Moving to a new culture

The aspects of my family’s past history does have an impact on shaping my thoughts and feelings. Due to the timing of me going into an orphanage, my family’s history is unknown, and this can be overwhelming at times not knowing because going to doctors appointments or when people ask, sometimes I feel ashamed of not knowing the answers. At a young age “moving to a new culture involves psychological adjustment,” looking back to my adoption I can remember hearing stories for example, when I came to Canada I was petrified of men as they were not seen inside of orphanages. I would also say that I also had an adjustment period after immigrating to Canada as things like pizza and pastas were not part of my food pallet and communicating in English was originally a challenge. My older siblings would tell stories of me biting them and hitting them when I didn’t get something I wanted, they would get frustrated as well because when they would tell me something I never had any idea what they were saying. I think too they wouldn’t completely understand because my brother who is the same age of me understood what they were saying but couldn’t understand why I didn’t understand. Often those who immigrate at an older age have a cultural shock, in my experience I don’t remember having the signs of a cultural shock due to the age that I came to Canada at. These symptoms can be anxious, helpless, irritable, generally disoriented and homesick on moving to a new culture (Church 1982).




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The cultural changes that are occurring

Over the years, society has seen significant cultural change, from cultures becoming more diverse, the impact of social media, careers changing, intelligence and technology. It has been super interesting to see how culture has been changing by looking back in the past. As our textbook said interconnections are increasing and it has been seen that "Starbucks is being drank worldwide." When my family and I went to Spain last spring we were able to get Starbucks. Instead of having a bagel at their Starbucks, they had pastries, we are seeing that big companies are able to adapt to the culture they are put into. Not only are big companies adapting but people are adapting, we have seen an increase in cultures becoming more diverse. This summer I lived in Moncton, New Brunswick and I’ve always visited as I have family there, and I’ve always noticed there wasn’t much of a diverse population but this summer I noticed there has been a big increase in the diversity of Moncton. As well s...
Read more

Talking and Thinking

It is no shocker that “students of Asian background speak up less in class” as I often find us taking things in, personally lots of my friends who are Asian often have very good debates on topics after we have heard everyone else’s opinions. I find myself often sitting in the back of the classroom also to take everything in, like the behaviour of people. I also found it interesting to hear that Asian Americans perform poorly on tests when they are talking as when I’m writing a quiz I need it to be absolutely silent or even writing a paper as I find it makes me lose my train of thought. In relation to this, I find it very difficult to listen to different conversations or many people talking to me at once. I also find myself often eavesdropping and listening to conversations to get a scene of people and to hear all their opinions before voicing my opinion.  
Read more

Cultural Values and Practices

Cultural values and practices have positive as well as negative impacts, personally one of the things is the stigma that occurs around education. In the education system, education is extremely important in Asia and highly prioritized whereas in Canada the education system is not as important and is not prioritized. There is a stigma that children are very good at math and are very smart, as well as put in long hours and are very focused on education. From this stigma, I have a learning disability and have faced challenges due to the stigma around Asian kids being extremely smart. At some points, I felt overlooked because of the stereotype that Asian children face day to day in relation to education. I also would say another thing that is overlooked is weight gain, as often those of Asian descent are seen to be skinny, even though bulimia is not really seen in Asia, due to Asian people being skinny there is also a stereotype that all Asians are skinny and don’t have any fat. This has a...
Read more