Hi everyone,
I hope all is well and that you enjoyed your first week of Soliya! I've heard from a couple of you that it was a positive experience though you may have felt shy, and afraid about
technical problems and/or your English, but don't worry - that's normal!
As you have already seen, it gets easier and will continue to do so as the program progresses - believe me!
A couple of you have told me that you would prefer to keep your diaries private and so will send them to me by mail, which is fine - but please remember to send them to me each week :-) Some others I haven't heard from at all - so please post your diaries to this blog post (and last week's one) or send them to me by mail - also remember to copy and paste the text chat into a word document and send it to me.
Last week you had to do a special 'game' which took away some time from the discussion, I'll be able to tell you more about that when the project is over. This week you have the readings to do and videos to watch before your discussions, please remember to do that as it will help you contribute more fully to the discussion.
Enjoy the week, and remember to send your diaries and your chats!
Francesca
This week I hoped to meet up with my fellows and speak with them about our differences in terms of culture. In fact, our assignments were a couple of articles and a video to watch, related to several civilization and the Muslim’s world.
RispondiEliminaAs the best Anglo-Saxon culture is able to show us, the question put in the center of the discussion has been our personal identity. The question was formally very politically correct but the most of people didn’t make a short with the assignments. I didn’t understand if the facilitators didn’t want to force people. I imagine this happened because they wanted to find a soft way to introduce more complicate questions. Anyway, I tried to change the static situation but without any appreciable result. So, my proposal for next time is answer to Rachid when he spoke about to get satisfaction from a job. A good example for him could be a chain-worker that every day use to mount a thousand screws. In this case the satisfaction, from the worker’s point of view, is low, and clearly money and job are two faces of the same medal. Both give you the freedom.
Next time I hope we’ll discuss about the clash of civilization related at the first article of Samuel P. Huntington.
I see a contradiction when the author use the word “civilization”, in my opinion I would substitute it with the word society. But the worse fact is when he speak about “becoming modern” referring to a civilization that need military strength and weapons. I consider this model nowadays unacceptable.
About the second article, the Muslim’s world, would be interesting a comparison between the Christian holy Bible and the Quran with its supplementary books but of sure I’ll have to weight each word.
Gianluca
Hi everybody!
RispondiEliminaweek 2 has gone so fast and we already got into the heart of the prject. we had the first dispute between mates of my group, but everything has been in mutual respect for all. I think discussions like this one are helpful for exchangeing opinions and ideas. Next week we'll have 3rd meeting while discussing about Immigration and Integration and I am volunteer to prepare some questions about this argument. I am lookeing forward to begin this new topic! see you soon!
Matteo
Hi there!
RispondiEliminaSorry if I haven't updated my diary earlier, last week was pretty busy and, since I've been sick too, I couldn't even make it for the third meeting.
Anyway, during week two we focused on the readings we were assigned on 'the clash of civilizations' issue. It was an interesting debate thanks to some good insights that Jim, our Denver-based mate, and Esther, who's from Amsterdam, made. On the other hand I'd prefer a more in-depth discussion with the other members too, as I sensed different perspectives about important issues, such as the freedom of speech one, were coming out.
That said, I must say I appreciated how the discussion, starting off with the core Huntington-related topic, succeeded in broadening our focus on different issues like Orientalism, the Bush administration legacy, the debate on censorship and the westernization of the Arab world.
Finally we were explained the video project basis and its importance, as it will allow us to express all the issues we've been discussing so far.
In the end, I can conclude it's been a satisfying meeting and that certainly the discussion among each other made a step forward compared to the previous time.
As I missed the third meeting I'm now looking forward next week's one to see what the other guys talked about. Hope I can start working on the video project asap, last week was so busy (plus I got sick) I couldn't find much free time and I sense I'd better keep up with the whole Soliya thing ; )
Massimo