Disabilities

I’ve dealt with people who have disabilities for many years. My uncle in mentally retarded and my mom used to take care of several people with disabilities of all sorts. When I got my second job at the Marquis Plaza and Suites I got to work with quite a few hands on. They are extraordinary people. I don’t think there is any disability that is better or worse than another one. They all seem to be about the same to me it just depends on the way you look at the world around you. Even though you can see a physical disability before you can learning or a mental I don’t think there really is much of a difference besides the fact that a physical one may limit some things in your life.

Honestly I would have to say being born with a disability would be a lot easier to deal with because of the fact that you wouldn’t have to look back and say “this could have been prevented” or something like that. I think it is B.S. that women, any women are forced to have abortions. That is a very personal subject and decision that no one has any say in except the rightful parents of that baby. Just because they parents have a disability doesn’t mean the baby will too. There are many people who don’t have disabilities and have babies with disabilities.

The USA is a pretty large country. I think our pop culture influenced other cultures because in my opinion we have more in the USA. We have more freedom to pick and choose what we write, sing, and talk about than other countries do. And I think most of them admire us for that. The media has an influence on everyone and everything. They are always saying things like “if you listen to this, or if you do this then you’ll be cool”. What is cool anyway? Children’s books seem to have changed a lot. I mean they seem more advanced. When I was little I remember reading books like Clifford. Nowadays we are reading about people going to heaven.  

4-5-11

When we watched the movie last Tuesday night it really opened my eyes. Mostly to a lot of things you don’t think about every day.  I mean most people around our town nowadays pretty much just accept everyone the way they are homophobic, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. But in the bigger cities and towns they are punished when they show their true colors. And quite brutally might I add.

When they movie mentioned that over 300 species have homosexual relations I was shocked mostly because I didn’t know that there was that many species and because it is that high. There are many cultures and countries were homosexuals and heterosexuals are very much accepted. I want to know why it matters so much. I think it is ridiculous how some people react to others personalities or personal choices or even the way they were born.

If your friend was born with a missing finger or even an extra finger, you wouldn’t think anything of it. You might think it was a bit strange but it wouldn’t change how you feel about them as a person. So I ask why does being homophobic or being heterophobic make any difference at all. Most people say you can be born homophobic, I agree and disagree. Yes, you can be born that way, but I also think it can be a personal decision. But that’s just me. I have my own way of looking at the world.

To me, Ed is a big inspiration. I very much enjoyed listening to his story. It was quite fascinating. And I love the fact that he was so open with our class about sharing pretty much anything that we wanted to know and answering our questions so openly and honestly.

Cultural Values

The article I found was on a fifth grader in Pennsylvania. Her church was putting on a Christmas party for kids with lots of games and prizes. She wanted to invite her classmates so she handed out flyers before the first bell for school rang. However, her teacher told her that she needed to stop because she needed permission from the principle first. She did.

When the father called the principle to see if they had been approved, his response was, "all flyers that are non-school related must be approved by the Superintendent's office. We recieved a call today stating that it would not be permissable to distribute the flyers." Meaning she was not allowed student to student distribution during non-instructional time nor was she allowed to use the take-home flyer forum or the literature distribution letter.

The father wanted to know why you could pass out invitations for personal parties with no questions asked but once it came to a Christmas party at his daughters church, it was denied. He got no response.

The schools policy is to ban all expression on the subject of religion, the policy is unconstitutional in that it therefore restricts speech.


I dont think its fair in the least bit. The little girl is in no way promoting her religion nor is she shoving it down her classmates throats. She is only inviting them to a free Christmas party, a night of fun.

Great Debaters

"We do what we have to do, to do what we want to do."

I really enjoyed watching this movie. The culture in this movie seemed most between white and black people. In the beginning the coach was trying to get his debate team to get to know each other, in the process he mentioned a bit of history. Walter Lynch created "lynching". Which was his way of teaching the whites how to keep their slaves in line. He taught them to keep their bodies strong but their minds weak. Eventually lynching turned into racism and murder just because whites felt they could, because they feel they were above and better than the blacks.

The debate team was a four member team of blacks. Their first debate was against Oklahoma City University about letting blacks and whites go to state universities together. They weren't even allowed on campus during this debate. It was never said why the debate wasnt on campus, but it could have been for a number of reasons. In my opinion I think it was because that it was a black debate team. I think they had their own negative thoughts about black people so they didnt want to "risk" having them at the university.

However, throughout the entire debate season Mr. Tolson tried to get Harvard to debate them. By the end of the movie Harvard finally sent them an invitation to debate them on campus. It seemed they did not care what race they were they only interested debating them. Which quite honestly was a pretty heated debate. But in the end Samantha Booke and James Farmer Jr. overtook Harvard.

Joyce

I absolutely loved how Joyce started her speech with speaking in chinese.Ii thought it was kinda cool that she did that because we had to try to figure out what she was saying by her actions. She taught us 20 to 25 words total she said. That only took us about a half hour. I was told that chinese was one of the hardest languages to learn, although we only a little bit, I thought it was quite easy.

