Personal Narrative: Moving Into A New Culture

What is culture? Culture is the idea of what is wrong or right, the concept of what is acceptable within our society. Culture serves us as a guide, taking us to the "right way" and helping us to make sense of things that surrounds us. There are many different cultures around the world. A lot of them are similar in specific ways and others are just completely different, this difference explains why we think that people from different backgrounds are "weird".

What Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci coined "The New World" was now overrun by man-eating zombies. It all started in Chile and Argentina; news of a highly infectious pathogen had begun spreading at breakneck speeds. By the time epidemiologists had discovered the cause of this pathogen it had already spread to the Western half of the United States and was making its way east.

Starting over. Those two simple words pretty much sum up where I am at in my life at the moment. I am a 34 year old mother of three. I have never been to college. My husband just recently left me. It has been a whirlwind summer to say the least, but before I get into what brought me back to school, I'll start at the beginning. I was born in FL., and quite literally spent all my time either at the beach or running bare foot on my grandparents farm. I loved every second. Shortly after I turned 8 my mom met my step-dad, and we were quickly headed on our first big adventure, moving to Texas! While I missed my family in FL., I can not tell you enough how happy I was that my mom married my dad. He has been a rock and solid foundation for me my whole

If I was a European thinking about moving to the New World, I would base my decision based off the images and descriptions that were available. One of the images that would deter me from migrating away was a piece of artwork done by Jacques Le Moyne. His picture entails a group of natives who are trying to fight off a fearsome looking alligator. Theodore De Bry describes them plunging a pole into it’s mouth and turning it around so they can stab their stomach. He goes on to say that the natives have to watch out for them day and night because of how frequent they appear. Since I don’t really know how to defend myself against such creatures, I would be afraid to live somewhere where danger is constant. I also would not want to deal with vampire

Around two or three years ago my family and I had to move houses. Moving was sudden and we didn't know it was going to happen. This made moving out and into the other house a lot harder. Since we were moving so fast somethings we just decided to leave behind with the person that was still living there. We got most things with us but one thing that we did leave back in the old place was our living room tv. Since we had just moved and my family isn't rich my mom said we couldn't go get a new one for some time. This sucked because I used the tv a lot for watching show, movies, and playing games just like the rest of my family did. Having a tv wasn't something we needed at all but it was always something to do when you were bored and there was no other things to do. Another big thing was my grandma had just gotten us a new playstation 3 and now we weren't able to used it at all because there was no television. Not having a tv was bummer for me and I thought it was a huge problem when it really wasn’t.

Moving, for many people, can be a difficult process. A lot of the time kids have to switch schools and deal with the challenge of making new friends and getting used to everything new. Since my parents divorced when I was five years old, I can remember living in many different homes. My mother would rent out a place, live there for a few months, then meet a new guy and move on. For years, I hoped to myself that my mom and dad would get back together, like Nick and Elizabeth Parker from “The Parent Trap.” I knew, however, deep down that such a thing just couldn’t happen. My four siblings and I were dragged along, forced to go with the flow and adapt as quickly as possible. Up till she married her second husband, Tony. As young as I was,

Who knew that things could change so abruptly, it almost felt that my whole world was flipped within a blink of an eye. Things were going to be different from now on, the people, the weather, even the fresh summer breeze from the coast will soon become a cold bitter winter breeze. This all came to my mind when my mom announced to my family that we’re moving, to New Jersey, once my school goes on summer break. At first, I began to panic, why do we have to move? Why can’t we just live here? We don’t even know anyone there, except for my aunt. We just moved here three years ago from New Jersey, and we didn’t like it, that’s why we only lived there for a month. Then why would we would we like it now? I question my mom, and I demanded explanations

Recently I took a trip to Nashville, and YES it was so much fun, I learned a lot about my business, met some of my AWESOME business partners, but most of all I got back my Country Roots !

Moving, although natural, is not easy to most people. How many things are involved when you have to leave your school and friends behind to go to a place totally unfamiliar where anything could go wrong? For me, more than I could count since my family decided to move four thousands miles away.

One day when at the Sabre meeting, I was told there was a diving meet and volunteered to go. I came to the meet on Friday the 15 to the pool late at night when I assumed I would get busy. But I wasn’t. Though there were about 6 schools at the meet, it was only the dive teams from those schools. And since there was only one diving board at our pool, things took a while. Instead of leaving and coming back later when I was needed to take photos of our one FUMA diver, I stayed to watch the sport, as I have never spectated a dive meet before. As I continued to watch the sport over a long period of time, I realized the intensity of the sport. The way the sport works is that you will be asked to perform a certain dive

Imagine going to the moon without oxygen, that’s how I felt when I moved to a new country during my teenage years, with little to no English, no idea of how the society functions, and clueless about how to speak the native tongue. When I moved to the United States from India, I faced many hardships along the way. One of my biggest roadblocks was making new friends. Being accepted into the classroom by my classmates was a great comparison to how the real world worked, and the real world was a hard place to be accepted in.

It was like stepping into a whole new world, a whole new life. Moving to a different country changes everything from the food, the clothes, the culture, and even the air. One area of the move that impacted my sister and I the most was a new school. Not knowing one of the most popular languages in the world made things very difficult, however, both my sister and I quickly adapted to the new language, and soon enough our parents would advise us not to forget our native tongue. At a young age I believed that I could never speak another language, but as the years passed, I became more comfortable in speaking English. I was proud of myself that I accomplished something that I doubted I could do. Throughout my journey of learning English my parents

Many people may think that since you are young you have the ability to adapt to a new language faster than an adult but that wasn't my case. When I was two and a half years old I was adopted from China and I didn't know any English. However, over time I picked up more and more of the new language to me at that time. After elementary school started they noticed that I was struggling with reading, so they did some tests with me and had meetings with my parents. Overall, they believed what could be the reason why I had difficulty reading was that the transition from Chinese to English wasn't the easiest flow for me. Even though I had to battle against reading, I did lots of practice at home and in school at the program Title; all the effort I put into this has lead me to overcoming this issue and has helped prepare me for my future.

While looking for an opportunity to move out into a new market, I came across the ad WDIV Detroit had put out looking for a new Beat Reporter. As I prepare to graduate from the University of Southern Mississippi, I think this would be the perfect opportunity for me to branch out in the field while utilizing and sharpening the skill I’ve learned in the classroom.

I have gone to Catholic school since kindergarten. Needless to say, my cultural experience is fairly limited; mostly, I interact with white people. So when I got to high school, it was mostly curiosity that made me sign up to take Mandarin Chinese as a language.