To Struggle Against Stress!!

The month went by in a flashy since I came here to La Paz, Mexico. Mexico is an incredibly good place to visit. People are merry and thoughtful. It is worthwhile visiting at least once in your life. Only Spanish is spoken here though. 
 So I am supposed to enjoy my Mexican life, but actually I'm stressed-out here. I have to go to school everyday frommorning till night, and have lots of assignments to do. Besides when I had a project which I have to work on in a group, we always had an argument to decide on one thing to do. The worst thing is there is no time to hang out with my friends!!
 I can't stand any more without blowing off steam. But the problem is I don't know how to handle them....
Do you have any suggestions for me???


anyway, I'd like to post some pictures of Mexico. Enjoy it!!

AFTER AMERICAN LIFE

In a car on my way to my host-family house, I've completely made it a habit to try to catch English from the radio. One month earlier, I thought I hoped I would understand what they were talking about within a month. Now I just realized that it is too short for me to learn English in just one month. However, I've learned a lot of things from this experience. Since I came here to the U.S., I've felt that American values are definitely different from Japanese ones and it gave me a chance to rethink what Japanese are or Japan is. It isn't sometimes easy to　understand new values. It reminds me of the story of Thanksgiving, it is known as the biggest event here in the U.S. In the class, one of the professors told us about what it happened, what the origin was.

 Heroes in this story are people called "Pilgrims" ,the founder of America. The Pilgrim left Plymouth, England in 1620 because of religious persecution. They wanted to start a new life in the New World (America) and practiced their religion in freedom. Their sea voyage was very difficult and many of the Pilgrims died. Finally they arrived on the north east coast in North America. At the time, that area was wilderness. It was almost winter and they had no homes and little food.  The winter was very cold and harsh. Almost half of pilgrims died from starvation and sickness.

 However, soon they became friends with the local Native American Indians who showed the pilgrims how to grow food, namely corn, pumpkins and beans. The pilgrims worked hard and the summer harvest of 1621 was excellent. The pilgrims declared a three-day festival to thank God and to celebrate the wonderful harvest with their friends, the Native American Indians, who had helped them so much. This is the origin of Thanksgiving.

 So Thanksgiving is a symbol of their strong bond between the Pilgrims and the Indians, many people don't know about that today though. Now, it is not so hard for me to imagine what the pilgrims felt when they met people who were incredibly different from themselves. And also their burden to try to know each other goes beyond my imagination. I'm on that way now. I should keep on trying to take new culture and values. From next month, I am going to start a new life in Mexico and stay there for 3 months. I’m ready to give a try to anything. I hope the day would come when I could thank God for all I would have and all people who I’ve already met and I would meet from now in 3 months, like Thanksgiving.

Japanese values VS American values

In my class I learned about American culture values. I made an essay to compare to Japanese cultural values and American cultural values as a an assignment. I'd like to post it below.

How are your cultural values different from American cultural values?

It is said that three words describe Japanese cultural values; patience, constraint, and endurance. I think they are based on the Japanese tradition called "Shame Culture".
A shame culture is one in which the primary device for gaining control over children and maintaining control over adults is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism.
In a nutshell the key point of "Shame culture" is the fear of rejection. People tend to act in a group(society), and when someone doesn't act in concordance with society,they are ostracized; society pressures him or her, adding to his or her shame. Due to his or her fear of rejection, he or she to return to conformity. For example, people who don't care much about other's pressure are called K.Y(Kuki Yomenai i Japanese). This word usually used in negative way. To survive in this culture, we must get used to it . As a result, we're specialized sense of patience, constraint and endurance.
On the other hand, American culture is called "Guilt Culture" A guilt culture is defined as one that emphasizes punishment and forgiveness as ways of restoring the moral order.
A simple idea of guilty culture is that society builds a standard to judge whether your behavior is ethically good or not, people follow this system. In fact the border is strongly connected with religion(this goes back to the Pilgrims whose puritan values skill influence society.) That's why American cultural values represent initiative, progress and individualism.
Also high rats of immigration have been contributing to American cultural values as well.
The different ways of thinking from those two cultures affect our ideas and behavior.
In fact, some of my friends told me that the style of participation in class bothers them. They hesitate to say something in class, given that they grew up in Japanese culture as I mentioned. But just in my case, I don't feel anything frustrating to me. Intrinsically Japanese cultural values haven't suited for me. As proving, my tutor called me off that I was lacking of a feeling of concordance and I couldn't survive in Japanese society, when I was in Japan.

Peanuts Incident

I went to Central Park with my host-family 2 weeks ago. There were lots of squirrels in that park. They run around all over place. My mother suggested us to feed them peanuts. So we went to the nearest store and bought a pack of peanuts. My host mother found it and gave me it oddly enough. I had no idea why she gave it to me, because I thought she would buy it for us. She had me stand in a line for a checkout counter without any ideas, and I payed forit.... Holy cow!!!. I was fine about that. It was cheap but it made me disappointed. I tried to forget it. Never mind!!
And then, we walked back to the park. We started to feed peanuts to squirrels for a while. They usually came near to people who fed them. but at that time they seemed  like that they didn't want to come near us. Eventually I ended up feeding them and I started eating the peanuts I bought. Seeing me eating peanuts, she started laughing and said "Hereis a big squirrel from Japan!! Why are you eating food for squirrels!!!" That  made me pissed off. In mymind,"shut up. You can't talk about that. I'm one who bought them! Who cares!!" I kept on eating them, leaving her out.