...As we moved to a new place, especially in America, we encounter new things and the most common things is the culture shock. It is the feeling of disorientation, self-doubt, and unease that one may feel in a an unfamiliar place. Our principles, attitudes and rituals that we usually take for granted may no longer suffice us in our new environment. We can overcome culture shock and develop meaningful relationships with others, rather than feeling anxious and confused, by assimilating to the American culture. To do that, there are steps that I learned, for five months in the U.S. since I arrived here, based on my experience. First, as we encounter culture shock, we need to keep an open mind. We get a bit of disoriented as we try to see the culture, way different from our own. Do not automatically judge everything that is different is weird. Be optimistic. It takes time to adjust, but remember that...
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...The day I moved from Pakistan to the United States changed me tremendously as a person. I was 7 years old and clueless about life outside of Pakistan and didn't know what to expect. Things changed real quick for me when my flight landed in the U. S. l was filled with confusion and couldn't tell where I was and who the people were around me and what they were saying. Life had completely made a three sixty rotation and things were only going to get more difficult. My first day of school was terrifying and very bewildering. I was baffled 7 year old Pakistani boy who didn't know English in a class with nearly one hundred percent American boys who spoke English. As a kid in Pakistan I loved sports my parents always kind of supported me no matter what I played. So when I got to the U.S I found this breathtaking new sport that I never knew anything about called football and fell in love with it in an instance. The thing that changed me the most was the people and friends that I met. The people I met were so polite and they always had this attitude toward helping other people. Going to an American School for the first time was one of the hardest things in my life. I didn't know English, so communication was extremely difficult at first. However, later I was put in this amazing program called ESL and learned English very quickly and fluently. Other students were very polite and they treated me honestly with all the respect that other students received. School at that point became amusing...
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...When I was 12 years old, I went to visit my family in the Philippines. I spent the whole summer there experiencing what it was like to live there again. I was born in the Philippines but I moved to America when I was just 6 years old for better opportunities for my family. During my time there I saw the differences in the values they had compared to what I see in America, especially in the way they see religion, I had seen where I learned my thoughts on religion came from. I was emerged in a whole new way at looking at what is going on around me. Filipinos are majority Catholic, they incorporate their religion into almost every aspect of their lives--even in school--by praying as often as they can and using what the bible says ad life lessons. In America my family just tries to go to church as often as we can, that is the majority of how we incorporate the religion into our lives but still had a sense even with the little amount it can still affect my life. Since my grandparents are missionaries they take their religion very seriously, I have always been open to believing in something higher up--like a god--to turn to when a tough situation arises. I like the idea of...
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...The night of Friday the 13,2001 at 11:00 p.m. I was born in a very beautiful country Kenya, specifically in a city called Nairobi. May not have been a lucky day but I truly feel I'm lucky. My parents had already been living there for a little over fifteen years until in 2009 when they decided it would be better for my future to move to the United States of America. I was excited at first knowing I was going to settle in a new country that is far advanced than where I live. I have been to copious places like London, Tanzania, Dubai, Mombasa, Uganda, India and much more. But I started to realize I would be leaving my friends, my house that I grew up in and my memories I had made for the past eight years. In America, we arrived in Minnesota at my...
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...Life is a series of ups and down everyone must deal with adversity have gone through paying for and Joe for moments are the must deal with adversity have gone through painful and joyful moments, but the hardest predicament I have dealt with is moving to America. Moving gave me default challenges to deal with such as losing friends and family, adopting to new environment, and the Constant feeling of being out of place. In 2008 I played, laughed, and shared stories with my friends for the last time. This is one of the many obstacle I had to overcome in the journey to coming America. I was around ten years old and I had grown up with most of the kids in the village so when I was told to say goodbye it left me heart broken so I grow closer to my brothers because they were more mature but also understood my pain. And once we settled in I found new friends and hope and pray that I will see my childhood friends again. Saying goodbye was a hard obstacle that I overcame by looking forward to when we would meet again....
