Advertisement
Published: September 5th 2016
Edit Blog Post
Monday, 9-5-2016
The third week of my stay abroad. I am staying in Santa Ana, CA, to work at an in-home daycare.
First of all I want to apologize for the late entry. My work as been really hectic and I did not have the chance to write a blogpost.
This week I had to work a bit extra but that also resulted in me being able to go to the beach and to an outlet store in Orange in return. On Thursday I went to Laguna Beach with another volunteer. We waited for the Uber driver to pick us up, packed with beach towels and an umbrella, very touristic. Our driver was from around the area and told us the places we had to visit. He mentioned of course the beach but also recommended us to go to the 1,000 steps beach, a much smaller beach with amazing nature surrounding the place. He could hear we were not from America because of our accents. I was bummed out by that because I had recently received a lot of compliments on my English and about how well-spoken I was. The next time
someone tells me this, I will ask them how to improve it.
The beach was ever so nice and the area around it had a relaxed atmosphere. Laguna Beach is a very touristic place so you would see a lot of diversity between the people. The shops look like they come straight out of the fifties but the interior is modern. Laguna Beach as a lot of art shops and museums which are free to visit. I got the feeling it was a bit the Camden of California, but of course I could be wrong.
We went to a place to eat which sold the 'Oktoberfest burger' and I remembered our driver telling us that Oktoberfest is 'a pretty big deal' in America. I was surprised by that because this is a German holiday. The burger consisted of bratwurst and sauerkraut. The person I was with was from Germany so she told me this was not a pleasant combination.
On Sunday I went to The Outlets at Orange, a mall that only has, you guessed it, outlet stores. It was not an indoor mall which was nice because the AC is always blasting
at the indoor malls. It looked like you were in another world as soon as you got in. Some places reminded me of a theme park. They had a lot of restaurants and we tried a lot of different foods.
They had a special offer at one of the fastfood restaurants: nacho fries. It consists of fries, melted cheddar cheese, pieces of beacon, three different sauces and jalapeño peppers. It came with a drink and that is when I discovered something. You only pay for the cup! You by the cup and you could get as many refills as you want. At first I was hesitant to do this because I was so used to paying for two drinks if I had two drinks, but everyone did this.
After a few hours we were hungry again and we decided to go for a real meal. We went to a huge restaurant that looked like a gigantic shed and was decorated with cowboy figures and horses. Inside the staff were dressed as bikers. I got a true American feeling when I stepped inside although I could not necessarily pinpoint what it was. Maybe it were the big
screens that where playing three different sport games at the same time, American Football, baseball and soccer. We ordered chicken tacos and got an impressive sized plate in return. It was filled with two tacos, rice, beans, guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream and nachos. We were not able to finish it all and I remembered my mother telling me how big the portions were in The States. The waiters were so excited to help two European girls we got a cotton candy on the house as a surprise. After that, one of them had another surprise: an American chocolate pie and ice cream. This time the drinks were the same; if you ordered the same drink over and over you would only pay for one. I was still surprised by this but took huge advantage of it. We took everything home.
Today is Labor Day. It is an American and Canadian holiday to celebrate the working class and it is celebrated on the first Monday of September. Labor Day weekend is the first weekend of September and is seen as a sign of the end of the summer. Today I am off at work as
are a lot of other people. We will celebrate Labor Day with a nice family barbecue. I will ask them more information about this day and will inform you all about it in my next blogpost.
------------------------------
CULT5 assignment 2 theme 2
Theme 2: Multiculturalism What is the ethnic/cultural make-up of your community/country? How well or badly do different cultures live together? As we all know, America is the land of immigration. When Columbus in 1492 came to America he was an immigrant himself, invading the land of the Native Americans. In America you can find so many people with ancestors from all over the world that it could be called a land of diversity. In Santa Ana this isn’t any different. The neighborhood I live in is mainly white, but that does not mean that there is no diversity to be found here. You will find that a lot of people have mixed blood, my host has a Mexican mom and a German dad for example. Of course there are also African American people living in this neighborhood and Asian Americans as well.
You can also see the diversity at the daycare where I do my volunteer work. You have white kids, African American kids, Latinx kids, Asian American kids. I think it is fascinating to see how children do not see color, they just see new friends to play with. In some ways, I think ‘older’ people can learn a lot from these children.
What I am about to write may sound opinionated but I just hope that people share the same opinion as I do when I say that Trump is a racist and sexist man. When you hear his plans about wanting to build a wall between the American-Mexican border I can’t help but have flashbacks to the wall that separated Berlin in 1961. He claims that “all Mexicans are rapists” and that “women wouldn’t be raped if they were as strong as man”. The scary part about this is that people actually believe and support him and share the same believes as him. These people are sometimes triggered because they had a not so pleasant encounter with people of a certain ethnic. Others simply do not know enough about the topic to form an opinion so they listen to the one who screams the loudest.
We all know that in the past year and a half America is torn by so-called ‘racial wars’. When we look at the news we cannot help but see that police officers have shot yet another African American man or woman. I wondered how this all started, but I believe this has always been the case and the media simply pays more attention to it know. Of course, this is what I believe and in no way the whole truth.
That being said, in the area I am staying it I have not seen a bad encounter whatsoever. California is close to the American-Mexican border and it shows in the amount of Latinx people living here. In every supermarket you go to the signs will tell you where to go in English and in Spanish. Most of the California residents can speak Spanish well. There is a special Mexican supermarket near that sell all kinds of Mexican products and the people here often enjoy Mexican food as well. I have several times ate a Mexican breakfast which consisted of a tamolies, a warp with scrambled eggs, peppers and a sausage and of course the healthy amount of guacamole and pico de gallo. It was delicious.
Neighbors help each other out if needed. Uber drivers talk about their families and ask about yours. Waiters ask where you come from and are excited to learn about your country. For a while, race does not exist.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.08s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0451s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb