F2F Class Notes (Nick)

Vocabulary

Ancestry – family line; all the people related to you backwards in time
e.g. My Mom studies our ancestry, so she is a “genealogist.”

Independence Day – the Fourth of July in the United States

Cuban Missile Crisis – the United States had nuclear missiles stationed in Europe where they could hit the Soviet Union; the Soviets did not like this, and wanted to put some missiles closer to the United States; they tried to put some in Cuba, and it almost led to a nuclear strike by the United States against the Soviet Union; this is one thing that Kennedy is famous for

Brink – the very edge
Brinkmanship – taking threats to the extreme, until you almost have a conflict in order to cause the other side to back down

Crisis – a very serious situation, when things will get a lot worse if you don’t act quickly, decisively, and correctly
e.g. If you don’t exercise, you may eventually have a health crisis.

Naturalized – someone who is not a citizen because of where they were born, or who their parents were, but because they chose to be; they applied and were accepted as a citizen
e.g. Melania Trump is a naturalized American citizen.

Surgery / Operation

Spiel – a prepared, “canned” speech
e.g. After introducing himself, the salesman got into his sales spiel.

Grammar

When talking about someone’s nationality/heritage, put the heritage first, and the nationality second
— Chinese-American (an American whose family is Chinese)