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...Famous poet Khalil Gibran once said, “March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.” I relate to this quote because I am in a stage of my life that I cannot stop going forward, and I want to achieve the best that I can. As a result of moving to America, I learned to appreciate a trusting environment, the closeness of family, and the importance of education. As I was born and lived twenty two years in Iran. Then my family decided to move to America. Actually, this was not a sudden decision because they were thinking about it over a decade. There are many reasons we left our country, and the main reason is me. The other reason is that living in Iran...
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...Kazakhstan pertained to the Soviet Union at the moment of my conception. My father was a Cuban exchange student finishing Geology, and my mother, a Russian-Greek descendant graduated from metallurgical engineering. Around eighteen months old, I visited Cuba to meet my parental family. After returning to Kazakhstan and living there for almost four years, I went back to Cuba and never saw my country of origin again; however, for the first time, we lived all together as a real family. After Soviet Union’s collapsing and the end of its assistance program, living in Cuba became unbearable. It was not only due to the economic constraints, but also the country’s social deterioration. Thus, we decided to emigrate again, but this time to Greece. To avoid suspicion, my father departed first in 1992, the following year I did; however, my mother was intercepted in her attempt to escape by the Cuban authorities. It was not until 1995 that she was able to finally leave Cuba. The moment of my departure was the last time I saw my mother in many years and this incident destroyed my parents’ marriage. Before immigrating to Greece, I flew to Russia in order to obtain Greek’s tourist visa. I spent one week in Moscow with my uncle and when my documents were available, I could finally fly and reunite with my father. After living in Greece for one year and not obtaining legal residency status, my father decided to try fortune in another country: the US. Leaving Greece was easy, but when we reached...
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...The plane ambled across the sky, basking in the bright afternoon sun. I slowly reached up and slid the round window cover open, letting the intense sunlight in and watching the vast ocean expand below. I squirmed with anticipation in my seat and excitedly glanced around the plane cabin. Traveling to this new world seemed like a fascinating adventure to my five-year old mind. I stared in utter amazement through the window as the sun set with a faint scarlet glow; light shimmering off the clouds and waves below. I longed to see the shores of America peak over the horizon. As my initial excitement gave way to exhaustion, I quietly drifted off to sleep, dreaming of a new and exhilarating life in the United States. Initially, I did not realize the consequences of moving to a foreign country. Once I stepped off the plane, I heard people around me speaking the equivalent of gibberish. Unsurprisingly, communication ended up being the first issue with immigrating to the United States. Being shunned as a result of not being able to communicate was part of every day at school. Alone and friendless, I spent many afternoons in a corner of the playground watching the other children play. Because I had no friends, recess became...
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...The first ten years of my life were spent in the most beautiful and calm place in the world, my country Libya. Throughout this time, I was an adventurous girl that loves to do new things and meet new people. However, things have changed when I moved to the United States. It was March 3, 2011, when I experienced new things for the first time, like riding an airplane and meeting new people that are not Libyan and don’t speak Arabic. As a child, I thought there is nothing outside of Tripoli, Libya and the people that I have seen on Tv were just fictional people that were created by some type of technology, but I was wrong. I was in America! I couldn't believe it. This is the place that everyone wishes to go to. It's the land of the free...
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...I was 10 years old, I had a very normal calm life in my home country India. I was extremely sociable and had a lot of friends. At the age of 11, all of this changed when my parents decided to move to the U.S. At first I was excited, I’ve watched numerous amounts of Hollywood movies during my childhood. Of course, I had no idea about what they were saying but the people depicted always seemed happy. Then as time went by the day came, the actual move from across the sea was about to take place in a few days. As I thought about how life was going be after the move I finally had a reality check. For so long I was daydreaming every day about the pros of moving but I finally started thinking about all the cons. First and foremost the most important thing that is essential for all humans is the ability to be able to communicate, I realized that I would not be so great at that since I didn't really practice English at my home country....
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...Frederick Jackson Turner is most successful at analyzing American history through his essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”. This piece examines how life was first created here in America, as well as how the first frontier set the stage for numerous civilization advancements that would occur in the near future. Many Americans today seem to forget about the first settlements that served as the basis for what the United States of America has become. This essay accomplishes the goal of reminding those people of how majorly important each step was on the American frontier centuries ago. What was once just an enormous area of free, unoccupied land, is now the home of billions of people as well as numerous buildings, businesses, and modes of transportation....
