Example 1
Some of the Questions:
- What is your favorite food? Do you cook?
- What was the last sound you heard in your hometown?
- What was your last meal before fleeing/leaving your country?
- How did your mother's kitchen smell when you were home?
- What was your first sonic experience of facing the new city?
- Describe your neighborhood. How does it sound and smell? Do you remember the sound and smell of your district in your country?
- Describe your hometown by its smell and sound.
- Are (were) there any places near your house, like a restaurant, mosque, or church, that have specific sounds or smells that you get used to?
- Are there any differences in the smell of fruits and vegetables between countries you have ever lived in?
- Do (did) you have any daily path toward office, school, or wherever you should go daily? Do you use a car, or do you walk along this path? Please describe any sound or smell that you are experiencing every day on this path.
- Have you ever felt like missing that routine path in your hometown? Have you ever chosen your way based on its familiar sound and smell?
- Have you ever taken a trip back to your own country after a few years of being immigrated? What did you feel when the airplane doors were opened? How did it smell/ sound? Did it look different from when you were living there?
- Have you had any morning rituals in your school? Any songs, slogans, or hymns? Please tell me what you remember about these ceremonies and sing or perform some of them.
- What is your favorite meal your mom used to cook? Tell me why you loved it. What made that so special to you? How did it smell and look? Do you remember any sounds she made during her cooking? Can you tell the recipe from its beginning to the end? Could you ever experience that outside your mother’s kitchen after you left your country? Have you ever tried? Please explain your experience.
- Have you experienced being questioned by locals about the food you were eating, cooking your language, or the music you were playing or listening to? Have any neighbors ever knocked on your door to ask about the weird smell during your cooking?
- How have you changed? How have this new sound and smell changed you and your attitudes?
- How long did adapting to your new place, city, country, and cultural meaning take?
- Each society has its different meanings of urban sound and smell. Do you live differently outside and inside your house? Are there any outdoor activities you don’t do because you feel that might be perceived as strange by local people? Have you ever had any experience of an unintentional reveal of these private activities? How did you manage it?
- How often do you miss your home town? What makes you feel this?
- Do you regularly go to any ethnic bars or restaurants? Why? What does it feel like for you? What is it there that makes you feel at home? How often do you visit these kinds of places?
- What would you do if you wanted to spend one day in memory of your hometown? Have you ever experienced setting up everything as you did in your country? What did you do? Did you do it alone or with your friends?
- Please name one music track that makes you listen to whenever you miss home.
- Before you go abroad, what was your music playlist? Name 3 to 5 music tracks that you used to listen to at that time. What is your new playlist? Do you think living in another country has changed your music listening habits? If yes, please explain how.
- Please tell me if you want to add whatever I haven’t asked you before. It might be a story, memory, or specific feelings toward sound and smell in your urban life.
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