3/24/11

Wonder who makes the best parties, the Greeks or the Italians? 

SPRING BREAK:   Spring Break is coming up and all my friends are excited, yet no ones stops to think the that means that we are only a couple of months away from becoming Seniors, which means that we only have about one more year of High School :(. If 11:11 is real than I wish that my junior year wouldn't end so quickly. Life as a High School student sure is fun, but I know that once you cross the senior year age, fun ends and a new beginning awaits .....................    But still this spring break should be fun, I may go to a wedding ( should be interesting and scary, family weddings get a bit scary, interesting and out off control), o well you can't pick your family ( lol ). Hope that its fun.................

This week in sociology we watched the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the movie was really weird yet it was also really realistic to what happens in real life when two different cultures come together and unavoidably experience culture shock.  When my parents got married, their wasn't that much of a difference in culture since their both from Mexico, but when one of my uncle got married with someone from America ( my uncle was also from Mexico), thats where one could see the big difference in cultures. 

   

 My mom's side of the family loved to party, they would have a party for just about any reason, it could be something as small as passing 2nd grade to celebrating for an anniversary.  My uncle ( from my mom's side of the family) is the youngest of 15, since he was the youngest, everyone was expecting a final  big wedding. All his siblings by this time were happily married and they have  had a Big Fat Mexican Wedding ( lol ). In my mom's side of the family, weddings were of the most importance, every detail had to be noted and taken into consideration, their was no room for errors, basically my mom's side of the family was crazy when it came to weddings, to them weddings were sacred bonds that would last forever.  On the other hand, my future to be aunt, didn't see the wedding the way that my family saw it. My future aunt had only one sibling, she said that her sisters wedding was small and it wasn't made into such an exaggeration,or at least as much as my family, and that was the way that she wanted. My future aunt wanted to have a very limited invite list for the church ceremony and she wanted their to be a maximum of 100 people at the after party. My grandparents weren't to please with the idea of having a small wedding, to them a wedding was something special that needed to be shared by all your love ones, which included cousins, siblings, aunts, uncles, second cousins, and ect. When it came down to the day of the wedding, things had been changed, the soon to be wife was convince to do a wedding the way that my grandparents had dreamed of making it. In the end, the wedding was AMAZING, a lot of family showed up at the church ceremony ( some people had to stand ), the limit that aunt placed for the after party was almost tripled. Overall the wedding was amazing and everybody enjoyed it, the best part is that its even almost 20 years since the wedding and people are still talking about it. 

 I wonder if when I get married, my wedding will turn out to be something as amazing as the wedding that my aunts and uncles have had. 

3/17/11

I hope the that never happens to me ever again...............       Am I old?
    Today at my job, this kids took some weird games and they were playing with it all afternoon. The kids seemed to have been having a lot of fun with the games, so I approach them ( I regret doing that ). When I asked the kids what they were playing, they quickly gave me a weird look and hesitated to tell me what they were doing, eventually they told ( it sounded a bit complicated.) The game seemed complicated but fun, I asked one of the kids if I could play, he said yeah. Not even three minutes had gone by when I had lost, I was surprise, I thought that I had the hang of it but apparently not. After losing about three times, the kid got mad and told me that should stop playing because I was to old to understand the game. I was shocked, a little kid was dissing me. The comment made me sad, it made me realize that maybe I was getting a bit old ;( .
    In this depressing moment in my old life  ;( , made me different from everyone else. In this example, I think that I was a member of the outgroup A.K.A the old group. I was one of the old kids in the room and they were the ingroup or the cool kids. Overall today was not a good day at work.