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...“Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.” (Cesar Chavez) Culture does not deserve disrespect as it is what determines a person's views on the world. Imagine moving to a place for the first time, Everything would be completely different from the past. Experiencing a new aspect of culture never explored. Culture is the main root in informing a person how to see the world around them. In the essay “Where Worlds Collide”, written by Pico Iyer, Iyer describes his time first moving to a new place. Coming from out of the country he anticipates that every step he takes is going to be a glance at paradise. “The blue skies and palm trees they saw on TV are scarcely visible from here: just an undifferentiated smoggy haze, billboards advertising Nissan and Cannon, and beyond those an endlessly receding mess of gray streets.” (page 51, Springboard). Here he describes how his picture of L.A was so...
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...Suki kim is the author of the essay “Facing Poverty with a Rich girl habit. The main focus within the essay, Kim wants to describe her struggles as a young Korean exchange student adjusting to life in the United States. The essay discusses the struggles she had as a child being in the 7th grade and moving from South Korea to Queens, NY. She went from being rich to being poor almost overnight. Her world as she knew it was changed in an instant and it became hard for her to cope. Her father went from being a billionaire to having nothing. As a result of her father going bankrupt her family was forced to leave Korea and her father faced jail time. Her main purpose is to describe what she faced while trying to adapt to different beliefs and cultures. She recalls their first home of a two-family brownstone in Woodside (Kim page 62) owned by a Korean family. When she came to America her lifestyle changed in a major way. She went from having a chauffeur to taking public transportation. She had to get used to being called an Asian when she had only heard that term in school in South Korea. She no longer had a maid and she was forced to take her clothes to a laundromat to wash them on her own. In South Korea, she had the assistance of a governess helping her with her homework. She now had to do homework by herself. She wanted to explain what she went through relocating to the United States and becoming accustomed to the American lifestyle she now had to live. She adjusted...
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...Definition Essay: Final Draft Kristopher Kirkpatrick September 19, 2011 English 002 Kris Kirkpatrick Definition Essay Where would the African-American community be today if they were all still living in the south? America would not be the country that it is today if people did not immigrate here from their respective countries, or migrate here from their respective areas. Due to immigration and migration, the culture in heavily populated cities, such as Harlem, Cleveland, Chicago, and Philadelphia, has given African-Americans, and European-Americans an identity and sense of belonging in the United States. Immigration is defined as the action to come to a country of which one is not a native, usually for permanent residency. Migration is defined as the action to move from a country, place, or locality to another. Why do Economist and Politicians seem to define blacks moving from the south to the north immigration? Certain groups of people still called the action of blacks moving from one part of the country to another immigration, instead of migration, because they didn’t see African-Americans as United States citizens. Economist believes migration has turned out to be a great strategy for the poor to make their lives a little better. African-Americans have migrated to the North for better opportunities, and the economy has boomed because of them. Economist can view the Great Migration and say that it resembles immigration in many ways. When foreigners immigrated...
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...Scott Russell Sanders responds to an essay by Salman Rushdie, a writer who left his home country native India for England. Sanders explains through various tricolons, and hyperboles, why migration is not always a good thing. Sanders uses hyperboles to exaggerate the unknown fact that moving place to place, forcing cultures onto the next is not the pathway to success as Rushdie believes is. Sanders states “The habit of our industry and commerce has been to force identical schemes onto differing locals, as through the mind were a cookie-cutter and the land were dough.” By cookie cutter I think Sanders means forcing something to be what it is not, moving consistently you never have a chance of making a “durable home for yourself or your decedents.” You will never have any roots if you continue to move from place to place. Not enough respect goes into where we root ourselves as stated “when we cease to be migrants and become inhabitants, we might begin to pay enough heed and respect to where we are.” Sanders exaggerates that the one and only plus of migrating would be “to be a migrant is, perhaps, to be the only species of human being free of the shackles of nationalism.” He doesn’t mean...
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