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Post by Jenny's Back! on Dec 3, 2003 19:38:18 GMT -5
Wow.. reading those, really changed the images of you all in my head! Now that i know what your nationalities are, i can have a better Idea in my head.
I am mostly Italian and Polish, but i also have German, Irish, and a very little Dutch. My grandfather on my father's side came over from italy when he was a child. i'm not exactly sure how old. He died a few years ago. i don't know much about his family though. i know more about my grandmother's family, on my dad's side again. Her father and Mother came over from poland, and then they had my grandmother, and all her brothers and sisters. Her name was Lucy, and my g-pa's dad was John/Nicholas. We were neevr really sure which.
(sorry i'll modify later i have to go out with the fam... )
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Post by Will on Dec 3, 2003 19:41:05 GMT -5
Oi… war and any thing related to it isn’t discussed very often in our family. Yes, we do keep up with news and at times speak our mind, but nothing other then that. No one, I don’t think, is to
See, my grandfather didn’t fight in WWII. He wasn’t involved with combat at all. Like I said before, he was a translator or something like that… ((My dad said there was a better word for it.)) And he was the oldest relative I know. Everyone before him were lost to my knowledge. Therefore, WWII is as far back as it goes. It’s… disappointing that I have no way to figure out my family history.
Hmmm, my mother’s side has a thing for singing. They all have wonderful voices. My mother, both uncles, grandma, grandpa and even the older of two uncle’s wife has a good singing voice. I guess that’s why I like singing so much and art in general.
My father’s side is older, meaning that my relatives from that side are older in age… All but one of my cousins on that side are in collage. The oldest is 25 and she’s in grad school right now. Anyway, they seem to be more… distant? They are always busy with something and we rarely get a chance to get together anymore. When we do, however, it’s just great. My uncles on my father’s side are the most hilarious bunch of people and I love them. Heehee… I’ve also noticed that they are more… er… stylish than my mother’s side. Probably because they are, well, the higher level of middle class.
To your question, En. I call my relatives in Chinese. Always have and always will. Mom and Dad are different though. I’m childish and call them “mommy and daddy”.
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Post by En on Dec 4, 2003 11:05:18 GMT -5
Heh heh, you want to know one of the chief reasons I have gender confusions? It's because I look exactly like BOTH my dad and mum. They're totally unrelated as far back as I can trace them, which is several hundred years in some places, but they look so much alike that people usually thought they were siblings. Bit creepy, really. I have more of his nose and more of her hair colour, but if you put the three of us together, we look like siblings.
I'm also frequently mistaken for a few other relatives -- to the point where we do have to be careful about marking photos, because sometimes the only way I can tell the difference between me and other people is that the photograph is too old to be of me, or because I never owned a pair of green socks until after college, or stuff like that.
Jen, it's possible that John/Nicholas had a confirmation name and a birth name -- was he Catholic?
About war -- my great-grandfather Weldon, who was the family member I was closest to, took me aside before he died and told me very carefully that he had never seen action in WWI -- he'd been a motorcycle driver who escorted military officials in his sidecar. He was stationed in France. He was really keen on my knowing he'd never killed anyone or been up in the fighting. So I asked him who he drove around, but all he'd say was "Oh, this guy they called Le Nez" (French for "the Nose").
My other great-grandfather was a veterinary officer (because back then, horses were still used in war). I know a bit about his deal because we found his old papers, including a really funny poem about how not sunny Sunny France was.
Hm, age... I'm the oldest child of two oldest children, so I'm the oldest one in my generation of the family, old enough that people sometimes get confused about which generation I'm in. My uncle on Mum's side is only nine years older than me -- which means he and I are closer in age than Lumie and I.
Willow -- I don't know very much about recordkeeping in Taiwan or China, because most of the genealogy research I've done has been in western Europe, where the main sources of information are county records and baptismal records, and sometimes gravestones. But you might take a look at ancestry.com or rootsweb.com and see if they have anything about your family -- I found a whole missing branch once. Or they might have some discussion boards for people with Taiwanese and Chinese ancestry, so people can discuss what records are available to check....
