Heartbroken Jets ^_^

First off, kudos to our CLAM professor, Randy Nichols, for his entertaining, funny, and insightful 3rd week videos. I scared my aunt with my shrill laugh when I heard the bit about the Jets. You know, being from Jersey and having lived about 5 minutes from the Giants Stadium for 11 years, I can't help but be a fan and take pleasure in the Jet fans' broken hearts! OK, enough insult to the Jets. The reason why I'm so comfortable about not offending anyone is because I think that it is highly unlikely we have a Jets fan in the class.

Now back to some serious business. I unfortunately do not have the opportunity to study abroad. I consulted Prof. Nichols about what culture I should investigate and he gave me some clear insight to how I should go about choosing one. I narrowed it down to two. So, I need your help (classmates and Prof. Nichols) in helping me pick one.

First culture is the small population located in San Pedro, Peru in the Peruvian Andes. I traveled there with a non-profit organization called Globe Aware. I spent a week there with some of my co-workers and learned a lot about their culture. Here is a link to the Globe Aware San Pedro facebook album.

By the way, that's me on the left, on the way to Marchhuasi.

So, I know quite a bit of "stuff" about the Peruvians in San Pedro, because I had a chance to explore their culture first hand. But I also like a challenge so I thought maybe I should investigate something that I don't know anything about.

My second option is to explore the Assyrian, a.k.a. Chaldean or Syriac people. Turkey has a large population of Muslims; 98% to be exact. So, growing up in Turkey, I wasn't exposed to other religions at all. But now here in the US, one of my aunt's closest friends is Syriac (I don't know if I'm using it in the right context but in Turkish they would be called "Süryani"). I haven't much conversed with him or his family so I don't know much. The little bit I know is that even though they were born and raised in Turkey, they don't call themselves Turkish. They call themselves "Süryani." It's a more of a definition about their faith than their nationality. I asked him one day what Süryani meant and he said it means Christian. They speak Aramaic, the language of Christ and religion plays a big role in their lives. So, anyways, I thought this would be a good opportunity to find out about their culture. He promised me he would take me to Church and show me their lifestyle as best as he could.

Anyways, let me know what you guys think as to what culture I should pick to study.

P.S. I had to look up the word "pontificate."
P.S.S. Field of Dreams picture was awesome.
P.S.S.S. I used Hoftede's website for my Thailand group project in COMM 150.
P.S.S.S.S. I disagree with E.D. Hirsch's quote: "Knowing a lot of words means knowing a lot of things." I think that knowing a lot of words means knowing a lot of words. Knowing something ABOUT the word is more important than knowing the word. For example, I know the word snake. I also know a little bit about snakes because I owned three snakes for a while. Anyways, that's my two cents about the subject.

Gizem

Lack of involvement...

As I said before, I don't quite like "blogging" or the online communities. I found out pretty quickly after I signed up for facebook and myspace that I spent way too much time "surfing" when I could have been doing other things that are more valuable with my time. Now I just kind of sign in and out sporadically.

I used to keep an online journal in high school. It wasn't known site like xanga or livejournal I kind of wanted to be anonymous. One day I stumbled upon this website called melodramatic.com. At the time it had something like two or three hundred users. Logging in was a pain in the butt due to server overflow. I really liked conversing with people I didn't know. I think it made it an unbiased medium for people to voice their opinions without the backlash of prejudice.

As you can see, I'm not a big blogger and never have been. But I think that this course will enable me to have a different prospective about the online communities.

Anyhoo, after I thought about what I should write in this post, I wanted to include a copy of the "Map of Online Communities" photo here. I thought it was funny and quite brilliant! And all I had to do was google "Map of Online Communities" and link it here. It popped up as the first search. Nothing about the internet surprises me anymore to be honest.

CLAM, here I AM!

Well, I am technology challenged to say the least. I am not big on MySpace or facebook. I thoroughly dislike youtube and I hate, HATE, blogging or online journals. I am just not a big fan of spending so much time on the internet trying to find out about other people or advertise myself, if you will. Even now, as I was wring this blog, my laptop overheated and shut off. Fortunately, it didn't erase everything I had worked on.

This course is going to be a challenge for me. Not because of the material but because I categorize myself as a technology-reject. But I'm sure that I will learn a lot and enjoy the course.

I have to say the syllabus and the course outline was well organized. Organization is essential to be because I have OCD. The blogger set up video was very very helpful and much needed in my case =P

I look forward to a semester of blogging... NOT!