Anywayssssssssssss.
     This week, we had to break a folkway and I can honestly say that breaking a folkway was fun and awkward at the same time. The folkway that I decided to break was related to clothing.  People in America judge one another by the clothes that they are wearing. If someone saw a person wearing a lot of silk and flashy accessories, one might think that person was rich, compared to someone wearing old rags of clothes with dirt marks. What I decided to do was wear my underwear on top of my jeans. I went to the store and bought  a  boxer decorated with smiley face . When I got home, I rubbed it against the dirt so that it would get some uniqueness and I played tug of war with my dog ( poor dog, didn't know what she was doing). The idea of making the appearance of the underwear look bad was to try and change the peoples view towards my appearance more realistic ( people would notice that the boxer was new). At first I was scared the response that I would get from the people would be exaggerated and I could get in serious trouble ( lucky me nothing bad happened :)). My hypothesis was the people would start to walk away as soon as they saw me, and try to avoid any sort of contact with me. At first, the people weren't responding the way that I hoped. People instead gave me a dirty, disapproving look that made me a bit uncomfortable. I than thought that maybe people weren't doing anything because they were under the influence of groupthink. Maybe people weren't doing anything like telling the manager, or someone in authority because they thought that someone else was going to do it or the people just didn't want to be members of an outgroup that could arouse at any moment ( members  of the outgroup could include people that made contact with me whether it was directly or indirectly ). So instead of changing my underwear lol, I decided to change the location and try to go somewhere else where the people would be different and surely the response should be too. I went to ALDI, La Tampico, Burger King and Jewel, and yet not many people responded the way the I was expecting. It seemed as though woman were the ones that did most of the moving and evil look thing. The males seemed to have been the ones that didn't take much notice to the fact that I was wearing my underwear over my jeans ( that worried me a bit I was thinking that maybe they had also done it so they weren't surprise).

Overall breaking a folkway was really fun and interesting. I found out that people will just try to give you a vibe that will make you uncomfortable than actually doing something about it. I wonder if people would change their respond if I would have changed my underwear.

After the whole experiment, I threw away my new boxers, I kind of wanted to keep them as a memory of what I did, but my mom made me throw them away, she said that it was disgusting, which I don't see how but ok.

Hope that we get to do something more like that, it was really fun and interesting.  

3/10/11

I think that teachers are out to get students this week ( students beware of your teachers). A lot of kids are saying how they have a ton of HW and how they've taken a test just everyday this week, it makes me wonder if teachers this week formed their own interest group, just for a week  leaving the kids with a lot of test and HW ( what a nightmare ).  Well anyways, this week seems really long.  
              
 This week in sociology we learned about the different types of culture and the components of a culture.

I think that the most important thing that we learned this week in sociology were the norms that a culture could have.  I think that norms are the most important because they put a boundary on the members of a culture on how they are suppose to behave. Every culture has their own norms.
    For example............................
         One of my uncles was brought to America from Mexico, when he was really little ( a couple of months old) . He spent his whole life in America, so he is accustomed to the American culture rather than his birth culture ( Mexican ).  Not so long ago, he got divorce from his wife.  After he got divorce, it took him a long time before he told his parents that he got divorce because he knew that they wouldn't take it lightly and he was scared of what they were going to think.  His parents lived in Mexico and they were not used to divorces, in their eyes a divorce was like a big sin. Getting a divorce, to them was like breaking a taboo.  To them the consequences for breaking a taboo of that magnitude were severe ( I don't know what were the consequences).  When my uncle was ready to tell my grandparents that he was divorce, he bought a ticket to go to Mexico and decided to tell them in their faces what had happen rather than giving them a call them and telling them the whole story. When my grandparents heard what happen, they were shock and they didn't know what to say. He was the first member o the family to get a divorce.
     In the American culture, divorces aren't viewed the same, they don't fall under the same norm.  Maybe to Americans, a divorce would be more like a folkway instead of a Taboo. Every culture has different boundaries as to where something falls in the norm system. In the American culture, woman aren't made to cover their body. In India woman are made to cover their entire body because they think that its bad for a woman to show her body for the public eye.For America, this example might just be a folkway ( depending ) and on India it could probably be a Taboo or a Law.

A Taboo is a norm in a culture, where if someone breaks this kind of norm, they would get severe consequences.  The example of my uncle breaking a Taboo norm that was view as a big no no by grandparents culture, brought great consequences for him.

Sociology so far is really fun and I'm really learning a lot. :)

America is.........................

  My first choice is money since America is seen as a place that revolves around money. Money is on everyone's mind from little kids to adults.  People in America see money as their only way to live a good life.  I have a big extended family which the majority is of little cousins, and all they wanted for Christmas was money. Without money Americans couldn't pay for the new ipad, or the new droid, for fast food, or for an education.

