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Growing Up In Laredo

Decent Essays

Growing up in Laredo where diversity is low, we tend to get comfortable in what we consider “normal”. Laredo is a small, border town in south Texas with approximately two hundred fifty thousand citizens (United States Census Bureau). About ninety-five percent of that population is Hispanic (United States Census Bureau). My friend, Ali, is from India and still practices most of the customs from her culture. So I would’ve imagined she experienced some serious culture shock moving here. However, I later came to find she’s lived in the United States most of her life. I hadn’t understood how immense the difference from her culture was from mine until the end of my junior year in high school.

I met Ali during my freshman year of high school. …show more content…

Ali explained to me that in her Hindu culture and religion, it was custom to have a marriage between two people arranged by the parents. My shock turned to confusion; I had only heard of arranged marriages in movies and books. Not something seen in real life. I was used to a culture where the majority of the population is Catholic and Hispanic and couples choose each other. Since she’s my friend, my first thought was concern for her happiness in an arranged marriage after living in the United States for so long. How much of our culture and customs has she absorbed and what impact will it have on her “arrangement”? But, she then mentioned she was happy and excited because she knew and liked the person whom she is set to marry. My concern for her arranged marriage dissipated; I knew that what may not seem normal for me was normal for her. So, I also came to realize the important part here was that she was happy. I didn’t know it then, but those thirty minutes around lunch table altered my views and they were forever changed for the better. It also exposed me to a small part of the world outside of my non-diverse border

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