Cultural Differences In The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

In middle school one of my teachers asked what religion we were apart of. Almost the whole class raised their hands the second she said Christianity. Only three of us were Roman Catholic, and we were all Mexican as well. I know this is silly, but time I felt different from my peers and all I wanted was to feel as if we were equal. I remember one day we went to church early in the morning on Ash Wednesday. I walked into school and quickly received dirty looks. People stopped me and asked if I knew I had dirt on my forehead. I rushed to the bathroom mortified. I was ashamed of my religion, but worst of all I was mad at my mom for letting me go to school with “dirt” on my face. I thought she did not understand how we were suppose to act outside of our

My parents are Hmong refugees that immigrated to the United States after the Vietnam War in the 1970s in search of a better life. In their eyes, America is the land of the free and where dreams can become reality. In Laos, my parents lived an agrarian lifestyle with very little education. Despite their lack of education, they realized that education held the key to success. Throughout my life, my parents emphasized the importance of education and did their best to guide my siblings and me. This was not an easy task for my parents because of the cultural adjustment that they experienced, but they managed to instill in me invaluable character qualities such as patience, perseverance, hard work, sacrifice and courage. I am the third youngest out of twelve children, and I will be the first to receive a Graduates degree.

My worldview is formed by my relationships, challenges and choices I have made, environmental surroundings and my family influence, all which have impressed on me my views of the world.

Hello! This is Mihiret Mariam and some people call me Mercy. Coming to America from Ethiopian at a very young age has caused me to become a hybrid of two different cultures. This mixture gives me the ability to understand the truth and faults of two distinct customs of living. This led me to be a person who only cares about large book with many chapters and me as an eager child who learned to read. I intend to read and probe into all the chapters. I love reading books; I have read most of the book that is stored in Antioch high school and in the Nashville public library. My cousin taught me why reading is necessary for a student who is attending high school and college and she told me her life experience about how she has started a book club

Raised by a successful Black single mother, she taught me at an early age what it meant to be a Black woman in today’s American society. The daughter of field workers from Mississippi, education was my mother’s most important value. My grandparents worked hard to make sure she and her siblings received the education they did not and in turn, my mother stopped at nothing to make sure my brother

view on the world. We all live in the same world and are exposed to other cultures every day. If

I was blessed to be able to go through such a good school system. Some people complained about going to a private, Christian school, but I really enjoyed it. I do wonder sometimes though what it would have been like to go through public schooling and if that would have changed how I am today. I think the strong morals and values I hold today were largely created by my upbringing. But, I do think I used to simply claim to be a Christian because of my family. If my parents are Christian that must mean I’m a Christian, right? Going to college made me realize that my faith is something that I have to make my own. My faith is not necessarily my parents’ faith. I have to make a decision on what I believe and what I stand for, separate from my family. I remember that around the age of 14 I started to feel distant from God and was not very strong in my faith. Throughout high school I think I had different points of feeling “spiritual highs,” but felt like my faith was lukewarm. Today, I think I am starting to separate my parent’s faith from my own, and starting to make it mine. I feel like this is something everyone has to do at some point in their life. In the past year, and in the past couple months especially, I have had a stronger relationship with God. I definitely don’t feel “strong” in my faith, but I feel like I am growing spiritually. I think being here and the

As an immigrant from Nepal, I have witnessed the thrash of poverty, which constantly serves as a reminder that I was given a rare opportunity to hopefully become a successful individual. When I boarded the plane to the U.S. at age eight, the notion of hard work and excellence never failed to energize my mind; it was something I knew I had to fill myself with in order to succeed. Growing up in the U.S., I constantly focused on academics because I knew that attaining knowledge was going to be detrimental to my success as an entrepreneur I imagined myself to be. In addition, I was able to form friendships with people who were utterly different from those in the slums of Nepal. The spiritual belief of hard work and dedication combined with the

My grandmother as a child lived in a small town in Nigeria. She is the only female child of her parents and unfortunately, she lived in the uncivilized era. Before my grandmother was born, her father borrowed some money from an uneducated rich landlord and, unfortunately, could not pay back so he used his daughter as collateral. She was betrothed to a man twenty years older than her. By the age of ten, she was married off and she lived with her husband and his two older wives. She did not get to enjoy her childhood days. She did not get to play with any dolls and she did not get to have a tea party with her fellow ten-year-olds. My grandmother was not

As an American citizen with almost unlimited freedom of religion in this country, I have taken full advantage of this freedom that has been graciously given to me for free just for being born in the land of the free and the home of the brave. As a young child until the end of my junior high school education I attended a Christian school, and throughout the span of my high school career I attended a Lutheran school. Both of these schools had an impact on my religiously, and as the person I have developed into today. Although there were similarities between each of the schools I attended, there were also clear differences between them. Like schools, religions also have differences between them, such as the god or spiritual presence which

I was born into a family with Native American heritage that practiced a strict protestant religion. As a child, I would often wonder why people's attitudes, behaviors and beliefs could be so different from one another. I wondered why some people believed in things with great zeal, yet other people believed the contrary just as vehemently.

My baba was born in a time when the only way you could have food on your plate for dinner was if you hunted it yourself. She would explain to me that “living in a communist country was one of the worst things I have ever seen or been through. Not only was my country communist, we were going through a famine. There was no way to get food because the government starved us. If I wanted to eat that day I would have to kill a bird or whatever else was around that day.” My grandma is a very strong woman. She grew up with 3 brothers and 1 sister, who were all older. She always wanted to be like her siblings. Because her siblings were all older, my grandmother was a very fast learner. They taught her what they were during in school so by the time she got to that grade level she already knew the information. My grandma

I am very excited to be writing this information here on this page as I always keep asking this question from myself almost every single day. As a global citizen i believe i am from this earth not from one country of another and this reminds me that we are all the same, despite of our differences we are all still human beings with the same origins, a beating heart and blood running through our veins. My consciousness towards my Creator(GOD) leads me to be conscious of all lives, cultures, races and beliefs.

My father came from a family of very little money. His parents were divorced when he was nine years old. Culturally, he was raised by both parents separately. His mother was a single mom putting herself through nursing school. My father is the oldest child of 4, and often took on adult responsibilities. Their status was considered lower class; however, their outlook was very giving and self-less. They were appreciative for everything they had, because they knew how hard it was to obtain. My father’s side is very outgoing, hardworking and independent. They remain humble, and are very well-rounded members of society.

Growing up I always lived in a religious household. We always prayed before we ate, prayed before we went to bed, and always went to church on Sunday and Wednesday night. While I never questioned these actions and never tried to rebel against them, I still didn’t understand the importance of them either. I was merely walking in my parents footsteps, doing what my parents told me, singing along to the children’s songs in Sunday school, gave a tithing of my allowance every Sunday, but my life was void of the real meanings of my actions. This went on for years. Because I had not yet read through the Bible to understand why these actions had any meaning, they were just things I did all the time and I thought that was normal and that was what it meant to be a Christian.