Intro Lost in Translation.

Lost in Translation: A Life in a New World.

First 32. 

First Impressions

What are your initial thoughts or reactions to the novel?

Multiple Choice

Where does the initial setting take place?

• Serbia

• Ukraine

• Poland

• Croatia

Multiple Choice

Which is Poland's flag?

Multiple Choice

How old are the main character and her sister?

• 14 and 8

• 13 and 9

• 12 and 7

• 15 and 9

Poll

Who do you think is going to have more trouble adjusting to a new country?

• The younger sister (9 years old)

• The older sister (13 years old)

• Both.

Multiple Choice

What does the word "tęsknota" mean?

• Heartbreak

• Nostalgia

• Homesickness

• Sorrow

Create an example that clearly states the meaning of the following expression:

FILLED TO THE BRIM

What does the author mean by:

"...the wonder is what you can make a paradise out of."

Eden # 1

Many years later, at a stylish party in New York, I met a woman who told me that she had had an enchanted childhood. Her father was a highly positioned diplomat in an Asian country, and she had lived surrounded by sumptuous elegance, the courtesy of servants, and the delicate advances of older men. No wonder, she said, that when this part of her life came to an end, at age thirteen, she felt she had been exiled from paradise, and had been searching for it ever since.

Eden # 2

No wonder. But the wonder is what you can make a paradise out of. I told her that I grew up in a lumpen apartment in Cracow, squeezed into three rudimentary rooms with four other people, surrounded by squabbles, dark political rumblings, memories of wartime suffering, and daily struggle for existence. And yet, when it came time to leave, I, too, felt I was being pushed out of the happy, safe enclosures of Eden.

Poll

When you think about your own conception of Eden, what does it relate with the most?

• Family

• A place

• Friends

• Food

• Nothing. I have no Eden.

Create an example that clearly states the meaning of the following word:

ASSUAGE

What is the main character's name?

Who is she named after?

Multiple Select

What is the closest in meaning to a Coddle Son?

• A Spoiled Son

• An Introvert Son

• A Reckless Son

• A Judicious Son

Think of someone famous or a character from a movie or tv series that could be called a:

NE'ER-DO-WELL

Ewa on her father's teachings.

Sometimes his pedagogy is less than encouraging. When I am five or so, he buys me a boy’s bicycle that is too high for me, and once I learn how to keep my balance, he pushes me off, shouting “faster, faster, faster!” –till I rush headlong into a fall. He initiates me into swimming by that time-honored method of dunking me into a river and watching from a nearby bridge, till I nearly go under and come up again with my mouth full of water and a sense of injured dignity.

Multiple Choice

Choose the image that correctly represents what a Chifforobe is.

That's life...

The other downstairs apartment is occupied by a shoemaker, who, in more classic style, gets drunk and beats his wife. Everyone has heard her cry behind their leathery-smelling shop, and everyone nods in commiseration when the couple is mentioned. But nobody is astonished. Husbands sometimes beat their wives. That’s life.

Poll

Do you think that after 74 years (1946-2020) there are still people who accept the previous premise?

• Yes

• No

Create an example that clearly states the meaning of the following word:

CACHET

Well, that sounds familiar.

My father prefers the adventurism of independent entrepreneurship – illegal though it is in his society – to the industriousness of everyday routine. Although he has a regular job at an “Import-Export” store, his real resourcefulness and cleverness are deployed in risky money-making schemes – buying forbidden dollars, or smuggling silver from East Germany. He is one of a large number of people who engage in such games – part of the constant, ongoing Game of outwitting the System of which so much Polish life consists, and which, given people’s attitude toward that System, is thought to be honorable and piquantly reckless. 

Everyone – this is the common wisdom – is involved in an illicit activity of some kind: moonlighting, or using the factory equipment to make extra goods for private sale after hours, or going to Hungary to sell some items unavailable there – sheets or plastic combs, for example (for a while, plastic products are all the rage) – in exchange for those forbidden and invaluable dollars. How anyone can get along without such sidelines is a mystery, for the normal job wage is hardly enough to feed a family, never mind to clothe them.

"Middle Class"

His illicit initiatives are also what keeps us within the bounds of the respectable middle class, which means that we go to a restaurant perhaps once a month, take long summer vacations, have a live-in maid and more than one change of clothing, and can occasionally afford to buy an imported item, like spike-heeled shoes for my mother, or a nylon blouse for me.

Poll

Is it okay to condone doing something illegal for the sake of your family's well-being?

• YES

• NO

On the work ethic

No matter how many accoutrements of middle-class life they’ll later acquire, my parents never quite buy into the work ethic. Life has been irrational enough for them to believe in the power of the gamble – in games of luck and risk – more than in orderly progress.

The System –compounded by the Poles’ perennial skepticism about all systems – produces a nation of ironists and gamblers.

Poll

Is that what happens in Colombia? Do we have a nation of ironist and gamblers?

• YES

• NO

Laziness shows a certain luxuriance of character, the eroticism of valuing your pleasure.

DO YOU AGREE?

To be continued...