RASBERRIES!!!

Sebastian and I just went with Mama Mayer to pick FRESH rasberries!!!! OMG! Who knew that berries actually existed in an orchard?? Fresh sweet rasberries. The farm also had bluberries, i had the most incredible fresh perfect wonderbar blueberry. It was an explosian of bliss in my mouth. And they had strawberries and apple trees. If i am going to die anytime soon i hope it is in a farm like this one so i can come back and haunt the farm and eat all the fresh fruit. Now Mama Mayer and I make marmalade. How wonderbar. The food here is by far bettter than any food I've had. And i'm not eating like unhealthy fried crap. Its the grain and seed bread, that usually at home tastes like cardboard, actually tastes like bread here. Its my favorite bread. The joghurt too. Plain joghurt, not flavored, with cornflakes and cinnamon and possibly marmalade or honey. Omgosh. WONDERBAR

1st Day of school and 1st German Rotary Meeting

My first meeting was. Interesting. Since i didnt understand anything they said. Duh. haha. But the restraurant was super super fancy. I had canoodel and swine brotten (which are spelled horribly wrong. haha) All the old men seemed the same as Rotary at home. But one 'rebound'(just come back from their exchange) was like disgusted with the president there. Which i thought was strange. She explained to me later that he made a very 'macho' (for lack of something better. but very not respective to women) comment. I understand that his comment maybe offended her. But i thought all those Rotary men were like that. haha. At least when it's in English i can laugh about this. Mayb that is why i didnt appreciate his comment. I dunno. Very strange.

1st day of school was a joke. Oh wait. I mean the first 3 days. haha. First two was an attempt to get a schedule and a 400€ buspass. HOLY CRAP. 400 just for the bus to school!! Gah!! What if you are poor?! How do you get to school?! But i had my first class today. With a spanish speaking political teacher. I wrote down all the notes since i didnt understand anything!!!! and translated it once i was home. Still dont know what it means tho. haha. I need to work on this German thing. I borrowed a little kids book form the library tho to try and increase my very very small vocab. The book is bright and yellow and over a foot in height. I felt very awesome checking that out. haha.

1st Orientation & Many Drivers

So, my first meeting of all the other eschange kids was alright. There were some pretty cool kids and then that fullfilled the Eu stereotype of being smelly. Which was rather awful while we were doing a 'team building' excercise.

Driver. Oh my god. Is all of Eu like how German drivers are?? It's like god went and stuck every female driver there was in Germany. But only there were a lot more 'heshes' then there usually are. For example:
Mr. Bilke (pronounced bile-k)= speed demon. I was very frightened while he took his turns. Altho i guess that says nothing since i am always scared while i am in someones car. I have been in 6 peoples cars now and all don't know how to make complete stops. I'm worried about one day some random semi will be going down a rural road and someone will cali roll thru and SMASH. But i'm also thinking that they are jsut used to being bad drivers so it is a norm.

New Bug bite count: none so far yet. 34 total tho. I'm susprised. I guess my net over hang thing is really working. and i always thought those were just to look pretty over 4th grade girls beds. Susprisingly useful.
ALSO:
Negro count: 12
German Asian count: 1
Brown ppl count: 1 (who would have thought that a German/Candaian girl could look like the color of mud? Andrea and i originally thought she was an indian. Very strange)

1st Day & Night in Vaseville (aka Wasserberg!!!)

So, the first night:
Bugbite count: 31 just on my face and right arm tho.

I sleep in a little room in the slant of a house. Which sounds not that great but it's part of a flat that i share with Andrea (my host sister). WE have a kitchen and living room and dining room thing. It's mighty nifty.

First Day: It was rather boring. Possibly because i was jetlaggged tho. I slept and missed out on the opportunity to mow the lawn for the first time. Which was quite a let down. Cause what's it like to have a lawn?? I suppose i shall find out next time the lawn needs mowing.
That night tho we went to Herbsfest (Auntumn Festival). Which was an experience. It was a carival. But then there were beer tents. Which was the most fun thing i've ever been to. WE all stood on benches and drank beer and sprite mixed and sang traditional Bavaian songs and 'coreographed' them. But it wasnt just young people. It was old people with gray hair and young people who were 16. It was very surreal. Why don't we have that type a spirit where the whole place knows the words to the songs and can party together?

