Cultural Immersion Analysis

I have chosen to do my cultural immersion project on adults with disabilities. I was able to visit with two different women with different types of disabilities Darlene and Rhonda. Darlene is around 60 years old with a developmental delay that had her mental age around 6 years old. Rhonda is around 50 years old with psycho-affective disorder with features of Schizophrenia, Manic Depression, and Bipolar disorder. One I thing I found interesting was how they were able live in the same household with very different personalities. Darlene is very much like a typical 6 year old talkative, hyperactive, and always on the go while Rhonda is more reserved, does not like to do any activities, and enjoys being a couch potato (her words). I assume that they would bicker like anyone would living in a bigger family in tighter corners ,

While reflecting on what culture to choose for my cultural immersion project, I thought about the many different areas we have reviewed in this course. There were several groups/areas that would not apply to me simply because of my own family and my gender. I thought about my own cultural background and belief system and which area I was the least culturally knowledgeable. I wanted to learn something new and grow during the immersion process. During the course of this paper, I will be looking at some stereotypes (both negative and positive) about this particular culture, language differences between homosexual populations and heterosexual populations, my observations of the group and my thoughts on the cultural immersion experience. I chose the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning (LGBTQ) community because, to the best of my knowledge, I do not have any family members of friends who identify with any of these categories. I have had coworkers or classmates that identify in this way, so I feel like I have always been tolerant, but I have never been close with anyone who is LGBTQ.

I contemplated for a long time on where I would do my cultural immersion experience. I wanted to go somewhere where I was an outsider in a part of my own culture. It was then that I realized I didn’t have to go far for this assignment. For as long as anyone can remember, my family has been Catholic. Despite that, I have never been to church and I don’t know much of anything about Catholicism.

I understand the term “cultural competence” is the ability to naturally navigate through (social) environments taking into consideration people’s different cultural views and promote the views of others – not to the detriment of others.

For my cultural immersion experience, I choose to attend meditation at a Buddhist temple. Lately, I have been very interested in the Buddhist religion so I thought that this would be a good introduction into it. I am not a very religious person nor did I know much about Buddhism before this experience. I did do some research and was able to find a meditation for beginners session at the Temple of Harmony. This specific temple is located in Joliet, Illinois. I did some research beforehand on what to expect for my immersion experience. I quickly learned from looking over the temple’s website that people of all races, religions, and ages came to practice Buddhism at the temple. This made me a little bit less nervous for my experience since

Being raised in The Bronx is very close to growing up in a barred civilization. Marble Hill is where I was raised and where my mother, a couple months fresh from the Dominican Republic, had met my father. Both chained with the poverty of coming from a country where you quite literally fetch breakfast in the fields, they had never dared to imagine anything outside of the Bronx borough. My father was gone around the time I was in third grade, and my immediate family was reduced to my heroic mother and two sisters. By the time I was about thirteen we left our one bedroom apartment in Marble Hill for a coquettish two bedroom on the other side of the Bronx, and it was then when I had gotten my first taste of escape.

The young girl tends to ignore the old perceptions of loyalty and consent to the traditions. She demonstrates an invisible shifting boundary between women and men, between women and women, between a tradition bound woman and a modern woman (I know who I am, nobody can dictate me). She is not a consenting subject, a primary requirement of hegemony which masks any inequality as natural. Growing up and sharing the same cultural ethos, she develops a subjectivity that differs the subjectivity of the previous narrator. Is her narrative a resistance to the dominant cultural ethos or hegemony, or the other informants who created their spaces by arguing with their husbands, such as those two females who work in garment factories, are consenting subjects to the hegemonic culture in which they live? Is a compliance meant to be always a consent? Do the consciousness of the selfhood, personhood, and individuality

The first cultural immersion activity that I participated in was going to St. Charles Catholic Church on Ash Wednesday (March 5, 2014). I had a friend who was catholic attend the church with me so I would have a better understanding of what to do and not stand out so much. In addition, I asked my friend to attend with me so I would not do anything in church that was disrespectful. Before going to the church, I thought that I would have to dress up in dress clothes but my friend told me that it is not necessary to dress up for a catholic church, which surprised me. When we first got there, my friend used the holy water and kneeled before entering the pew. I did not do these things because I felt like I would mess up and it would be

In the research paper Immigrants and The Economy, the authors analyze the changing composition of American labor. The service industry grew 13% from 1970 to 2000 according to the paper. The service industry ranges from high skilled labor to low skilled labor, immigrants participate in both ends, but tend to take the low skilled jobs much more frequently. The slowing of manufacturing in the US has hurt unions, causing manufacturing jobs to be less appealing to US born workers who are looking for stable jobs. The old wave of immigrants came to work in factories. Now, low-skill immigrants take jobs that are considered too menial for native-born Americans to desire. These types of jobs are in the agricultural, meat-packing, chicken-processing,

The special lecture was held by Rabbi Edward and Dr. Yong. Rabbi Edward explained various Jewish holidays and the reasons why they are held. Rabbi Edward then explained why Jewish community practice holidays. Dr. Yong explained briefly about Jesus, Covenant, and Freedom.

Religions all around the world are very complex, with many different values and beliefs. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to take this course and learn more about Judaism. When completing the exercise in class, I was able to see what different perspectives and thoughts others had on the religion. While listening to the interviews, I began to grasp different values that seem to be well recognized in Judaism. The one that stood out to me the most was the holidays. Many of my peers stated that they valued the holidays the most, which made me want to learn more about it. It also made me wonder if bonding together, as family and friends, is a great value in this religion. Other interviews sparked up different thoughts for me as well,

People are often ask about their cultural identity and the response tend to be straightforward. This is understandable since we all come from somewhere and definitely are going somewhere. As there are people that desire to be identify with the culture of their parents there are many that do not. Some deny their heritage as cause of fear or self-harm. Some accept it and make it part of their life as a model that one must follow. In my case? The answer is not complicated at all. It just requires attention, perception and context of who I am.

I believe that it is immensely important for the police department to be ‘culturally literate’.

Finally comes Hanukkah. This beloved eight-day winter festival celebrates the miracle of a small cruse of oil when it burned for eight-days, instead of only one. It also celebrates the military victory of the Jewish Maccabees over the powerful Syrian Greek army in 167 BCE. The victory was followed by a rededication(Hanukkah) of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. It is from this act that the holiday gets its name, which I find very interesting because of something so small created a holiday. But with Christian religion it would be Christmas and its only celebrated one day. The day where Mary had Jesus in Bethlehem in a

Cultural engagement is a process of learning to interact with individuals in another culture. This is highly important in any Christians walk with God because it helps us learn to serve, and not see this world as our own, but rather a world we need to serve in for others to show the care and love that Jesus once showed when he roamed the Earth. As we serve we gain a servants heart, which changes our hearts to look more like Jesus. In Galatians 5:13 it says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” We must not just serve others in our community, but serve with the same love that Jesus had, and this will not only change us, but also those that