Break away or choose a side?

My Culture

One of the many things that is interesting about me is that I am African-American and Ethiopian and I have learned many ways to honor my culture. For example, my mom likes to take us to an Ethiopian restaurant for special occasions and that has been a tradition in our family for many years.What we eat is injera,it resembles bread ut it is made out of wheat only and shiro is also eaten with this.
I have also tried learning the language and going to family events with other relatives who are ethiopian or if you are from Eritrea you are habesha. I have also embraced my african-american roots by going to places that my relatives on my dad's side and learning about their ancestors and how they came to America. My grandmother passed down a necklace that has been in our family for nearly 5 decades and I hope to pass it on to my future daughters and so fourth.

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I understand there is a balance between which culture you relate more to but I try to incorporate them both to fit me and I love that I can share many aspects of different styles and customs and make something potentially new. Something that I do that's different is mixing ethiopian breakfast foods with a special oatemeal my African-American grandmother makes and by doing so I created a new dish. Also I recently tried mixing my styles of clothing is wearing a shemma and mixing it with modern american clothes.

For holidays I celebrate both the New Year and then the Habesha New Year or Enkutatash, we celebrate by eating injera and wearing our new clothes. I like to do both because they are joyous occasions and are good luck. There are many traditions that I celebrate and integrate into one in order to enjoy both sides of my culture therefore I am in the middleground and I don't have to choose one side.

Finally, I think that kids like me, can break away from the things they don't like and stil honor their culture. For example, when I first had to wear the shemma I didn't like it but by adding something modern I found that it was not so terrible and it made me want to wear it more often. Also, some people prefer to add to their culture while still honoring it and hte significance it has in their lives so it's just about finding your preferance and what you feel is right while still being unique you can also learn to love what makes you diverse. So these are just my thoughts on the subject hope you enjoyed the brief history of Eritrea!

 

The Haunted House

A Haunted House

  Poe has many interesting stories that are spooky as well as find a way to entertain that part of us that longs for a good scare now and then. The techniques I would most copy from him would be his use of personification, his grammatical skills, his use of diction, the way he structures his writing, and finally how he uses metaphors. There are many ways to use all of these things in an essay for example, if I were to talk about a tree and say it's branches screached as the wind blew past that could be a use of personification. I would apply the use of structuring my essay by planning ahead and figuring out how I should write the thesis, topic sentence and the rest of my body paragraphs.

   I can use grammar skills that are strong and tie my information back to the thesis in order to give more of an effect, and by doing this I can better my essay. Finally I would use metaphors that can be understood like comparing a black raven to a lonsome person. Now that I have told you of the ways I would use his techniques and how I would use them it's time for a spooky story about a HAUNTED HOUSE....

   There once was a house on Oakridge Lane that everyone in town knew all to well about, it was dark, isolated in a deserted part of the town and it seemed as though the clouds were set dark and gloomy right above that particular spot. It had overgrown weeds all around and even the animals kept away from what might've been the scariest house in the whole state! Ashley and mike two young high school students heard stories about the spooktacularr house and in utter curiosity decided to check it out. They drove 40 miles out of town ready and prepared for what could happen in a place that no one would ever go near if they were to be lost, they pulled up to the house and parked in an abandoned barn.

    "Let's go inside!" said Mike, Ashley was brave but even a house like this sent chills down her spine. They neared the house and opened the creaky wooden door that would lead them inside, slowly but surely all seemed well. Walking from room to room they noticed porttraits of the family that used to live there, they were a small family who lived moved there from Eastern Europe around the early 1900's, they were all murdered by a greedy man that sought to take their land.  Ashley noticed the young girl that looked similar to the girl decribed in all the stories she'd heard, long brown hair, pale face and black eyes. Eager to move on Ashley stepped down stairs and saw a figure standing at the foot of the stairs. It was a girl, covered in blood who once had her back turned was now at ashley's level of the stairs. Her teeth were sharpended to a point and she looked as if she just devoured an animal and by the smell a dead one, Mike still clueless headed to ashley and what he saw was truly horrifying... There he saw the girl smile with a grin as blood dripped down her chin and blood splatters on the wall, ashley had just been turned into a human puzzle.
Hope you enjoyed the short story, and hope it was scary enough!