Blog Post for the Week of April 7

 I found our initial reading of I, Rigoberta Menchu to be very interesting. I found it particularly sad to see how much these people have suffered. It reminded me of a personal experience I've had with a Guatemalan who went through similar suffering. Back when I was younger, my family housed a Guatemalan refugee for about seven months. He was from the Mam people and had come from a very rural area of the country. Unfortunately, he got caught up in gang and drug related activities. In his effort to get out of those activities, he had to flee, otherwise he would be killed. After making a traumatic border crossing where he wasn't sure he would survive, he was picked up by a border patrol, but because he was assumed to be a minor he was sent to a program to house him while his case was processed. After some research, however, the government found out he was actually over 18 and was going to deport him, but he was granted asylum because if he returned to Guatemala he would have likely been killed. He couldn't stay in the program for minors, however, and he needed a home while the government located any  relatives of his in the US. I have brother who used to work in that program for minors, and that's how he ended up with our family. He has since moved to New York to live with an uncle and is doing well, and we still keep in touch. His story always makes me sad, though, because he's an incredibly nice, sweet person but with a very unfortunate past. It always makes me wonder about how many others like him are born into similarly unfortunate conditions, but are never able to get out and turn their story around like he has.

Comments

  1. Médar SerrataApril 17, 2022 at 11:32 AM

    Thank you for sharing this story, Joe. Despite the sufferings he had to endure, I believe that young man was extremely fortunate to have met your family and that he will remain for ever grateful for what you did for him.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Response to Victoria's Post for the Week of March 31

  Hi Victoria! I also found the contrast between the two poems and their opposing views on the Revolution to be interesting. It was enlightening to see how different people looked at the same Revolution in completely different lights based on their own personal experience with it. It shows how everyone has their own perspective, and each perspective can be completely different based on one's experience.
Read more

My Response to Ben's Post #2

Hey Ben! I think it's great that you brought up how different cultures see the world in a different light. I think many times we grow up in a sheltered reality, thinking that our culture or way of life is the "correct" one, and not realizing that other people looking in may view our culture in a whole different way. The idea that there are different "realities", and that the same situation or event can be viewed in opposing ways solely based on perspective, is really eye-opening. Thanks for this great post, I really enjoyed it!
Read more

Blog Post for the Week of December 9

 I really enjoyed our class this week. After all those weeks of reading, writing, and hard work, it felt very relaxing to have a few class periods dedicated to music and dancing. To be quite honest, I never realized we would be learning to dance in this class, but I'm glad we did. I think I may need a few more sessions, though, if I were to actually feel confident with these dances, as my feet seem to have minds of their own. One thing that the music we listened to made me realize, though, is how hard it is to understand a song in a different language. I love listening to Spanish conversations, because it's fun to try to pick out different words that I recognize and try to piece together a meaning. But trying to do the same with music is so much harder. I'm not sure if its the distraction of the instruments or something, but whenever I try to understand the lyrics of a Spanish song, I just get lost. In all, however, this week was a wonderful reprieve, and I'm really gla...
Read more