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Ceridwen
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Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
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Post by Ceridwen on Dec 4, 2003 11:19:15 GMT -5
Just to answer En's question - I call my parents Mammy and Daddy, or Mam and Dad, or Ma and Da. I call my one surviving grandmother 'Nonie', or 'Nana', and I would always refer to my other grandmother as 'Nanny' or 'Granny'. My grandfathers are both just 'Grandad'. I call my brother 'Squirt', considering that he's 5' 11" and I'm .. er .. not. I'm more on the 5' 5" side of things. I look a lot like my great-grandmother, whose name was Jane. My name IRL is the Irish for Jane, so I am quite proud to be named for her. I am always being told I am like my grandmother on my mother's side, the one who's deceased, but not so much in looks as in mannerisms, things she did which I couldn't possibly have picked up from her. She died when I was very young. My mother tells me I sleep in the same position, I mumble in my sleep just like she did, I have the same expressions, the same gestures, and so on. It gets a bit creepy for her sometimes, watching me. It also weirds me out, a bit! According to lore, my great-grandad was somehow involved in the Civil War in Ireland... but, in fairness, all men at that time were involved somehow. I've never learned the details, and nobody knows anymore. My grandfathers weren't involved in war, because Ireland never got involved due to neutrality. The country suffered during the wars, according to my Nonie's stories, but we didn't fight. It's sad, to read of your relatives who've fought - I hate war.
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Post by En on Dec 4, 2003 11:31:49 GMT -5
*murmurs a bit of Yeats' Wild Swans poem*
Funny, about mannerisms -- I copy mannerisms without noticing, like I copy accents. So lately I've used a lot of my da's parents' mannerisms, because I've spent more time with them in the last couple of months. But I also have mannerisms from Doc, the great-grandfather who was in the veterinary corps -- and who died in April 1978
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Ceridwen
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Post by Ceridwen on Dec 4, 2003 11:37:51 GMT -5
*chuckles*
My Mam has this great belief that there was only ever one set of people made, and that they keep getting re-used, over and over again. She can't explain my likeness to my grandmother any other way.
I tell her this belief is quite like believing in reincarnation, which makes her staunchly Catholic little self a bit uncomfortable.. ;D
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Post by Will on Dec 4, 2003 20:50:05 GMT -5
I’m 5’1 ½”… So what in the world would that make me? -cough- Giant?
I don’t know if a search on the web would work. I asked my dad about things I weren’t sure of and I got a pretty good story of what happened to my grandparents.
So, apparently, during WWII, the communist part of China was fighting against this other party that I don’t know how to translate into English. It was a civil war pretty much. Grandpa and grandma met each other during service and eventually got married. Note that this was a very untraditional because they wed outside of their homes. Anyway, the Communist Party won the civil war and the other party was forced to flee to the neighboring island just off of China, Taiwan. My grandparents were just two people out of many who fled. In doing this, they were completely cut off from their friends and family. Dad said that he never really asked about his own grandparents or uncles, aunts. The subject had never come up and therefore we don’t know much.
One set of people made? Hmmm, interesting.
Oh, another question. What were some of the things your parents enjoyed doing when they were young?
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Calantha
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My name is Luck, this is my song, I happened by when you were gone
Posts: 4,493
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Post by Calantha on Dec 4, 2003 21:24:11 GMT -5
Hah. My father explains his days with my mother (grew up in same town, high school sweethearts, you know...all that stuff) as Dazed and Confused. Actually, I was watching the movie and I said "Who in the world just sits in their car and drives around drunk?" and my dad said "We did when we were younger. Your mom would drive though." My mom doesn't drink really, except when it is socially mandatory at business events with my father . My mom grew up with a lot of sisters around her on an army base...she said they mostly tried to find ways to sneak out and visit boys who they weren't allowed to visit. That and school, my mom was really into school. Both of my parents love to fish and camp and be with a lot of people. So, I guess that's something that was really big? My dad used to own a VW van and they'd go camping in that (looking at my father now you would hardly guess it. I blame work .).
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Ceridwen
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Post by Ceridwen on Dec 5, 2003 4:58:01 GMT -5
When my parents were young, they did things that they would murder me for, if I did them nowadays. *shrugs* I guess because Ireland's changing, and it was still somewhat the 'innocent, green, singing' little country people sometimes perceive it to be, thirty years ago when my parents were my age. It's not like that now, at all.