Joyce told us how she started a school in 2001 called the Purple School. At first they only taught the language of Chinese but now they teach 8 different languages to children from ages from 0 to 10 years old, with 31 different catagories. She talked about how much easier it is to teach a child a foriegn language because at a young age beacause you are more aware to the sounds. The Chinese language has over 10,000 characters, each sound has its own character.

I learned from Joyce that the Chinese language can have 3 different ways of saying the same thing. There is one way to talk to the people above you, your elders or your boss. Another way to speak to your friends, and the last way is to speak to someone below you, such as your children.

Holiday

one holiday that is not most celebrated is presidents day. i mean in elementary school we might have looked over the presidents but i dont remember much of it. we dont ever really take the time to look back and recognize all our presidents. if you really think about it, we only really go over the presidents that did all the big things in the world, ie lincoln, roosevelt, washington. what about the little guys? they deserve some appreciation too. i think we shud celebrate all of them. i like the fact that we have a presidents day, but noone really takes notice of it. well except as a day off for some.

Loren Yellowbird

Loren did a great job of speaking to us at our class last tuesday night. He described to us how most white people treated him and his people of the Arikara tribe. He hated white people for the longest time because of what they did to them, but soon he realized that not all white people are the same. so he slowly gained trust in us. he takes pride in his culture and would like to keep it alive. he does this at his job by telling people the history of the Arikara tribe and teaching his own kids the language and other aspects.

Journey to a Hate Free Millenium

"White Race = Creator
Asian Race = Maintainors
Hispanic/Black = Destroyers"

I thought the movie was quite insightful. I mean you dont really realize how far people will go just to commit hate crimes. Matthew Shepard seemed like a great guy, and all the people, it seemed, that didnt know him only bashed him for being gay and used him as an example as a sin. i mean i didnt even know the kid and i already liked him, at least from what i have heard. Or look at James Byrd, he suffered a horrible death only because he is black. Hate crimes are big deals and supposably easy to commit.
Ghandi once said, "you must be the change that you want to see in the world."
in my opinion i blame the parents and the schools. mostly because if the parents are racist in the home then the kids will pick up the habit from them and take it into the schools. sometimes if the teachers have the seame views they wont say anything. therefore if the parents paid a little bit more attention to their kids' lives we might not live in such a messed up world.

Pricilla and Corey

Pricilla was our first guest speaker. She is the fourth generation in her family born in South Africa. She is one that talks very quickly, therefore we got alot of information in a short amount of time, which means I did not get the chance to take a lot of notes. However there were a couple of sujects I did catch. The marriage and the education differ very much from the U.S.
The caste system mainly revolves around your wealth and education. A man or woman of the upper class cannot marry one of the opposite sex from the lower caste system. the male proposes by delivering ten healthy cows to the womans parents. It shows thanks and appreciation. However if the wife proves to be unfaithful she has to return all the cows.
The education in South Africa is a bit more intense than ours. They wear uniforms and have more extreme dicipline. if a child gets backhanded or hit with a ruler the parents have no say.


Corey was our second guest speaker that night. He is from Canada. As hard as it is to believe there are many diffferences between the States and Canada. Hunting for example, in Canada you take an eight hour class when you are twelve years old but you have to have an adult  within arms reach of you at all times. You can go for your muzzle loader, rifle or a bow. Indians do ot need a license to hunt and the game wardens do not carry guns with them.
Another subject he talk about was our politics. We have two political parties, they have seven. Our politicians slam each other in commercials and on billboards. However  theirs go door to door and raise money for thier campaign.

2. Guest Speaker

On Tuesday, January 18th, we had a guest speaker, Anastasiya. She is a student at Williston State College but is from Ukraine. The culture in their country is quite different than ours. for example: the wedding trandition lasts two days long and is more family orientated. They have two dishes that they only make for the weddings, a bread dish and a salt dish. Whereas in our country the weddings last about an hour or two, then there is the reception, and then a honeymoon, which is only for the newlyweds. Our weddings aren't only for our family, its also a celebration for our friends and everyone else in the community.
The weather in Ukraine is quite similar to ours. they have four seasons just as we do. Although there winters are not as cold as ours are. However the holidays are not so similar. As for Christmas, ours would be on December 25-26 but theirs is on January 6-7. It would be starnge to celebrate New Years before Christmas. As for Easter they have Special Professions jsut to decorate eggs. They get pretty elaborate too.
The one thing that i did not like about their culture was the fact that they only go to school for eleven years. but here is the catcher, for college they are not allowed to pick the classes they take, they have to take them all.

Class Goals

     For my Intercultural Communications class I have set a few goals. Whether or not i reach these goals will be determined at the end of the semester.
     My first goal is to learn how to communicate better with people from other cultures and/or countries. To otain this goal I have to do my best to understand other cultures around me.
     My second goal is to learn not to judge nor assume anything about a person just because of the way they act or look. To reach this goal that means that I would have to take the time to get to know this person and ask questions.