things i hate:
~ sleeping badly.
~ feeling incompetent.
~ not being instantly good at everything.
~ feeling frustrated.
~ feeling made fun of.
~ asking for help when i should be able to figure it out myself.
~ being dismissed when i actually do finally ask for help.
~ ten years of cultural oppression by a cold and closed culture that's not my own and which is prone to dismissing anyone who is not family or someone they met when they went to kindergarten together.
when these things happen all at once, watch out.
and i decided january 1 that i wasn't going to be quiet about it anymore when i felt dismissed and negated as a human being by this culture in which i live. and so it wasn't that pretty this evening when all of these things happened at once.
i was having trouble with a simple task at weaving and after trying on my own for ten minutes, i finally asked for help from one of my fellow students. it was actually a really simple task and all i needed was about 10 seconds of help, just to get me started. the person i asked totally waved her arms and dismissed me so she could continue her endless stream of chat standing at someone else's loom and then as i walked away, muttered something under her breath about me. and i can tell you that it made me very angry. and i can tell you that she and everyone else present now know how angry it made me.
and i can also tell you that i'm not sorry. treating people as if they are invisible or stupid just because they're not native speakers of your language is not cool. is. not. cool. and i won't enable you do it to me anymore.
please note that i am not at all complaining about my weaving teacher, he's amazing and helpful and kind and patient. this was a fellow student who did this, and it's her and only her i'm complaining about. :-) just for the record.
