I hope one day I get to experience Japan!

Ok, so basically everyday my sociology teachers describes different aspects of Japan and how they are different from what we Americans are probably used to. This is extremely interesting to me because since I was born in America and all I really know is American customs, it excites me to learn about unfamiliar things. We have learned, for instance, that the toilet in Japan is a hole in the ground.... ya, it may sound weird to us but if you think about it, it is cleaner! Also, we have learned different social norms and gestures from different countries which is also interesting because I feel that as an American we never get the enjoyment of learning about different cultures etc, in this much detail.

"The Saddest Think In Life Is Wasted Talent"

For the past few days in class we have been watching a great movie called A Bronx Tale. I really enjoyed the story because it was true, interesting and not to mention I absolutely love New York accents (coming from a family who resides there). The movie was about a little Italian boy who witnessed a murder while sitting on his front stoop. The murder was committed by a man he admired, the head Italian mobster, "Sonny". Collogero, the little boy who grows up "too fast" throughout the movie was indeed in many different groups. First of all, he was in the group of Italians. The Italians were completely seperated from the African Americans that lived blocks down from them. Also, the boy was a part of his "rebel" friends, who were always up to no good. He was also apart of the Mobster group along with Sonny, earning the name of "C" instead of Collogero. I think that throughout the movie, Collegero realizes that he should drop the rebel friends (coming from Sonny's advice). At the end of the movie he stayed strong to his Italian roots and sort of started getting out of the mobster scene, after Sonny was murdered ofcourse.

Cookie Stealing

Okay, so today in class we read a poem "The Cookie thief" By Valerie Cox. This poem caught my attention and amused me because I can most deffinitely see my self in the woman's situation. You see, in the poem a woman bought a bag of cookies from an airport vender, the man who was sitting next to her happened to have bought the same bag of cookies (but she doesn't know this). So, when she sees the man eating the cookies she assumes that he was infact eating her cookies (while she was munching on them too). In her head she was accusing this man thinking he was a thief when really SHE was the cookie thief after all for munching on his snack. While our teacher read this poem aloud, I was smiling to myself the whole entire time. Because everybody makes this mistake ALL THE TIME, maybe they arn't in the SAME exact situation, but it happens to all of us and when we realize our mistake....lets just say it's incredibly embarrasing. I have parallel situations like this happen to me on a daily basis, I always jump to conclusions, I would say it's sort of a bad habbit. But who doesnt every once in a while?

What Would YOU Do?

I walked into sociology class the other day with tape on the floor symbolizing a boat. 16 people from the class were assigned roles and placed on the boat, we were told that people had to be kicked off the "boat" so that it wouldn't sink. Even though this was obviously not a real situation, most people in the class got really into it. Thinking about it to my self right now...if i were in that situation I have absolutely NO CLUE what I would do. I'm a very ethical person and would not even think of killing off anybody just for my survival, but nobody could no for sure how fast their minds could change in such a life threatening situation. In class, the people kicked off the boat first were un-healthy people who wouldnt have even a chance of surviving without the boat (cripples, old people, etc...). I personally wasn't given a role during this interesting activity, but if I was I think I would have chosen the same people to leave the boat first. All and all, this activity really made the whole class think and i enjoyed it. But really.... what would YOU do???