also leaving behind all of his memories there. He’s crossed many borders along the way: childhood, schooling, and making the journey over here.

 

D: I’ve lived in Saigon. When I was little, we didn’t do much but at night. So we just ran around, into walls, and when we light an oil candle, we saw flying bugs. When we saw those, we grabbed the closest rubber band we could find and shot them down.

 

E: Then you shot them…they’d die…? MURDERER!

 

D: No when I shot them, they didn’t die. They just lost half their body so they would waddle away.

 

E: You so bad, man.

 

D: Not bad. We were just bored. Everyone played like that, when we had time, we would shot them down…like CHOOOOOK.

 

Laughs

 

E: That all changed when North Vietnam invaded. Surprisingly, the South Vietnamese were happy at first. There was no longer going to be an army draft.

 

D: When we turned 18, they said we didn’t have to become soldiers. Everyone was happy but then one year later they made us go into the army to fight a war with the Cambodians.

 

E: After that, my dad comes out with a ton of newly created rules that the so-called “good” North Vietnam had given them.

D: Before in Vietnam, everything was okay if the officials said it was. If they didn’t like it you were dead meat. They told us you cant do this you cant do that. Men had to cut their hair. They’d catch you and shave it off. If the police caught you, they’d honk their horn “BLEEP” and stop you. They’d grab you by the hair: “AYAHHH!” and they say “You’re hair is this long?” While you were still AYAHHH-ing. They wouldn’t let go. Then they would call the barber over: “Hey give this boy a hair cut” and snap snap snap. Your hair was all kinds of ugly. After that they’d laugh as you ran off. This is why no one liked North Vietnam. Grandpa for one hated long hair because at that people we were trying to come over to the US. So if we got arrested, that would cause trouble for the whole family trying to flee! Grandpa didn’t let us do anything. Like back in Vietnam, when daddy was troublesome or anyone was bad… they’d catch you and throw you in jail. Just for their fun! Now jail in Vietnam and jail in the US are different. There’s no phone there, no laws there. So when people would look for you, they couldn’t find you because…YOU WERE IN JAIL!

 

E: My dad laughs as he retells the stories of those put in jail told him. He goes on about how the officials used to arrest people for selling food or items.

 

D: They came into your house, and take everything…even your house! And then they

Kicked you out to the farm.  For YOU to work. The rich didn’t. They also changed the money. They took our money and said our old money didn’t work so they gave us new money. Vietnam barely had stories after that. They didn’t let us do anything! No selling, no hair, no school, no nothing. Before when grandpa would brew and sell things from his teacart, they would penalize him! So it that was it, then my cousin, your uncle, brought us over. We had a big party. Everyone came and wished us well. They said things like: Wow, you’re so lucky you guys get to leave now, who knows when we’ll ever leave.

 

E: The journey starts off rough. Like jail house rough. My dad, his sisters, his brothers, and his mom, and dad were all sent off to Thailand for a few days to wait to be transported to Thailand. He tells me snippets of what his community dorm looked like and their daily life. Through out his whole stay there, he had to keep just one thing by his side.  

 

D: The first place we had to go was Thailand. We lived in a big dorm with other families. We stacked the suitcases on top of each other. There was a shower room and we changed there. At the lower floors, they sold coffee. When it came to eating, you had to be fast. They gave us one metal spoon per person too. You lose it…well then that’s the end of you and eating. We stood in line like it was a jailhouse.

 

After that we went to the Philippines, the first couple of weeks, it was so boring. I was so lonely and bored waiting for school to start. Every day we went to school, and then we had to clean something for two hours. So I spent my days cleaning different places. Finally, a month later we all went to school. I was so happy I could go to school. So we had to go to school for 4 hours for four and a half months. That’s where I made a lot of friends! On weekends, everyone went to the river and played. In the dorms, we weren’t allowed to drink alcohol so if you did they would catch you and lock you up for three weeks. The three weeks you were locked up, you were also missing school days. And when you missed school days, you get another four months of schooling. No one wanted to stay in the dorms, so no one drank, except for a few people but they didn’t drink that much because they didn’t want to look drunk. You know what the jails are called there? MONKEY HOUSE. Okay? Stay at the monkey house.

 

E: My dad goes on telling me about his adventures but this one stuck out to me. It was his first time volunteering and he was told to clean a room. Little did he know what was in those rooms?

