The Lost Boys

In class this week we watched a movie called Lost Boys. They were a group of refugees from Sudan and they were forced to leave because of the war. Too many of them were getting killed right in the open. Once they moved to the US they could see how different it is from Sudan and their camp in Kakuma. After a while they started seeing how things work in the US. One thing they noticed is that people tend to walk by themselves. People don't walk up to each other and ask what's wrong even if people are crying. The main lesson they remember is that culture is everything. They have to remember that in a new country and being in new cultures they have too maintain their own culture. One thing they maintain is how they eat. They are not ashamed to use their hands when eating anything. The Lost Boys made sure to get the word out about the war in Sudan so they would make a walk to get people informed.

One thing I have learned from this movie is that you should always be thankful for the little things you have. When I looked at all the things they had you could see they really had nothing. They didn't even have shoes or nice clothes and that just made me realize that even if we have "little" things and to them that would seem like so much. One thing I also noticed is that the older generations didn't care about changing their appearance or their values while the younger generations change their looks and how they acted and completely forgot about their culture. In the end you can see that they still worked to support themselves in the US and to support their family in Sudan to try to get them out of there.

Five Tricks

We started off our new unit this week by playing a card game. Each table had their own set of rules but we didn't know until we switched tables. At the beginning we got a sheet of paper that explained the rules and each table practiced for a couple of rounds until we got the hang of it. Then for the rest of the game we had to play silent but we were allowed to make hand gestures and bang the table if needed. From each table we there would be one winner. The winner moved counter clockwise and the loser moved clockwise. I was the winner of my group and when I moved to the new table I was really confused with their new rules because in my table a diamond would trump over anything and the new table I moved to the clubs would trump over everything.

The lesson from this card game is that each table was it's own culture and when you move to a new table you had to learn and respect their own culture. We also learned three new terms. Culture Shock was when we moved to a new table and found out about their own "culture" that was different from ours was a shock. Ethnocentrism is thinking that your culture should be the center. So when you moved to the new table and didn't understand their rules you think that your rules from your "culture" should be the ones they should follow. Cultural Relativity is when you are relating your culture to that of the new one and how our culture makes us act a certain way socially.