Hope

"Hope is a big part of everyone’s life. Hope points us to the future. It gives us something to look forward to. It inspires us. When we combine it with our faith we can happily wait for what we are hoping for to happen - even as we get older."

I really like this text because i think it defines hope very well. Everyday, everyone hopes. It can be for something negative to turn around or it can be for something great to get even better. Many people use hope to get them through tough times or just hope in general. I really think without hope life would be a lot more difficult and if someone doesn't hope then they're making things harder on themselves. Everyone can use hope.

Religion

Around the world, religion is something that all countries and people have in common. Every religion is different in its own way with thousands of beliefs, stories, traditions and much more. I was reading today a website that talks about all the different types of religions that are practiced throughout the world. I found it interesting to see how diverse the world really is, and also to see how each religion is separated by the people that practice it. The most common religion in the world is Christianity. About 33% of the people pratice it which is 2.1 billion. The next is Islam 21%-- 1.5 billion people practicing it. Third comes Secular/Nonreligious/ Agnostic/ Atheist at about 1.1 billion people practicing it. After many more religions following in the list, the least common religion is Scientology. This comes out to only .36% which is 500 thousand.
I found this list of statistics really interesting to see the variety and it kind of showed that religion seems to be a popular thing amongst many people.

Gender Roles

Throughout the past few decades, the gender roles between men and women have changed greatly. Women are more accepted to work and aren't expected to all do the same things such as stay home all day cooking and cleaning while caring for children. Even though the daily role of women has changed. Still girls seem to be more appreciated for their looks, where boys are more appreciated for their accomplishments. Also, if a mother is the worker and the father stays home taking care of the children, this is how the children will view gender roles vice versa.
I think that women are still have a little less power than men do even though they have come so far in being equal with men there are a lot of people that think men are more powerful and important than men. This may be since women are the ones who give birth, they are more expected to care for the child than men since the child needs a mother more than a father at a young age. However, as children grow older they really do need both a mother and a father figure in their lives. Really, men and women are very equal in this country compared to others.

http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/8/Gender-roles.html

Culture

Today i read about african culture. I learned about how compared to our culture, where the things people do are shopping, text, surf the internet, talk on the phone, many different types of technology, and other modern things. Where as in Africa they have those types of things but not nearly as high tech as Americas, and their entire lives do not revolve around those things. There are so many different types of languages spoken throughout the countries, the people practice numerous types of religions. For fun people dance the national dance, listen to many types of music and spend time together with they're friends and family while bonding. In our culture i noticed families don't seem to be as close to each other and people don't do really different things everyday for fun.

http://www.africaguide.com/culture/index.htm

Overcoming a Stuggle

When I think of overcoming a struggle, I think of the book Nineteen minutes. A girl refuses to donate bone marrow to her dieing sister, because her sister secretly asked her too. She gets a lawsuit against her parents so they can't make her donate it. Plus, the only reason she was born was so that she could donate to her sister and try to save her life. But her sister just ends up wanting to die anyways. She overcame her struggle by going for going for what her sister truely wanted not what her parents told her to do.

Blog Post #29

I read an article about how with this recession being one of the worst in decades, the amount of people seeking help has increased greatly. This reminded me of how in the book Nectar in a Sieve, Rukumanis family is struggling to feed her family because they do not have enough money to feed all the people in their family. The people seeking help to get through the recession are trying to think of creative ways to save money and help the economy, and Rukumani is trying to send her kids to work at the tannery to make money.

Nonprofits struggle to meet a rising demand
Tuesday, 03 February 2009
http://erstarnews.com/content/view/6026/26/

Blog Post #28

I read an article about how whenever there is a natural disaster in the United States, the National Guard is always there to help. As Americans we recieve plenty of aid in times of need, compared to other countries lack of aid where they have to take care of disater on their own.
The United States have a trained force of 114,000 persons that are trained and equipped ( equiptment and all funds are payed for by the budget of the Defense Department) to be prepared for natural disaters such as hurricane Katrina. When the hurricane hit the National Guard was there as soon as possible to help people get to somewhere safe and soon after started rebuilding the homes and buildings. Where as in the Novel Nectar in a Sieve, when the Monsoon hits and destroys all the crops, everyone is left on their own to grow more crops and take care of the damage without any kind of aid whatsoever. I think the United States doesn't completely realize how easy they have it compared to other countries that funtion completely on their own.

National Guard of the United Sates. Discovery Education. 2005.
Discovery Education. Febuary 8th 2009.
http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/