Creative Assignment Blog #11

I chose these three pictures because I really feel like they shape my identity/personality.  It has always been a dream of mine since I was little to be ‘Belle’ from Beauty and the Beast someday.  The picture on the left reminds me of my dream every day.  When I look at it I know that I must never give up on my dream. As one of my friends told me, “It’s like your hugging your future!”

One of my favorite quotes from Walt Disney says, “All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.”  I live by this quote every single day.  Dreams don’t come easy, you have to work for it and I will never get up on it.  The picture of the right just makes me think that all the characters are waiting for me.  I know it sounds corny but these are things that motivate me into never letting go of my dream.

The reason all of this influences my identity is simple.  I am a true kid at heart.  I stand by everything that Disney promotes.  I love fairytales and happily ever after.  I love bringing joy to people and especially kids.  Overall, I am a very outgoing person and love interacting with all sorts of people.  I am also a people person.  I hope to work at Disney World someday and give people that same magical feeling that I get every time I go there.

Cultural Assignment #1

Since this weekend was Easter, I spent a lot of time with my family and relatives and got to see what our culture is really like.  No matter what other cultures might say about us, we are very close with our families.  Even though we all live far away from each other and can’t see each other as often as we’d like, we make that time up by talking about our lives that they are not a part of due to distance.  I noticed how everyone was happy to see each other and hear about ourselves.  It’s truly great how loving my family and relatives are and how much they care about everyone.  I think this makes our culture really unique because family always comes first and we truly all care about each other.  Some other cultures might see their family every day and are constantly in every ones business.  But that might not always be good.  It makes family time more special when you haven’t seen one another in a very long time and are able to catch up.  I know personally that I get so excited to see my relatives every time I have the chance because since we don’t see each other daily it’s nice to catch up and to just see how everyone is doing.  We all care about each other and truly want the best for everyone.

This weekend was also nice because I got to see some friends that I don’t see that often anymore.  Since we are very close friends we immediately click and act like it hasn’t been months since we saw each other last.  I think this makes us unique because a lot of friends become out of touch and distant from each other once they enter college, but me and my friends make sure that we are still very close and are just as good friends as we were before college.

On Saturday, my parents were watching ‘Everybody loves Raymond’ and the episode displayed individuality very well.  The episode was about Ray’s and Debra’s daughter Allie was getting bullied on her school bus.  Her mom wanted her to stand up for herself and be independent.  Ray on the other hand was born into a family where his mom always babied him and took care of him so his naturally instinct was to protect his daughter.  The next day, he arrived to the bus stop with Allie and convinced the bus driver to ride the bus with him to stop the bully.  Unfortunately, nothing suspicious happened on the bus.  He asked the bus driver if she knew about the situation and she said how Allie was the one who was bullying another girl.  Ray was very upset and when he talked to his wife about it, Debra said she would talk to Allie about it.  She thought that Allie should always stand up for herself so that she will be able to take care of herself when she was older.  This really reminded me of what we were talking about this week because it proved that American’s really want their kids to be tough and independent while other cultures, such as Ray’s who were strong Italians, want to ‘baby’ their kids and to let them know that their family will always be there and protect them.

[HW #9] Individualism as a Cultural Value

1.  One topic that American’s think is rude to talk about is asking a personal questions such as, ‘Why a person is divorced’ or ‘how much income do you make’.  We typically don’t like to share our private life with other people because we don’t want to be judged and just don’t like sharing it.  Another thing we find rude is when we are eating at a table and people reach for food during a meal.  We stalk up our plates before the meal so we don’t have to reach over people eating because we find that to be disrespectful.  One last topic we think is rude to talk about would be other people telling us how to take care of our family.  Everyone has a different way of raising their families and when someone else tries to correct them it comes across being very rude and noisy on other people’s lives.
2. When American needs to take care of an elderly person we usually hire people to help and visit as often as we can but in Thai they drop everything they have to take care of an elderly person.  That was from the reading.  I disagree with this though because many American’s, such as my family, tends on our grandparents all the time and care for them very much.
3. My dream has always been to work in Disney World.  I think in the next year or so I am going to transfer to UCF so that I can live in Florida and will be closer to my dream.  People in other cultures would find this strange though because I will be leaving all of my family, friends, and everyone I’ve grown up with to chase a dream.

