My family.
My friend Mario and my cousin Valentina became part of my family after they moved from Mexico to our house in McAllen six months ago. Since the beginning, I started seeing Mario and Valentina like siblings. My parents my brother and I bonded with them right away because we shared the same views and ideas about many things. I felt like their presence made my family closer and therefore a more communicative family.
In my point of view, members of a discourse community don’t necessarily always need to share the same views and ideas, but in this occasion, having similar views and ideas led to a better communication between us, and it helped a lot to become the unified “family” that we are today. The group that was created when my friend and my cousin came to live with us was very important and influential. Their incorporation helped me realize the importance of having good communication between the members.
Mario came to McAllen because he wanted to experience something new, meet new people, and a job opportunity opened up for him, and Valentina simply came because she wanted to learn English, and wanted to see what it was like to live in a different country with a different culture. For both of them the change was radical because they were used to living in a stricter environment. For them it was like boot camp year round. “Now it is more relaxed, I feel like everything is more open and I am very comfortable living here”(Llorens) said Mario after being asked what was the most notable difference between living with his strict family and living with his new family.
When we interact the most is during lunchtime, because we always like to eat together to talk about our day or other current events. There we let everything out. If someone has anything important to say or needs advice on something, that is the time to share it with the family. Most days, mealtime is fun and full of laughs. Mario and my dad always manage to make jokes out of every story each member of the family has to share. Jokes are important for my family and me because sharing jokes with the people around us is always a good medicine to ease our tensions and relieve our stress. In addition, eating family meals is key to building strong bonds between parents and their children and we believe that while technology have brought us closer to the rest of humanity, it is the family meal that brings us closer to our own clan (Stephen). Other day’s mealtime isn’t as fun and full of laughter. We can tell right away when my parents have trouble at work or when there is something wrong with someone. The mood at the table is completely different from other days when we are all happy. Normally when this happens everyone stares at each other waiting for someone to speak something. We know right away when our parents are having problems at work because they start arguing and they don’t like for us to get in their conversation. When someone else has a problem that wants to share, we try to help each other by giving advice or we try to support each other when going through rough times. I think that eating lunch as a family every day resembles the Hispanic culture. The way family members are bonded and behave, affect the way a culture or a society flourishes. It is very common for Latino families like ours to have lunch together to gossip and talk about current events (Stephen).
All my life, I have only lived with my brother and my parents and the communication between us was different than the one we have now with the new members. Before, my brother was basically my only source of advice when I had questions that I was ashamed to ask my parents. Since they became part of our community this has changed. Now I have two more “siblings” who I can rely when I need advice or an opinion. Their incorporation was also very important to me because it helped improve the communication between our parents and us. Since they arrived my parents became more frank. They said that