Children: The Way of Treating Them

During my stay at the US, I observed that people treat their children with all the love, mercy, and happiness. Everywhere around the world, people treat their children well because if children were not treated good, they will treat their parents back when they get older. However, children should not be just treated well all the time even if they did something wrong. People should punish their children when they do something wrong so they can learn from their mistake and not to do it again. I noticed that in the US children of both genders are treated equally; however, back home, girls are treated better than boys because they are the princesses of the houses when they get older. To conclude, I think that people treat their children the same everywhere around the world in general, but some people may not treat their children the way they should be treated.

Families' Comparison

As we all believe that family is the most important thing in life; however, it differ from one culture to another in other ways. In my home country, family is the core of person's life. Arab families are, an average of five children, bigger than other regions of the world. The family gathers together for diner almost everyday and a person should be engaged with other family's ocasions.

Divorce is a common problem around the world; however, in Arab cultures most of divorce cases are for newly or young married couples. I noticed that in America, divorce is much common and it could happen to anyone, with no age limit.

In most of Arab cultures it is common to stay living in parents' house until marriage; however, in American and Western cultures, if a person reached eighteen years old, he or she leaves their parents' house.

Observing Elections

Last Tuesday, it was the election day for Americans to vote for the state senate and the congress; so I went to observe that to get to know how people vote and how is the procedure.
I saw people standing and waiting for their turn to go to the next spot to do the vote. It was so simple and easy; people just brought their ID card and go to vote. Eventually when I was observing, I remembered that back home earlier this year, I worked with one of the candidates to the senate of the Chamber of Commerce in Jeddah. It was so different; it was so crowded in the hall of welcoming people to go to vote. The boxes where people put their vote in were not seen as I saw it here, it was in another room inside that only voter and staff of the election can enter to it. A lot of candidates were giving voters fraud just to give them their voice.; for many people and for me it was so disappointing. So it is way different that what I saw here, maybe because we are not familiar to elections especially political elections because Saudi Arabia is a kingdom.
I really like and got exited to see the voting process and I hope I can earn more about it to be hoping that we could gain the experience from the U.S. to apply it in my country.

Human Trafficking = Modern Slavery

According to humantrafficking.org, human trafficking is the third largest and fastest growing illegal business in the world with $32 billion; victims are currently more than 27 million. Most of those victims are women (80%) and about (50%) are minors.
There are three different types of human trafficking which are bonded labor, child trafficking, and sex trafficking. First, bonded labor which is a kind of debt slavery created in a case of a person starts working for another person that have a debt from that working person. It begins when a person goes to another one to borrow some money and have to work for that other person who lent him/her money. Second, child trafficking is holding about 6 million children around the globe. Some children are working as a child soldiers and others forced for child sex trafficking. In Africa only, there are about 120,000 children who are forced to be child soldiers, and there are about 300,000 children around the world. Third, sex trafficking is the most common type of human trafficking, and the U.S. is the second largest for sex industry after Germany. Sex trafficking can make high profits, large demand, and growing AIDS epidemic.
There are many causes to this problem, human trafficking in general; for example, from an economic view, those people are the poorest individuals in the world because they don’t even own themselves. Today, $100 is the cost of a person which makes it easy for bad people to trafficking humans while in 1850 it was $40,000. From cultural view, high demand for cheap goods is something that bad people use to own salves. There are about 121 million primary school aged children who are not going to schools.
In my opinion, governments from all around the world should do something real, not just talks, to prevent that dark and evil business from becoming a big issue for those people to survive their lives. If it continues to grow more, it will be the first illegal business in the future, which might cause civil wars all around the world.

Rope Course Activity

I will tell you about the rope course activity that I experienced with my colleagues the other day in US Culture class. We went to the rope course on campus on a lovely day to play and experience one of the American's activities that is not only a sport or an activity but it is more than that.

The guy who was teaching us about the rope course activities explained to us how these activities reflect on us on how to communicate, lead, trust and work together as a one group. It also develops these concepts in everyone of us.





We started our activities by a simple one, but it's not simple as I expected. It is called "ships and commanders" where we split into groups of 2 persons, a commander and a ship, where the commander lead and guide the ship, blinded, where are the balls, which is used as bombs, to destroy other ships. It was fun and exciting but it's developing communication skills and trust between people.





After that we went to another activity which we did it as a whole group. It is how to move from one deck to another by using only two wood boards. We barely were standing all together on the first deck and while we were standing, we decided how to go to the other deck without trying or knowing how to go there. This exercise develops critical thinking and solving problems urgently. We worked as we were in a life-death situation and we did it.





The final activity was called the spider's web where we all stand in the inside of the web and try to go outside of it without touching any of the strings of the web. Some of us got out through low and big holes, and the others got through high and small holes where the insiders and the outsiders carry some of us to go to the other side. For me, I was carried and went through one of the higher holes. I experienced and built up trust to my colleagues and this was the main goal of the exercise.

I really liked the rope course activities and I really appreciate Americans how developed that kind of activity to improve and develop those kind of human qualities such as leadership, trust and decision making. It was a fun day and a great experience that I want to do again in the future.

UWEC Homecoming 2010

It was Friday October 1st, everyone was exicted for Homecoming weekend. All Americans were asking me "what's you plan for Homecoming?" I wasn't sure of what I will be experiencing through that weekend. I just went to sleep that Friday as it was a normal night.

Next morning, I was hearing music in my sleep. No it's not music; it's a marching band! I woke up and still the same music is played. I got it, the Prade was near to my house and i couldn't get back to sleep again. I woke up and got outside and it was another life I knew. People are everywhere outside of their houses; people were passing by their friends' home and having fun playing games and drinking beer. I enjoyed seeing people having fun, and I decided to go to the football field to watch UWEC Bluegolds play the game. It was cold and i had been sick all week, but it's worth it to go and watch the passionate sport of Americans. I met my collegues in class and started to get more exicted as the Bluegold marching band started to play; that was the same melodies i woke up with!

The game was started and Bluegolds led the score. I enjoyed that experience and atmosphere until half-time; because i was just recovered from flu, I started to feel tired. Then, I decided to go back to get lunch and then get back home to rest. My friends and I decided to go to have lunch outside. People are wearing different shirts that represent Homecoming. Some says "Don't forget Homecoming 2010", "drink and enjoy", and "Blackout Homecoming 2010" etc.

At the end, it was an exicting and awesome time during Homecoming weekend. I am already hoping that next Homecoming comes soon!!

A Personal Immigrant Story

A Personal Immigrant Story

I had a conversation with a middle aged American woman called Jodi, and I asked her about how her ancestors immigrated to the United States. She told me that her great great grand parents originally came from Germany and Poland, so they were speaking German and Polish. They immigrated to the United States in the last decade of 1800’s. They settled and took Wisconsin as their new home; thereafter, her great grand father was born in Wisconsin. Her great grandfather’s parents were farmers just to provide the fundamental food for their own family.

After her great grandfather became mature, he worked in the construction field. Then, he reached a great financial status, so he shifted from being a worker to became an owner of a building materials’ factory. When he had kids, they worked at the same factory.

In this story we can see hard work and willingness to be in good status in society, living above average level and to be recognized, as most of American people do. For sure Jodi is very proud of her ancestors.