Intro to American Life

1. Two things that are different in tv/movies than in reality are that tv reflects American as being people who are extremely over weight, people who party every day, and people who are spoiled and rich.  If tv is not showing any of those things, it will show people who are really poor or sad stories.  It rarely shows American as being normal and living a normal life like a lot of us do.  I think the reason they don’t show that is because they think that will be boring to watch and won’t attract an audience.
2. Americans are very cautious about time because they always want to be on time and never want to waste a minute of it.  We know that our time is so precious and we don’t have a lot of it in the day so we try to do as much as possible in a day.  Sometimes times can stress us out if we have deadlines and or have to be somewhere at a certain time.
3. Americans don’t like interruptions because they will distract us.  If we’re in some sort of mess, being interrupted by people can be distracting and cause us to lose time.
4. “In the United States, it is extremely important to extend the same courtesies and respect to all individuals, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, or sexual orientation.”  I picked this sentence because I agree that we as Americans respect all people no matter who they are or what they look like.  I think this has made our country grow a lot stronger as individuals.

The Global Village Finally Arrives

1.  “In this respect, the city seems only to bear out the old adage that what is in California today is in America tomorrow, and next week around the globe.”  I picked this sentence because it really stuck out to me.  I never knew that California was ahead of the whole world in many things.  I find it very fascinating.

2.  Two positives of a multi-cultural/globalized world  would be that everyone is able to learn many different cultures and are able to travel anywhere around the world to understand each culture and to appreciate what they each offer.  Two negatives would be that it might be confusing to kids what their real culture is. If they are constantly surrounded by hundreds of different cultures, they may never learn where they came from and what their own culture is about.  Another negative is that people might have to learn multiple languages just to survive in their own country.

Learning from Ladakh

1.  The introduction to a money based economy distorted relationships because everyone became so greedy that they forgot their values with one another and just focused on getting more money.  They also became very dependent on more material items which were called by money once again.  Since they were being introduced to items that the culture has never seen before, everyone wanted to own everything.

2.  I think that the Ladakhis were better off before money because I feel that their economy was more efficient when they used other things than money to buy and sell products.  Many farmers were able to provide for their families, but now most of them have turned to the city to find jobs leaving the rest of the farmers to provide even more food for the public.  Also, everyone had better values before money was introduced and everyone was treated equally among each other.

The Paranoids

Earlier this week I saw the movie “The Paranoids”.  Since it was in a different language I had to rely on the subtitles to understand what was going on.  The main character Luciano was quiet most of the time and let his best friend Manuel boss him around.  Manuel was coming back from Spain to write a Tv show ‘The Paranoids’ which was to feature Luciano who was also a writer but could never figure out how to end his own movie.  I feel that his whole life he’s been a little outspoken and afraid to stand up for himself.  He seems content how his life is going but I could tell that he would burst out of his shell by the end of the movie.  When Sofia, Manuel’s girlfriend, stays at Luciano’s house for a couple of days it is obvious that there is some connection between them.  But with Luciano’s fear of sticking up for himself and for never going after something that he wants, he tries to show little emotion towards her.  It is only until the last five minutes of the movie where we see Luciano showing his full emotions towards her and betrays his friend to be with her.  I was very happy for him because Manuel had bossed him for their whole friendship and at the end it shows Luciano finally getting out of his shell and sticking up for himself.

This movie was very different from an American movie.  There were a lot of times where the movie dragged on and it would just show all the characters smoking or drinking.  Over all, I thought it showed a great way of someones own identity changing for the better.