Journal Entry #4- Cultural diversity

My experience at the CESL today was a very enlightening and enjoyable.  I met two people who have just recently moved here from China and Dubai.  It was very interesting talking to them and sharing their life experiences as well as mine and finding out what they have planned for their futures.  The thing that interested me most about their culture is that they both had very tight and close family relations as opposed to the general American culture in which many parents allow their kids to be independent sooner and even kick their kids out of the house at 18.  My family, also raised with a different culture, has very similar closeness within the family and always having a place at home for their children.  It was interesting to hear how in China the parents rarely let their children do anything unsupervised and are raised so strictly.  In Dubai, I learned that the families tend to live together with multiple generations in one house.  For instance, if a son gets married, he can live in his father's house as long as he wants. I believe that our interactions today related to the reading Letter to Mexico because there were alot of new ideas and culture shocks in both situations.  For instance, in Letters to Mexico, Biss realizes how disgraceful many people of the American culture are when she is around Mexican citizens and how they view her negatively because of stereotypical judgements.  SImilarly, I had some preconceived notions of some of the Chinese and Arab cultures that were proved wrong by meeting with these people that I met today.  Also, in the story, Biss helps out the Mexican American in the factory with her English and vice versa with Biss' spanish.  They developed a friendship and mutual understanding of each others' cultures and accepted and appreciated each other.  Today was similar as we had conversations that extended beyond the given question sets and were facinated to learn about the others' cultures.  By learning about other cultures and how it shapes the identities of the people that are part of that society, we realize that we are able to shift our culture slightly by learning from the positive identifiers of other cultures.  Overall this experience definitely made a positive impact on me.