EDUC-6164: My Family Culture

Imagine the following:

A major catastrophe has almost completely devastated the infrastructure of your country. The emergency government has decided that the surviving citizens will be best served if they are evacuated to other countries willing to take refugees. You and your immediate family are among the survivors of this catastrophic event. However, you have absolutely no input into the final destination or in any other evacuation details. You are told that your host country’s culture is completely different from your own, and that you might have to stay there permanently. You are further told that, in addition to one change of clothes, you can only take 3 small items with you. You decide to take three items that you hold dear and that represent your family culture.

Blog about all of the following:

•A description of the three items you would choose

•How you would explain to others what each of these items means to you

•Your feelings if, upon arrival, you were told that you could only keep one personal item and have to give up the other two items you brought with you

Ipod

•Any insights you gained about yourself, your family culture, diversity, and/or cultural differences in general, as a result of this exercise

Bible

Grandma's Quilt

 This assignment was more difficult than I expected.  I thought that when it came time to decide which 3 items to take with me, it would be hard to narrow the items down to 3.  However, my struggles were just the opposite!  I struggled to think of 3 items that were that important to me. I would have my husband, 3 children, and dog (I'm assuming) and so nothing else really mattered to me.  I decided that the 3 items I would take with me would be:

•  A Bible- My family's Christian religion is important piece of who we are.  I think that a Bible would tell us to spread the word of God and show who we are and what we represent. 
• Our family IPod- This may seem like a silly item to take, but it really represents our family and things that are important to us.  We have our pictures on the Ipod, a camera, music, games, and even the bible!  I would think that this situation would be very traumatizing to our family.  I think that the Ipod would bring a little bit of "home" and allow us to hear music that we love, see pictures from our past, and even take picture to hold on to what the future may bring!
• My Grandmother's handmade quilt- My family quilts are a strong piece of my family history.  This fabric represent where I came from and was made by the tough strong finger of my great-grandmother...piece by piece, string by string, and a needle (no machines). This quilt could keep my family warm in times of need.  My family loves to cuddle up together and I think that we would continue to do this wherever our family would be taken.

If we had to only keep one item, it would be the bible.  I think that the bible would be the most important item that represents my family, and is the key to holding our family together.  It best represents my culture.  We have our voices to sing, our bodies to dance, and each other to keep warm.  But regardless of the situation that we are in, we will always need reminders that there is a reason we are there and we need to be the best we can be! My feelings is we had to give our stuff up?  A little sad, but in the end, we just lost our country, millions of people, everything we own and everything that we know!  And yet, we are there and alive and have each other!  I wouldn't care really!  Stuff is just stuff!  It is my family that is the most important to me!