In this past week 8's lecture, I signed up to present my Extraordinary Person who is my great aunt, Everlita Rivera-David! The experience from the interviews to the presentation to currently working on the final memoir has been fun! I’m planning on making a newspaper type of article as her final memoir since receiving her newspaper article reviews were one of her favorite things to get! This experience was really nice as I got to learn a lot about her musical career from her childhood to now. It is definitely weird thinking about how the elders in my life have known me my whole life and have been aware of my growth from a baby. Yet, I know only 20 years aka a portion of their life. Also, in the past where I have interviewed a family member for a school project, it has usually been about a certain topic or a specific time, so it was nice to have had a lot of freedom and range on what the storytelling with our extraordinary person was going to be. It also allowed me and hopefully my peers as well to be creative and explore topics that we wanted to know more about our EP, which I really enjoyed in my personal experience as well as watching others’ presentations. I have loved seeing and hearing my peers’ Extraordinary Person presentations these past two weeks because everyone’s lives seem so interesting. I am definitely excited to hear the last group’s this week, although I am kind of bummed that it’s almost over.
Talking to the residents of Case de Mañana during this past week’s lecture was really fun and eye-opening. I had the chance to be in a breakout room with Susan and Malcolm and it was interesting to hear their experiences about living here. Something that struck out to me was hearing Susan talk about how she chose to move here out of her and husband’s decisions. I had always just thought that many of these people move when they are forced to whether it by their children or out of sickness and not being able to live in their own private property. She mentioned how it was a good decision to be able to go when she was ready and I could see how the helps greatly with making this transition more positive and uplifting. Many times when seniors are forced to live here, they are not ready, mentally, therefore having a negative attitude about it and not being able to make the most out of the experience. it definitely opened up my eyes to what I would do once I got older. It was also interesting to hear how living with their children would not be an option they would like to consider for them because of the differences of lifestyles. This is interesting because growing up in an Asian household, we are taught to continuously take care of our elders and that when they are old, we have this responsibility to be their caregivers. Many of my older family members live with their children and their families so it was surprising to hear a different perspective to this. I understand why they would not want to live with their children and their families because I have seen how living with one’s children as a senior could have an impact on their sense of independence which has been something they have been practicing longer than their children have been alive so it would be weird to live with their kids and be dependent on them. Overall, hearing stories from a couple of these residents was very lovely and I hope we get the chance to hear from them again and hopefully one day, in person!
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Ma Kiela OrtineroMa Kiela is a Global Health and Urban Studies & Planning double major from Corona, CA. A fun fact about her is that she has lived in 8 different cities (in 2 different continents) in the past 20 years! Archives
April 2021
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