Continuation of a Journey

             Seven weeks ago I started a journey.  I am not exactly sure what I thought would happen on this journey.  I went back and read what I wrote for my first blog.  I talked about the opportunity this class would bring to learn about a society and culture that I totally love and admire.  I hoped that the knowledge would help me breach the barrier that there is in working with the Latino community.  Although this was my first and top most reason of why I took this class, I have discovered that it has become much more than just learning about a culture.             

            This truly has been a journey for me.  Before I took this class, I didn’t really see other cultures, as I should have.  I didn’t open my eyes and broaden my knowledge of things happening around me in the world.  I’ve learned that to truly know someone, you have to put yourself in his or her shoes and walk the roads they walk.  This doesn’t mean I have to literally move to Mexico, Central America, or South America to truly understand someone, I just need to learn to talk to people, find out about them, watch shows I normally wouldn’t watch, listen to music I might not normally listen to, and eat food that I might not normally eat.  How do we get to know people?  We learn from them. 

            My journey hasn’t been about bridging a gap that I thought was there, it has been about building a bridge that brings me closer to other people and other societies that help teach me to be a better person, help me teach my kids to be better people and hopefully help me to be a good example to those that I might come in contact with.  It hasn’t just helped me see the Hispanic culture better and in a new light, I have also learned from my classmates and from the many different cultures that we all share.  I have learned how there are so many great people in this world and I have been truly blessed to be associated with them on a weekly basis.  Most of all, I wanted to have fun, and fun I have had. 

            If I was asked to recommend this class, I totally would.  It was a very unusual class in the way it was taught, but I think that was how I learned the most.  If we wanted to get anything out of the class, we had to work at it and figure out on our own what we wanted to learn from the class.  So, did I learn?  Yes, I learned.  I am hoping that what I learned will help me to be the type of person who is non judgmental, who treats others the way I would want to be treated, the type of person who looks at other cultures as a way to learn more about the world and initiate new friendships.  I am hoping that some of things I have learned will help me on my journey to being a better person.