Everyone is "cousin"

We all get confused at 1 stage or another how to address certain relatives, especially if u hav an extensive family (Note tat u dun hav any special titles for relatives thru marriage. In other words since they're not blood-related, they're not counted as relatives).

Generally, every1 knows tat
A nuclear family is made up of father, mother and one or more children living together.
A single-parent family is one where either the mother or father is caring for the children in the family.
(Both the "nuclear family" and the "single-parent family" are also called the "immediate family".)

Second families
"Step-" is used to show tat it is from another marriage. "Half-" is for anything new in the second (or third) marriage.

The sister/brother of ur grandparent is actually ur great-aunt/great-uncle, n not grand aunt/grand uncle, as in the diagram. I simply dun hav a better diagram.



Ok, here comes the "Cousin" part:

A cousin is a relative, other than an ancestor or descendant who shares a common ancestor (basically, every1 young or in the same age range like u in a family-get-together, is a counsin, u wouldn't go wrong there).

Parallel cousin r those who are in the same descent group as u and are from the parent's same-sexed sibling. A cross cousin is from the parent's opposite-sexed sibling. Simply put, a parallel cousin is a first cousin who is the child of the father's brother (paternal uncle's child) or the mother's sister (maternal aunt's child), while a cross cousin is the child of the mother's brother (maternal uncle's child) or of the father's sister (paternal aunt's child).

Double first cousins arise when two siblings reproduce with another set of siblings and the resulting children are related to each other through both parents' families (How cool is tat?).

Generally, the words cousin-sister/cousin-brother does not exist in proper English. These r the terms, tat i read somewhere, first introduced by English-speaking Indians, which just refer to female cousin/male cousin. And now these terms r widely n generally used in Malaysia n Singapore. Sad.

Today we did a little revision n 2 new dances. One of them is The Last Waltz - 1 wall 48 count. It is not a new song. Basically it's something like the basic waltz steps cos after all the turning, u wind up facing the same wall, except tat in the real waltz u stand on the exact location as u first started but in this dance - no, u ended up toward the first wall. The steps r harder than the basic waltz tho. And the hand movements. I always hated the hands.