Culture differences

It interesting how different cultures around the world are. I remember when I was visiting my family in Turkey thinking how interesting the culture there was. Unlike in the United States when you meet a Turkish person they will kiss you on both sides of you cheeks as oppose to a hand shake. Like Japan Turkey also had some toilets that were just a hole in the ground. I also remember being woken up at the crack of dawn listening to people pray over a loud speaker so the entire town could hear and pray aswell. It took me awhile getting us to all of this but I personally find Turkish culture very cool. They have some similar thing to America for intance people like to smoke to be social. In America we usually smoke cigarettes but in Turkey they smoke hookah. I also really enjoyed the Turkish cuisine. I really enjoy experiencing different cultures around the world. In my opinion diversity is very enriching.

A Bronx Tale

I loved that movie A Bronx Tale it really showed life lessons. It showed how much C's father and Sunny, C's role model influenced C's life. C's father tried to teach him what he viewed was the right way to grow up and the right way to treat others. While on the other hand Sunny was more power hungery in the sense he wanted everyone to fear him and his gang. Then once he met C at a young age he taught C how to protect himself and how to be a gangster. C was pulled in two different directions and wasn't sure which one was the right one for him. He later then balanced out between both his father and Sunny. Unlike Sunny C couldn't fight people because he knew it was wrong and he didn't want to harm anyone. However unlike C's father C was not prejudice. I just thought how interesting it was throughout the movie to see C grow up and how he was like both his father and Sunny. I thought to myself how much people have an influence on your life. One person is all it takes to turn your life around. That's exactly what happened in A Bronx Tale, C changed tremedously after meeting Sunny. Ever since we were little our parents always influenced us to make the best choices as possible for us, but is it really the better choice? If we hang out with someone that our parents don't approve of is it really bad? C's father highly disliked Sunny but in the end Sunny saved C's life. So my question is are all parents right when the tell their children to keep away from a certain person?

Influences

So Friday we had the whole discussion about groups and social structure. The groups that I put down were friends from Stevenson, family, and my friends that are in college. About a year ago I would've said that my friends define me, now I'm not so sure. I have grown and changed a lot in the past year and I relized that my family has had the biggest influence on me my entire life. I learned all my morals from my mom and dad. My older brother has had such a big influence on me ever since I was little he has always protected me and been there for me. He also taugh me a lot of valuable things like how to stick up for myself and how to fight :). I have a good relationship with my brother. Another person who influenced me a whole lot throughout my life was my mom. She taught me good values as well, like how to treat others and how to make better choices. So to summarize up my blog my biggest influence in life is definatly my family.

First day of school

My first day of school I was really nervous because everytime you walk into a new class you are alway anxious about who is going to be in it whether it's your best friend or a complete stranger. I'll be completely honest the first day I came to school with my head down. I had a few things on my mind that day. I had nobody that I knew in any of my classes, I was upset because my best friend had just left for college and I knew that I wasn't going to get to see him for a long time, and the entire idea that summer break was over. However as the day progressed my mood changed I met all of my teachers and I liked every single one of them. I also met some other kids in my classes which made me feel more comfortable in the classroom atmosphere. Then I thought to myself why am I being like this? This is my senior year this year is suppose to be fun. Even though I didn't have any of my friends in my classes it shouldn't bring me down. It's good to be around new people because you get to know people that you never knew about! and that's exactly what happend with me. All in all my first day turned out well :)

Last nights reading... (Gang Leader For A Day)

So I just finished reading "Gang Leader For A Day" and I had a few things that I just wanted to self reflect on. After reading this story it made me think of a few things: how much I appreciate where I live, how thankful I am for having a loving family who provides me with food, shelter, and clothing, and how thanful I am to be able to go to school to get an education. It's just sad hearing how these people live in this story, like how they explained how there are so many poor African Americans who live in these bad areas they call "the ghetto." It also is sad how they referred to eachother as "nigger" growing up I was taught that the word "nigger" was profane and extremely disrespectful. I had a couple of questions running throught my head while I was reading this story, one that popped in my head a lot was why were these young black men compelled to be so violent? It's just a horrible way to live feeling like everyday your going to have to kill someone. All and all though this story was good I enjoyed reading about how these men treated Sudhir Venkatesh when he entered their neighborhood and how they thought about him.