My Life Of My Family

“Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9). Through all generations of my family leading up to today, my family, on my mother and father’s sides, all practice the same faith. All of my family is Catholic, most of my friends growing up were catholic, and everywhere I looked, my faith was an important part of my life. I went to private school for nine years; the same one many of my cousins and my siblings attended. All of the people around me when I was a child prayed and worshiped like I was taught to do. They were the ones that influenced me to go deeper into my faith. Through the daily religion classes and weekly masses, to the teachers and priest that influenced my morals and values, I look back on those days as times I cherish. I had learned to open my heart and let others in to take a part in my life. I set boundaries for myself to be a respectful person and keep my faith. And most importantly, I am a life worth living as we are all made from the same image of God. Private school is the reason I am the person I have grown to be today and I will become tomorrow.

All my life, I have always made sure that family is a key part of my life. My grandparents were always my closest family besides my parents and brother. I never really had any cousins to hang out with, so a lot of my free time would be spent with my grandparents. When I was in elementary school, I would always walk from my grandmother’s house in the morning to school. I did this every day, and over the years it made us a lot closer. I have always tried to be close with all my family members. I’m extremely happy I always had this attitude, because in a blink of an eye it can all change.

I was born and grew up in Ethiopia, moving to America three years ago. Ethiopia is one of the traditional country where most of the population and the economy rely on agriculture. I was born in small rural town called Akaki in the southern part of Addis Ababa City. My family depends on agriculture, my parents grow crops like teff, barley, hard wheat and sorghum, which is the common ingredients for our day to day meal. The production of these crops takes place in traditional farming. I am the youngest kid in my family, that means I am free from any responsibilities in my culture my older siblings do most of the things in our family. I spent most of the time playing with my friends. Everyone in my family loves me. If something happens with in our family, the oldest one are accountable and responsible, even I am a young and grown guy, this thing makes me lazy and spoiled person.

“We live by hope. We do not always get all we want when we want it. But we have to believe that someday, somehow, some way,it will be better and that we can make it so.” Hubert H. Humphrey. I am a true believer that as humans we interpret things completely different from one another no matter how ¨simple¨ a phrase or something may be. I interpret this quote as tomorrow will be better. I guess you can say I am one who tends to live in the future rather than the present. I am Rajveer Sahota and this is a little insight on me.

Love and friendships- My first friendship was one i am still been with for almost 15 years and growing up with him is like having a brother in another family. We would always go and listen to music and fool around, my first time coming into the U.S i already had someone to be around. When his oldest brother died i was still brand new here. It was still very tragic and even though me and him didn't know his brother as much it was difficult to believe it happened. The thing i most admire about friendship is that if you are that much close like brothers you can tell each other almost any deep dark secrets, being close to someone who is almost similar as you is the best thing about being in a friendship. It always helps being friends with someone you can trust.

As early as I can remember my grandparents, whom my sisters and I called Mum and Pa were and are the most important people in my life. I have two sisters, my twin Kristine and my younger sister Debbie. I don’t have many memories of my dad and the one’s I do recall aren’t really nice ones, he was an alcoholic who wasn’t home much and when he was my mother and him would argue and end with him hitting her. Growing up I always felt that my mom favored my twin Kristine (not much as changed) and that my father favored Debbie, so where did this leave me. We lived in a suburban city and most days and nights my mother worked second and third shifts, probably so she wasn’t home when our father returned late at night drunk. My parent’s situation left the three of us alone quite often if it wasn’t for our amazing grandparents. Similar to the way I felt about the favoritism being shown was the same way my sisters felt about the relationship I had with our grandparents. The numerous occasions I ran away from home to a phone booth to call my grandfather to come get me, staying at their house for days just being happy and feeling special. We didn’t live in the best houses, I remember one home that used to be my fathers aunt and uncles house when we walked home from school with friends they would want to know what house and at first my sister and I would just say “oh it’s down there”. Finally, when I was in seventh grade my mother left our dad and we moved in with my grandparents.