  America now a days is so addicted to electronics especially cell phones. For my job I have to work with kids, and kids no older than 10 already have newest version of the ipod  and  they also already have a cell phone.  When I was their age cell phones weren't even seen on kids younger than high school students, now a days I walk past my old Elementary school and I see just about every kid with a cell phone or an ipod.  I think that if one electronics were to all of a suden disappear, the people of today would go nuts. Now a days, America depends on electronics for everything. Americans have computers to replace books, they have texting instead of sending letters by mail, they have T.Vs to replace going to an oprah show ( like the singing not the person). America today is addicted to electronics.





 America is a place where slowness is not allowed, were the slow get trampled on.  America is all about having everything fast, they want fast jobs, fast food,fast internet, fast new products.  America has no patience. Recently, fast food business has increase dramatically over a couple of years. Just about ten years ago Americans spent about $110 billion on fast food.  On average an American will eat a fast food meal at least three times every two weeks.  Fast food has taken over peoples lives. 


   The American culture revolves a lot around sports. Their are a lot of baseball fans, Football fans, soccer fans, volleyball fans, basket ball fans, fans for every sport ever invented. It doesn't matter what sport it is because America just loves them all.  People in America get really hyped up when two big rivals compete against one another or when a big game is coming up. America recently passed true a big game, the Super Bowl. When the Super Bowl was aired on live T.V, it was said to have been the most watched show on T. V. in a long time (or something like that).



  America is a place that is well known for its school.  Education is an important part of the American culture.  My mom first came to  America with a study visa. She came here to study and try and strive for a good future. Now my mom is pushing me and my siblings to get an education and to go to college and work hard to get a degree on something.  Education is in every Americans mind, probably more now days given the economical problems.

3-3-2011

The Awkward Moment..

     The activity that we did in class was by far the most awkward activity I have ever done. The class got divided into two different cultures and of course with different cultures come different customs. The simulation was tricky since one group was suppose to start a conversation with a hand shake, but the other group was not allowed to have any kind of physical contact with another person. The simulation turned really awkward and confusing  real fast since nobody knew what was going on or what to do.  The different cultures had totally different customs that one must follow.  It was hard at first, not being able to communicate with the other culture, but eventually the class pulled it toward people started to have some conversion. In real life something similar occurs just about every time one interacts with someone from a different culture. It can be something as simple as not being used to doing another cultures customs, as to not being allowed to do another cultures customs. 

At the very least we know that people  can never stop learning something new from the so many different cultures that the world has to offer. 

   The most awkward moment of my life was also the most wonderfull moment in my life.  The day that my grandparents first came to West Chicago was by far the best day of my life. The first time that I met them was when I was three and that was in Mexico ( some good, funny memories ) , years passed (5 years ) before I saw them again.  I was only a little kid, and I didn't know my inherited customs good enough when my grandparents first came. I had been waiting for the day that they would arrive at the airport, I was really excited to see them even though I hadn't seen them in a long time and I didn't remember much about them.  My mom told me great stories of my grandparents ( really funny ones ). Days before my grandparents were to arrive at the airport, my mom tried to teach us as much as she could about how to behave in the presence of my grandparents.  When they finally arrived at the airport, my whole family went to the airport to pick them up, everyone was excited and nervous to see them ( specially my mom). My mom was the first to recognize my grandparents, she started crying since it was her first time seeing them since she came to America.  She tried to walk as fast as she could towards them ( my mom was in the process of giving birth to my little brother ) and she automatically went up to them and hugged them and kept on hugging them for a long time . When it was finally my turn to greet my grandparents, my mom taught me that they weren't used to shaking hands and that instead I should just skip to the hugging.  I guess I was nervous when it was my turn, my extincts immediately kicked in and the first thing I did was stretch my hand to give them a hand shake ( I could see a confuse look on my grandparents face). It had taken my grandparents some time before reacting, I guess that they weren't used to the custom of shaking hands to greet a person, they were confused and just stood their not knowing what to do. The ride home was by far the most awkward ride of my life ( now I just go straight for a hug, I get to avoid the awkwardness).

Even though it started rough, both my grandparents and me learned something new from a different culture.