WEEK 6-- My Neighborhood

Languages I heard Today.

1. Hindi—the hair salon I use plays Bollywood videos.
2. Gujarati—One woman in the salon today was from Gujarat.
3. Russian—my neighbors on both sides and kiddy corner are all Russian. The most common
language spoken in my parking lot is Russian.
4. Yiddish—I stopped at my local Jewish bakery for the first time
5. Spanish—I passed two landscaping crews today speaking Spanish.
6. Marathi—my partner is from Maharashtra so he speaks Marathi to our son.
7. English

Other days I often hear German and Hungarian as I have two friends who speak these languages with their children.

The town I live in—while surrounded my development—is technically a small town (15-20,000 people). And yet each day I hear this array of languages. I can chose to eat Jewish, Greek, Middle Eastern, Peruvian, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, cuisine. All in a town that covers only two square miles.

I don’t always love New Jersey. I can’t let my son wade in our local river (18th most polluted in the country). The highways, strip malls, parking lots, oil refineries, and industrial parks, cover so much area that used to be forest, grassland, wetland. Even the garden state’s farmland is usually bordered by busy highways and strip malls. And yet what this place lacks in biodiversity it makes up for in its diversity of human culture.