I'm excited for Oktoberfest now. But that is in Munich and Andrea told me it was very expensive. Arg.

The keyboard here is strange also. The 'Z' and 'Y' have switched places and they have ö and ä. The letters have turned into strange creatures with eyes. I suppoes i will find out what the strange creatures mean eventually.

Seaside Shore

There are only three parts of the story I remember: when he left, when the police came, and when we went to Seaside. For the past year my padre and madre had been fighting because my uncle had been staying at the house doing illegal things that my ma didn’t approve of. My pa was loyal to my uncle because he was family but he also wanted to please my ma. My ma was loyal to the house and me because she didn’t want this happening in her house and she didn’t want me exposed to it. The smell of booze and skunk kept creeping out of my uncle’s room and my ma finally had it. She yelled and yelled and sent me to a friend’s house so when the police came to talk to my pa who smelled of booze also I wouldn’t be there to witness it. When I came back from school the next day my uncle had moved out and eventually the house started to smell like Asian stir-fry and banana bread again.

Before my parde left the big light on the ceiling fan of his room woke me up. He had already showered so the warm smell of the Irish soap traveled to my nose. He had shaved his beard completely off and the top of his head looked like he was going into the army. I followed him when he went outside and just watched. The tile floor was cool on my feet while the morning sun felt warm and I just watched. He went to our yellow shed and got out a vacuum and some clothes he had had in the shed for some reason and threw them into the trunk of the neon orange car that we had painted together. Once he closed it he wiped his hands together like he was wiping the dust off and came over to the door. He hugged me and told me all these things about seeing me later in high school but probably after college. I went back in to my ma’s room where I sat on the bed in the cool aqua colored sheets and stared at the morning sunlight through the blinds and cried.

My ma decided that saying in Tucson wasn’t the best idea for me so to get away she sent me to my aunt’s house in New Jersey. I only stayed there for a few weeks when my aunt had a serious talk with me and said that we couldn’t just leave my ma alone at home. So we booked the next flight available and flew back. I had always wondered why it had taken that long for my aunt to realize that we couldn’t leave my ma there alone but I think that my ma had slipped in a few words to my aunt on the phone the night before. When we arrived in Phoenix it was another warm morning. My ma was there to pick us up and we drove south. The car was very cool feeling in contrast to outside which I thought was strange because it was very warm for the morning. We arrived home and put our luggage away then my ma and aunt started to talk some more. Not soon after a policeman rung our doorbell. He asked to come in and my ma talked to him in the living room with my aunt. When my ma came in my aunt was holding her up and both were sobbing. I knew what had happened even though no one had told me anything yet. I think that the three of us cried enough to fill a bathtub for each of us to bathe in. Once I had stopped crying I left to my room. I don’t remember when the policeman left and I don’t remember what happened after I went to my room. After that day though I did know that my pa was found from the glint of the orange car in the middle of the desert.

We decided to have a memorial because my pa was cremated since my ma was Asian and it was custom to cremate. After I went with a friend and her family to some trashy restaurant. The place was dark and dingy. The colors of the inside were ugly dark greens and blues. I didn’t eat much.

A few days after the memorial my ma, aunt, and I flew back to Jersey. It’s tradition when in Jersey to always go out to eat late and get disco frys since they aren’t served in the Midwest. This tradition started because of this night. We went to a trashy diner and ordered cheese frys covered in gravy. The place was very flashy with gold and white and black accents everywhere. It looked like Elvis had walked in and his white suit and gold rim glasses had decided to eat the walls. After we left my aunt drove us to Seaside where the tent city of the east coast resided. My ma and I walked along the beach for a while. It was very dark and the moon was only half but since we were away from the city the stars looked brighter then usual. She sat me down on a bench and told me that my pa’s death wasn’t just death but that he committed suicide. This followed with more crying and then we walked back to my aunt. Before we left the shore I stood in the water with my jeans rolled up and my shoes back with my ma and just watched the sky hit the sea while the waves washed back and forth up onto my feet

6599 N POSITANO WAY • TUCSON, AZ 85741
PHONE 520-297-7509 • E-MAIL LWALSH2009@HOTMAIL.COM
LILY WALSH

EDUCATION
2007 - 2009 Catalina Foothills High School Tucson, Az
GED

2008-present Pima Community College Tucson, Az

INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES

· I’ve been playing the violin for 13 years and have been in the Tucson Jr. Strings orchestra for nine years.
· I was in karate at the American Karate School for seven years.
· I have been playing tennis for four years at the Tucson Racquet Club.
· In my free time I like to do origami, go paint balling, go shooting, hiking, snowboarding, and sewing.

