Culture Shock

Learning new things about other cultures is always very interesting, however, experiencing them first hand can be very unexpected. When I took a trip on a cruise with my family, we made a stop in Dominica. Dominica is a very unmodernized island. I remember coming off of the ship and having no clue what my family and I were going to do to entertain ourselves. It was like no other place I had been at before, especially on a vacation. We found a tour guide who took us in a large van around the island. First off, the van was not totally enclosed which is awesome for a tour on an island, but not when the driver of that van is cruising around at a nice speed of 60mph on a very curvey road overlooking a very steep moutain. As i feared for my life, the tour guide reached into his glove compartment, pulled out a few beer bottles, and offered those of us taking the tour. My dad politely told him no thank you and asked what Dominica's laws were regarding alcohol and driving. The driver told us the cops never really enforced driving under the influence laws. I really did not understand at the time how the police could allow people to drink as they drive around especially on such dangerous roads. Now that I think about it though, how many policemen could the small island have? Surely it can't like America where there is a cop car around what seems every corner waiting to catch its next speed victim. Maybe the few policemen this small island had were preoccupied with more serious offences than DUI's. Anyway as we were nearing the end of our very interesting tour, we passed a few men carrying either a machette or a machine gun. Now, in America you do not see someone walking around with such a weapon unless they're up to no good. In Dominica, however, these men were part of the island's small army. The men walk from one place to another everyday with their weapons.
We left the island of Dominica in one piece with a very different outlook of the world. I had never seen a place with so little modernization. Our tour guide had told us it was a very rare thing for people from Dominica to leave, meaning if you were born there, you stayed there for the rest of your life. Basically the culture that he was accustomed to had been the same from the beginning of Dominica. I think it was very cool to see such an untouched culture because normally when you vacation, the location has been totally influenced by tourism. I hope that tourism to the island remains minimal so it can keep as much of its ancestory as possible.

Bronx Story

I really liked this movie. I think the way C was molded from a young age from all the different groups wrapped up this unit well. The thing I think was the most interesting was the way the different ethnicities "stuck to their own kind". The way, like Sal pointed out in class, the neighborhoods were separated like country borders that were difficult to pass when you were not welcome. All of this reminded me of the movie Freedom Writers. Like C and his family of Italians, the teens in Freedom Writers were bound by their ethnicity. In Freedom Writers, there was no question you always stuck to your own kind. It created alot of gang violence, just as it had in Bronx Story. I think in each story the characters had the habit of having close ties with their own kind because of tradition and habit. They were taught as infants that they had to always protect their own. All of the focus on their own ethnicity created a strong sense of prejudice thereby creating gangs that would attack eachother as soon as they felt threatened. I think C did not have the same sense of strong prejudice as his friends did because of the way his father and Sunny brought him up. Sunny had encouraged him to follow his heart with Jane, and Lorenzo had always been friendly with all ethnicities that came onto his bus. Overall the movie was an awesome way to see what we have discussed in class on film.

Overboard

So i was not one of the people in the boat on boat day. I am kind of glad because I got to watch each person's reaction to the decisions everyone was trying to make. Each of the people who had been kicked off the boat I thought to myself I would have booted them off as well. It got me thinking, though, what is it that made me think the exact same as the 16 people who were in the boat? Why did we choose to save certain people and discard others with the same reasons? This is not an exercise that we would learn to deal with in school but somehow we all had the same strategy of making decisions. It became clear after we discussed in class how different groups subconciously make the same choices because it is the norm for the group. Each and everyone of us in the class is connected by at least one group, if not many more. I wonder if the data would differ from city to city or state to state. Or better yet, is it more than just our community that is causing the parallel thoughts that we experienced?

I had cheerleading practice today for the first time this week. My teammates and I had never been more excited to see one another even though we had just spent two full days together and pass eachother in the halls at school. It opened my eyes to how much we thrive off of our little group. Its so much more than just a team because it feels like a community from the degree we depend on eachother. From what we discussed today and how everyone in the class seemed to relate to their respective groups, I think each group a person belongs to is more like a family than a culster they happen to belong to.

Humans for food?

I have never been able to stomach the whole eating humans thing and continue to be completely disgusted by it after we read the article in class. I must admit, though, if there ever was a situation where it was mildly okay to have human for breakfast lunch and dinner, those who survived that flight were in it. It's very hard to think of placing yourself in their shoes because, let's face it, nothing comes close to being stranded on a moutain without food for months. I can't say i would or would not do as the survivers did and give into the human meat, because I don't know how i would deal with the situation until, God forbid, I'm in it. I feel if I knew the people who ate the humans, I would have a lot of questions to ask them like: what went through your head as you cut into the person and how do you honestly feel about the situation now. I would never, however, bring back the horrible memories the people went through. I know we were taught from day 1 that we don't eat other people, but what if we were comfronted with the situation the people on F-227 were? Would it be okay to eat another person to keep yourself and your family alive? Better yet, would you let strangers eat your family members?