 

D: I went to school in the afternoon and serviced in the morning. I was assigned the hospital to service. I went to clean up, follow the rules, and sign in and out. Then there was this one-day when I was told to clean a room. I went in there and cleaned it up nice and clean. Then when I got out, my friend asked it if I knew what that room was. I said no the boss just told me to clean it. Well they store dead bodies in there! Wahhhh, I was so scared all of the blood left my face.

 

Once you finish school, they don’t let you come over here right away. You’re put on the waiting list. We were put on and waiting for four whole months! Then when we got on the airplane. We were all so happy. We’ve never been on a plane before. Because Vietnam was communist so they didn’t have any. Every one was so happy. We gave and received phone numbers and addresses so we could find them in the future. That daddy when you uncle came to pick us up, it was 12 o clocks in the morning, Philadelphia was so pretty. We got home and spent the whole night talking, talking until four o clock and then we went to sleep. Everyone cried tears of joy as we caught up on the communist Vietnam and talk about how it changed.

 

The next day your uncle took us too shop. The first place we went to was McDonalds. WAHH, the big Mac was huge! I couldn’t eat it all. Really, it was enormous.

After we went shopping and… I saw these pants that were eight dollars. Your uncle said it was on sale from 24 dollars. I held it up and down up and down and up and down and then put it back. Your uncle asked it I wanted it but I said no, he’d already done so much for us. But those plants were really nice.

 

In June, I went blue berry picking as a job. A box was about 2 dollars and thirty cents. You know how many boxes I had to pick to have just enough for that day? It’s not like you guys today, randomly using money for idiotic reasons. Before, when I had to use a dollar, I had to THINK about it.

 

E: You still think about it!

 

D: REALLY NOW?!

 

E:I got into the topic of schooling. My dad didn’t tell me much.

 

D: Ugh school, I went into there not knowing English. ESL was okay they taught at a slower paste. But the other things like math, reading, and history, those were just not worth it. How did I know this stuff? The teacher told me. I looked at him back. And he says this is how you do this and that and this and wants a reply. What was I to do? He could teach me all he wanted but I still didn’t get it so I looked up at him dumbfounded, my eyes just staring at him and I just said awh awh awh okay. And when I really didn’t know how to do it, I sat in the lunchroom and when I felt like it I just quit. Then three months later I told grandpa that I wouldn’t go back. Grandpa said NO, you’re here in America, you need English. You have to learn. I told him even if I went back I still wouldn’t know what they were talking about so I quit school and found a job. My first job was a computer cable job. They gave me five dollars an hour. Then I worked my way up to twenty dollars until I was layed off. I got layed off because of 9/11. All of the businesses went down so they let people go.  I’ve been off and on jobs until I found genji and that’s where I learned to pick up a knife and make art out of it. And now were here and I'm telling you this stuff.

 

E: Now that Vietnam is back to normal, my dad still hasn’t been back there. Our family talks about it all the time and they say that this summer could be the summer we actually go. But then again, they’ve been saying for the past 26 years.

 

 

 

Crossing Bonders a Mothers story

This podcast is about a woman in her many stages of life. form being the first in her family to go to college. to being the first and only to movie out of there home town in New Jersey. alone the way there are funny parts sad parts and some things are are down right rude. But there is never a time when she is not crossing lines and making moves to a better life. 
Mom podcast 1 2

World of 100 Analysis

The World of 100 analysis was an assignment given to us that required us to imagine the world as if only 100 people populated it. For the assignment we had to look at critical global issues and distribute the weight of "how much" and "how many" with our numbers only being able to add up to 100. In many of my graphs, when compared to the actual answers, my predictions are far off. In my education chart I was way off. I was so off because in my mind I believe that in almost any place that isn't Europe or America, women aren't treated equally. My view on women all around the world is a bit biased and by looking at the correct answers to this assignment, my eyes have been opened. The one graph I did get right was my language graph. I predicted that the amount of people who would speak English would be about 5 and I was correct. 
I think that the most accurate category is Literacy. People are pushing for education for all and it's taking a good toll on our world. The number of males who are able to read and write is only 9 more than the number of females who are able to read and write. This is also the most shocking because I can remember reading about a time where women weren't even allowed to go to school. The whole assignment was very interesting.

Here are my graphs comparing my predictions to that of my classmates and the correct answers. They are as follows: Education, Language & Drinking Water


Education Chart
Education Chart
Language Chart
Language Chart
Water Chart
Water Chart