Numero Uno

Hello, my name is Rachel Astin Dunn. It’s an unusual middle name I am aware, but it was my mothers maiden name and it makes my initials rad like radical. I think it’s cool… Anyways, I am one of eight kids. I have five older brothers (best thing to say on any first date) and two younger sisters. That’s just the overview, it gets much more complicated. My two oldest brothers are only half brothers, we have the same mom, and between them I have four nieces and two nephews. So I am Auntie Rach to a few youngins. On with the complications, four of my siblings are adopted but biological to each other. They were the four youngest of twelve when they were put into foster care. We initially wanted to adopt the two little girls, but when we visited them for the first time and met their two brothers we simply could not separate this little family any further. Thus began the amazing rollercoaster that is my family life. I believe that leaves just me and my only fully biological brother, Gregory. We could not be more opposite if we tried. He is currently at UC Merced in his senior year going for a degree in Biology Engineering, while I am an English Edu major with a Theatre minor; yet our love and support for each other is unconditional. Wow this autobiography is going on forever, two more things and I’ll wrap it up. My cat is my life. I am fully aware that I am dead on my way to being an old cat lady, and am perfectly okay with that. I rescued him from a box outside a grocery store when he was only days old and looked nothing like a cat. I bottle fed him for the first two months of his life and we have been attached at the hip ever since. His name is Small Cat, partially because I never made my mind up on a name for him. And last but not least I just celebrated my one year with my boyfriend and we couldn’t be happier. And now I’ll stop talking about myself.

I unfortunately write more nowadays than read. I say unfortunately because when I began writing for myself and not only assignments, I like to think that I gathered my writing voice from a variety of authors I really enjoyed. I read everything from good ol’ Shakespeare to Nicholas Sparks, to my favorite which is the ever popular James Patterson. I began writing in a very formal tone and manner, then as I began to read more modern novels I believe that is when I began to relax into whatever “voice” it is I have today. I believe that the purpose of reading and writing is ultimately the ability to communicate. When we were asked to define Literacy I said that it was the ability to convey ones’ thoughts and intentions thoroughly. Therefore, I may be shunned as an English major for saying this, but I believe when it comes to communicating there is no right or wrong. If I understand what you said to me than that is all that matters. A question I often am asked is as an English major is why I don’t  correct people when their grammar is astonishingly wrong. My standard answer is, because I understood it. My four adopted siblings spoke Spanish before we adopted them and in the beginning of our time together. The most difficult time my family ever faced was the transition into complete English speaking. One of the most spectacular occurrences in life is if you’ve ever watched children communicate with their newfound friends on the first day of pre-school. Young children do not discriminate, the figure out ways to function. What I am getting at is that very quickly after we adopted my four Spanish speaking siblings, Gregory and I, having never spoken or even heard a Spanish word in our life, began translating. Because we understood. We did not look for ways to correct them but to  understand them, for our sake and our parents.  I believe that reading and writing is essential for communication to thrive. New dialects are born out of people trying to communicate with each other across language barriers. That is what I believe and what I took from reading Szwed.