Our parents are very hard-working people. Our parents both work day and nights. They embody the “American Dream”. .My father was always hustling and bustling whether it was in the states or overseas. So, he was not as much a part of my brother and I’s childhood as we had hoped. My mother, on the other hand, took the role of dual-parenting and took care of us at home. Though, she was also busy clocking in and out. We made the most of our time together and they were the most memorable moments. At the end of the day, life treated my brother and I really well. With that, our parents could not leave us to fend for ourselves at home alone--me being three years old with a younger brother and all. But,. growing up, my brother and I spent our childhood with one of our close cousin, ‘tina’s, grandmother. She had a special nickname, “Meema”, that everyone knew her by.

Granddad I blame you, I blame you for everything that had happened to our family year. I blame you for all the heartbreak and the tears that my family had cried. You were supposed to be the “head” of our family but, no you let me down, you let every family member down. I have been holding in these feelings for years but you are getting older and so am I. I’m trying to forgive you. I want to forgive you, but first I need to explain to you what you did to me.

I like to describe myself as a bubbly person; I am definitely a glass half full kind of girl; I love sunny days, the color pink, and peppy songs. At the same time I love pretty much anything girly, working with kids, history, reading, animals, hair, makeup, and talking about the Bible. My family has always discussed everything, and I guess that's where my love of discussing things comes from. I am the oldest of five kids and have two brothers, and two sisters. Mckinley is 15, Savanna is 13, Lincoln is 11, and Abel is 4. I have been homeschooled my entire life and enjoy a close relationship with my siblings and parents. My Dad is a state farm agent, but he spends his extra time studying hebrew, and my Mom is a full time homeschool mom and wife/super woman extraordinaire. We live in Davenport, Iowa right on the mississippi river.

When i was younger i always believed that i would have the ideal family. Unfortunately that changed the moment when my mom and and dad got a divorce. At that time i was 10 years old, i didn't really understand what was going on but i knew it wasn't good. The reason they were getting a divorce was because my mom found out that my dad was having an affair.

I decided to do this over family because we all know at one point in time we have taken for granted the parents we have or the happy moments of family. Family is very important to me because I got experience so much because of them. My brother is a big part of my life, he helped me be the person I am. He coming into my life made it so I could see the world differently.

I am a Bahamian citizen attempting to not only change my country but the world.

I was born into a dysfunctional family. My father was an alcoholic and a heavy smoker. There were so many financial problems and pure happiness. Everyday my parents would argue about the most minor things. Everyone thought that everything was all roses and unicorns for us, but in reality it was dull and grey. The life I was born into made me want to do things that are looked down upon. Despite all of this my mother was strong and maintained a smile on her face.

During my youth, I always tried to be the nicest person I could be. Today, negativity has become a big part of people’s everyday life. In high school, there happens to be tons of pettiness towards one another. People disliking others, many fights and unfortunate events become the center of all the attention and even bad reputations for people and their schools. The golden rule teaches us to, “Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.”

Betsy Sparrow, a psychologist at Columbia University, defines transactive memory as a shared system of knowledge where we have external memory systems available to us, typically in other people or the internet. We have learned to rely on these external systems to provide information rather than remember it ourselves. Even though I’ve never heard the term ‘transactive memory’ before watching this video, it makes sense. We can’t possibly remember everything, especially if we don’t use it every day, but if I remember where to find it, I can still utilize the information when I need it. This isn’t a new concept; employees who work in team environments often rely on coworkers to provide a unique set of knowledge and expertise that other team members don’t have. It allows team members to focus on their area of responsibility and can create a cohesive team environment. I do this in my personal life with my family and friends. If I can ask someone else or look it up on the internet, like driving directions or a recipe, I don’t have to store it in my internal memory. I just need to remember where to locate the information. Dr. Sparrow says that we typically rely on external memory systems for information that we don’t use in our everyday lives. The amount of information at our fingertips has grown exponentially because of the internet and search engines like Google; we have learned to adapt by prioritizing what we must store in our internal memory and what we can store in external