Blog #10

Joaquin Paez

10/29/12

 

Blog entry week #10

 

 

1.       I constantly wake up at 2:00am to find myself facing the opposite side of the bed.

2.       At the age of 17 I purchased my first car, an 89 VW Beetle.

3.       I currently work over 50 hours a week in over 5 different counties.

4.       I will be traveling to Miami Florida during the summer of 2013 to celebrate my birthday.

5.       I purchased a dog during the weekend.

6.       Golf has been my favorite sport since high school.

 

Breast Ironing

- Breast Ironing

This is, unfortunately, as bad as it sounds. Someone, usually the mother, will hold a girl aged 8-13 or just as she starts to blossom, and iron her chest with an extremely hot object. They are trying to stop her breasts from growing, believing in their minds that they are protecting the child from rape and/or pregnancy. They also beat on the chest with heated objects like the kitchen tool used to mash potatoes or anything that they can get. They pound and press with the heated object, causing more damage than they realize. The crazy part of it is that their intentions are good. They want the child not to be molested and to have a chance to finish her education.

More than 4 million females have suffered this fate at the hands of loved ones over the years in regions of the Republic of Cameroon. Breast ironing causes tissue damage, which can lead to breast cancer, cysts, infections, the inability to breast-feed their eventual children, depression, and malformation and/or the loss of at least one breast and possibly both.

 http://thumbpress.com/the-10-most-weird-body-deformation-practices/

I read this article and it really caught my attention, I was amazed at what other cultures do to ensure their children live a life free of molestation and within their believes offer them a better opportunity to succeed in academics, it made me want to share this with our class since I think it’s a sensitive subject and awareness can help make a difference.

Family

10/09/2012

Family

Unlike other Hispanic families there were only four of us while growing up, sister, mother and father. I was fortunate enough to have cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents. However, they did not live with or near us. The closes family I had was thousands of miles away in a different country. At a very early age my parents decided to move to the United States in search of a better future for them and us. Although I appreciate the outcome and value the privileges of living in a first world country I can’t help thinking what kind of childhood I would have experienced living and growing aside family. I deeply appreciate everything my parents have done for us, it was definitely difficult to go through holydays, birthdays and celebrations without the rest of the family.  I think this may be seen to other individuals as unfortunate or in a negative way but I think this fact alone has defined my family.  I think of us as a cinder block that needs four sides to be strong and maintain stability, we have learned to recognized feeling, emotions and behaviors without the need for words. I consider my family a strong entity that works together to reach a greater purpose, the purpose of happiness. We maintained this cinderblock analogy up to 4 years ago. In June 2007 my son was born, two new additions to my family were made, my beautiful wife and my loving son. Now that I have a family of own I see things differently, I realize that a parent would do anything in their power to protect and ensure a good life for their little ones. I never judged my parents actions or decisions but I constantly questioned, why I had to grow up without knowing what living and counting on cousins, grandparents and family. I now know why and I would probably do the same if it meant giving my son a better future or opportunity to succeed in life.