Both my parents went to Technical school, which is where they met, at the age of about 13/14. They've been together ever since. Tech school was the place you were sent if you couldn't afford to go to the convent or the Christian Brothers' (for boys) schools. Accordingly, they couldn't do the official state exams, and they are now so proud of my brother and I, for carrying on with our education as far as we have. [/tangent]. Anyway. Neither of them did much, really, till they finished school. My mother went to Dublin at 17 to work as a clerical officer in a major company, and my dad went off to learn how to be a mechanical fitter in a plant, even though she really wanted to write, and he really wanted to work with wood. They just didn't have the opportunity. So, they were apart for a few years, during which time my mam dated another guy who wanted to marry her, but she wouldn't have him, and my dad hoo-ha'd around the countryside during his time off from learning his trade, hitching lifts here and there, with three of his mates. He tells the story that one night, they camped on top of a cliff in Kerry during high winds, and woke up in the morning to find their tent, their clothes, their utensils, everything they owned, floating in the Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred feet below. But they kept going, regardless, and went around the whole country without so much as a penny! My mother loved writing when she was young, and wrote beautiful poetry. She was also very religious, and wanted to be a nun at one point, but was told by the convent she applied to that she wasn't suitable, and would make a much better housewife. *wipes brow in gratitude for that* My dad was a typical Irish guy - liked his pints, liked his rock and roll, wore his beard and hair as long as possible, and worked incredibly hard for my mam, and (when we arrived) my brother and me. They grew up without very much, as did most people, I guess, at that time, and grew up in a time where finding a 'trade' was the most important thing in life, not finding a career which you loved, and which fulfilled you. My dad still tells stories of his jaunt around the whole country at the age of 17, I think it's still his favourite memory, and the first time he ever did anything he really wanted to do. It's brilliant to hear him talk about it. As for my mam, I think she loved her time in Dublin, once she'd recovered from the shock of leaving home so young. She tells me how she used to dress like a hippie just to annoy people, and how she was clumsy, like me, and once fell while running for a bus, and woke up in hospital... that's the type of thing I'd do, too.
*gasps at the length of this post, and realises it's just a meandering ramble. Shuts up, wondering if it's anywhere close to an answer to Willow's question*
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Evelyn
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Posts: 1,059
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Post by Evelyn on Dec 5, 2003 19:03:35 GMT -5
Hm, my family, as far as I know, is from the Philippines and I'm a first generation Filipino American. I honesly don't know much about my family past my grandparents. My grandfather on my dad's side gought for the US in the Philippines (I'm guessing) during WWII but besides that I know bery littly.
Let's see, our tradition is that every Christmas everyone, cousins, aunts, uncles and close family friends gather at my godparents house for Christmas dinner and exchange presents.
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Post by Simply Panda on Dec 5, 2003 22:00:16 GMT -5
I'll start with my mom's side. My mom is Korean... My grandfather came from a very wealthy family of scholars and my grandmother from a very poor family(I'm not sure what they did) When my grandfather married my grandmother his family pushed him away... they wanted him to marry someone of status. They pushed him even further away when my mom was born because she was the first born and not a son. Something else I know about my Korean grandmother is that she was born in China during the Korean War in a refugee camp... which is kinda confusing to me since China was on the North Korean side. My mom met my dad when my dad was stationed in Korea(he was in the Marines) It was against my greatgrandmothers wishes for her to marry him... as a wealthy lawyer had been asking for my mom prior to this. She disregarded her family's wishes and married my dad anyway. My dad's family is mostly german in ancestry, with a bit of welsh and irish. I am not sure how long they have been in the states. My grandma's maiden name is Wachsman... which means Wax man... so my family must have been wax workers at one point. My grandma was in a family of 16 children. My greatgrandfather on my grandpa's side ran away at the age of 8 and worked on a ranch until he was about 20. He returned to his home at this time, and the only way his mother knew it was him was he took one of her lockets when he left, and presented it to her upon his return. He was about 15 years older than my greatgrandmother when they married... I don't know very much about their family. So that's basically what I know in the way of family...
Traditions... tradition... oh, man... brings back memories of watching Fiddler on the Roof, lol... okay... back to it... We live near my dad's family. We get together at Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter and have a huge dinner. On Christmas we have dessert at my grandmother's house everyother year and at My grandmother's sister's house the years when it's not at my grandmothers. Our family and her family have always been very close. We do have one thing that we have always passed down(from my grandfathers side of the family) It is a vase that has a mother and baby cow on it (one of the ugliest things you could ever lay eyes on... it's wonderful, lol) It goes to the son of the youngest son. so it skips generations in a way.
Well... that's all folks!
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Post by En on Dec 6, 2003 9:36:02 GMT -5
My family's really into keeping Stuff (at least, Da's family is) and that sort of wigs me out. There are a few physical objects that are important to me -- a hook carved by my great-grandfather Weldon, a small bronze horse that had been my great-grandmother's, stuff like that. A thing to remind me of each person. But my family -- they keep everything. Ugly lamps, musty curtains, odd rugs.
Of course, the generation just gone were alive during the Great Depression in the USA, so they grew up in a time when shoelaces cost a week's work, so it would make sense for them to want to keep stuff so they wouldn't end up needing something... but the oldest generation now living are very wealthy, so it's just kind of funny to watch them yelling at the younger kids in the family for not having sentimental appreciation for a wind-up Santa Claus ornament Never mind that it plays a carol we all hate, the whole family; and never mind that I'm Jewish and one of the other kids is probably going to become Wiccan.
When my da was young, he was a rabble-rouser, a political activist who got the position of Dean of Students abolished at his college, an avid future politician. But he doesn't deal with failure well, and so he never got off the ground in politics. He met my mum when he was in graduate school at the place she was going for undergrad. Mind you, she was a freshman and 16 (freaky genius girl) and he was a Masters' student and 24... ahem, moving on. They got married in 1975, and I know almost nothing about their life together other than that she was unhappy, he was a neat freak and I was born nine months after the opening night of Star Wars (Episode IV). Eighteen months after that, they split up.
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Post by Nie on Dec 6, 2003 20:42:06 GMT -5
On one side of my family we're Dutch/Indonesian, but were originally from Switzerland. We started out as millers and became really wealthy. We have a family castle in the town of Elgg in Switzerland and because of my family name I have automatic Swiss citizenship, even though I've never set foot on Swiss soil, which I think may come in handy one day. We have a family tree that has stayed in tact and kept pretty up to date for several centuries.
On the other side of my family is my Celtic/Spanish background. This is the superstitious side of my family, but also the funner side of my family. Several of my ancestors from this side were mediums who talked to ghosts and spirits. A few of them can still speak Gaelic.
Altogether I'm of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, Dutch, Swiss, Spanish and Indonesian blood, and I'm a second generation Australian. I'm colourful.
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Calantha
Gryffindor Alumni
My name is Luck, this is my song, I happened by when you were gone
Posts: 4,493
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Post by Calantha on Dec 6, 2003 21:22:47 GMT -5
My family likes to keep things as well. When someone in my family sells their homes (except for us because no one wants to buy a house where we have lived "too busy") another relative will go with someone else and buy the land or it gets passed down in a will (I think everyone almost owns a dead relatives property now in my family ). But we also keep the small stuff like rugs and weird things like that. But it's a big deal with heirlooms. For example, because my family knows I'm a book nerd, I got a lot of my great-grandfather's books. My sister likes jewlery, she gets a lot of rings and necklaces and such. When she graduated she got this beautiful pearl necklace and earring set that dates back about 125 years. I'll get more books (which makes me quite happy) and probably some jewlery as well. And we pass china as well to people. Although, it's choosen before we are born. It's odd that everything should be planned before we are born (including the books v. necklace thing. Odd ). My Grand used to own an antique place and he loved it. So now my Nan has a lot of stuff cluttering her house, but I find it quite interesting.
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Post by Will on Dec 7, 2003 0:56:22 GMT -5
Oi, sorry to hear that En. Do you have a say in the situation or to you have to go along with it? Wiccan... I know a few people that are Wiccan. It's actually pretty interesting stuff. I tried explaining it to my mother once, but she still thought it's evil Oh, my dad is about ten year older than my mom, so... yeah.
Keep things? I guess my family does that to an extant. Scrolls, pottery, and other nick-knacks. We don't have any heirlooms or anything. At least, not to my knowledge. Perhaps I could start something.
Hmmm, what is it like to be "colorful"? If it's any different at all.
I just came back from a Christmas party. All Asians of course. Afterwards, I was wondering what you guys do in family gatherings and parties? On my mother's side, they tend to play a lot of Mahjong ((Very fun!)) and karaoke ((Also very fun))..
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