Dilemmas

So, last Saturday, I spent 3 hours driving in car with two girl friends of mine that think is better to marry someone from your culture and country.
On Sunday, I spent about one hour with about 4 moms that had minimum 3 children and were very much pro home schooling, very in touch with what was going on around their kids school and what teachers and principals were able to do or not.

The way my friends brought the argument was kind of no brainier to think that with people that have the same culture you will not argue small things that are common sense and well understood from the way you are grown up. With someone from another culture you have to argue small things that might end up to a big fight. But I think we need to move out of our culture to get better and learn the best of both sides. Yes there are things to argue, everyone thinks that the way they do things is right but at one point both agree that everyone can bring something into the relation and that is not just wrong or right but it might be just two different ways of getting to the same point. For me, getting married with a guy from the same culture is like getting married with your father or brother. He will make you face the same issues that the man in your family made you face all your childhood. You will not be able to be who you are because they will frame you just like you have been framed before, in the name of the morals and what is supposed to be right from the culture point of view.

The way those moms argued was that in school your kids are not able to be who they are because they will have to follow rules set by teacher. These rules sometimes are archaic and do not make sense. Also, principals are not always able to control teachers and force control. While in a home school, you let your child develop in a natural way. Looks like this kind of schooling was the latest fashion now in Guelph to keep bored housewives wired to something interesting. Museums are open during the week and it is nice to visit them when there are not too crowded. Sometimes, you get together with other families that do home schooling and you can invite a teacher that will come to your house and explain science in a fun way for your kids. At the end they all agreed that it can't last for long and they all had their kids in school now. So the topic now was discussions about how principal and teachers behave, how capable are they and how is the communication with them. They have interviews with teachers very often, they go to school meetings, they sign petitions on what the school should do or they can even start an anti-petition for what school decided to do. Did I mentioned that they were all home stay moms? I can't disagree more with any of them. I was screaming inside during all the time and couldn't connect with any of them. They were in a different World and different dimension for me. But they all introduced themselves as intellectuals, with work experiences that had stopped once their kids needed attention and they all had more kids than I did. But what do I know about kids? I have only one 4 year old and I haven't been in Canadian schools to be able to argue how they function. Another thing that surprised me a lot was the fact that they seemed to be happy and in love with their husbands. I found that very fake because never before I have been with other married women who had no issues with how little their husbands did at home, or how much attention they put to work rather than home and kids. In my opinion, these are real women in real relations.

I asked my husband about both.
For the first one he laughed and said that I did right to marry a Canadian guy. It's good to mix things and be open. Maybe it would have been different with someone else for both of us but we can't find that out, now that we are together :)
For the second one he said he is pro home schooling and he would love it if I could do that. He thinks is a good thing for the kid and for the mother. Saying mother here because he doesn't think that the father can do that, only mothers :) Well .... there goes the argument :)



The point is that I felt that on both these cases I had a dilemma going on. I do not agree with the fact that only couples of the same culture have no problems and I am against home schooling. Am I right or are these other people right? The way they were talking and explaining things, made me feel very naive. You know, one day you feel strong, confident, able to handle everything and then something happens and makes you feel like a child that knows life only from books and movies but has no real experience. My 35-th birthday is around the corner but when will I grow up ?

What I did these last weeks

Since the last time I wrote here, I have taken 2 trainings, missed about 10 of my Karate classes, moved from heel-open shoes to winter shoes, felt like starving and then very full....lots have changed. Most of the things have changed because Fall is in full speed and the temperature is changing so fast that you can't refuse to accept that Winter is just around the corner. Actually, not far North from here, there was already 5cm of snow already.
My first training was from work and about Leadership. Was in a very nice hotel/resort, with very good food and I was in good company. The training was fun and I was myself in a lot of way, there was no need to lie or fake who I was and at the end, I found out that people like me for who I am. One thing I learned is to be more sophisticated and the tool I decided to use to do that is to keep my mouth shut more. Lately i find myself speaking a lot, something that I haven't done before. I have no idea why do I have this need to talk so much but I know I have to put it on leash.
The second training was not from work. I found it myself and I thought is a very good one to help me with the career change I want to do. I registered for the training to be in a place less than a kilometer from where I live bur because they didn't have enough people registered for that location, I had to actually go to Pennsylvania for that. I was the only Canadian in a class with 9 students and one teacher. The place was not good at all, especially if compared with the hotel from the previous training. The food was horrible, so bad that I almost starved. I went to buy some food I could eat and I got apples, carrots and some low calorie Granola bars. The low calorie on the bars was not done by removing the high calorie ingredients but by cutting the size of the bar. I meet some nice people with whom I hang around after classes. Things that made me think from that week were the fact they were all overweight and I felt thin like a ballerina for the first time in my life. Although they seemed to be average smart, they like Sarah Palin because "She is nice". I had to bite my tong to not start a conversation with them about her.
The bad thing about leaving for a while is that when you are back at work, you realize that the others have been working meanwhile and now you have to deal with 1000 unread messages in your mailbox.



One of the huge problems lately is the fact that the Economy is going down without any safety wire behind. This has affected my company as well by freezing on hiring. You would think this is ok as long as I still have a job. But on the other side, they go and buy a bundle of products from the competition and serve it to us as a good thing. I guess the company is doing well but there will be some people loosing their jobs.
At my work, every Halloween, we have a party and one of the things in the party is the Pumpkin carving competition. My team has been winning for the last 2 years and we are under a lot of pressure to win again so we are having meeting after meeting to decide on what is going to be and how can we realize that. You have no idea how much of technical skills you need for this competition. Let's hope we win again!
Tonight I meet a friend that doesn't live here but back home. She is here visiting. She started a conversation regarding couples that are from different countries and cultures. Another of my friends agreed with her. So both of them were under the impression that a couple that is made by people from different countries and cultures argue a lot about small things while couples from the same country and culture argue about important things. By this, it is better to be married with someone from your country. It might be true but I am not ok when it comes to marry guys from my country. Hmmmm.... I don't know. I remember a friend of mine (not from here) saying that girls from where he comes from are even better in bed (on top of being better in other things). Maybe we do want what is like us, even when it comes with problems.