LANGUAGES

Spanish: Intermediate level of communication and I can read and write it
Chinese (Cantonese): Basic level of communication

WORK EXPERIENCE

2007 - present Foothills Kumon Center Tucson, Az
Assistant
Tutoring children, secretary work

2006-2009 Tucson Chinese School Tucson,Az
Cultural teacher
Teach an arts and crafts class




All of the work experience I’ve acquired has been with jobs that deal with children. Before I had these jobs I didn’t know how to associate with kids and usually just avoided dealing with them altogether. I used to think they were annoying so I just brushed them off. Through these jobs I’ve taken I forced myself to deal with children, which has increased my patience and tolerance for them.

I’m usually one on one with kids when I’m tutoring them for math or reading. Being one on one really helped because then I could just talk to the child and they would usually share weird stories about their day that only children would care about. At this point I usually don’t know what to say so would walk away, but since I am tutoring I can’t simply do that. I listened to what the other workers would say and started to learn how to talk to kids from their example. Knowing how to converse with children really helped my patience with them because then I could talk to them to learn the reasoning behind some things that they do. This also helped my tolerance because instead of just having boring silence I could have a conversation with them.

Teaching a class was probably the most difficult thing I’ve done. Even though the class was only an hour and it was for art took time because I had to plan out each week’s project and make sure I knew exactly how to make it. Once I’ve gotten over that and I actually get to class I have to be able to grab the attention of 12 students, most of who are in kindergarten. Just from the planning I learned patience because I needed to learn how to budget my time and take the patience to actually do what was expected of me. Disciplining and holding the attention of young children taught me a great deal of patience and different ways that children respond so they do what is asked. Before teaching this class I thought that just asking someone to do something was good enough because there was always a reason behind a request. I found that was not the case and that reasons needed to be come up with and trickery needed to be done for children to agree to quiet down or be calm down or do what you ask.

These work experiences have changed me because now when I’m at a family gathering or out at some Chinese school event I don’t mind dealing with the smaller children who are around me.

Where I Am From

Weird Memories


I am from many violins, from rosin being thrown and teachers yelling that I need to practice. I am from computers and their guts being everywhere, placed in anything that could be a plastic bin. Waiting for them to be used while they just multiply instead. I am from Lays original potato chips and ham and cheese sandwiches everyday. One ugly, brown plate for lunch and one ugly, brown plate for dinner. I am from yelling, maybe not at each other but for anything that could’ve been done that wasn’t. From the smell of cigarette smoke and the arguments that it causes cancer. And from the promises that I’ll never have to smell the smoke again, that this is the time to quit. I am from cat scratches, from that awful calico cat that I used to love. To the dog “Maggie” that I used to love that was my personal horse to ride around the house. I am from the sound of a busy city. Where the public transportation system is actually used and the tram is hot and smelly because there is no air condition. To where the rickety car on wheels stops at the shore where the smell of dead fish and raw sewer is so strong you’d rather not breathe at all. I am from the taste of shrimp fried rice made the right way from fresh ingredients bought that day form the open market. And from walking to the bakery in the morning before the humidity sets in to drench my clothes and picking out the best looking bar-b-q pork buns. I am from tennis camp summers where the ground is so hot that is feels like my converse are being melted to the concrete. And from shady food like taquitos that are really the kids who misbehaved that day. I am from rainy summer days when camp is cancelled and the smell of rain makes me forget that there’s still another three hours before my uncle picks me up. But when he does come we can go to the mall to look at over priced clothes I want but end up just getting a dipped cone from DQ. I am from many weird memories that have shaped me into who I am today