Ron's ESL Blogs

My name is Anita and I came from Armenia. Armenia is a small, but a beautiful country. It has huge mountains, fast rivers, deep forests and wonderful weather. Armenia has an old and tragic history. Furthermore it has more than 5000 years of history. Armenia had many fateful moments in her history and like miracle it survived from abolition. In ancient times kings managed the country. The borders were starting from Caspian Sea to Mediterranean Sea. It was a pretty big country. During the centuries it became smaller and smaller, because the neighbors many times attacked and surrendered most of the land. Now it has 30,000 km length and it is surrounded with Russia, Turkey and Iran.

There are many similarities and differences between Armenian culture and American culture. When it comes to culture and customs there are a lot of things to talk about. I observed in U.S. that family ties are not that strong as in Armenia. In the U.S. I have seen that marriage is not taken seriously and divorces are too common. Therefore, more then 30% of kids grow up with one parent. In my opinion it has strong impact on any child and makes his or her psychology weak.

In the U.S. people are extremely individual and they don’t understand the important role of neighbors. They don’t even know their neighbors’ names and people never trust their neighbors. This relationship is completely different from my native customs. The Armenians are very close to their neighbors. They are always together, no matter in what situations they are, sadness or happiness. There is a saying “It is better to have a good neighbor then a far relative, whom you usually don’t see oftenâ€?.

In my opinion Armenians, just like Americans, love to celebrate the Holidays. In Armenia, the whole family comes together and they make a big party. Everybody has his own task. The men make barbeques outside of house. Women prepare everything else for dinner. They make those testy desserts, salads, appetizers, cookies and of course cakes and sweets. The ones who don’t have any responsibility are children. They play as much as they want. It is very crowded. I know the Americans also like to celebrate the Holidays but their parties are usually calm and quiet.
In US with this big racial and ethnic diversity of population people live with great harmony. Every one is equal, no matter where you came from and what color is your skin or hair. I like it, because I feel free with my thoughts and opinions. I felt accepted by community from the first day when I came here. I think this is very important for someone, who came from another country, who left his or her family, home, customs.
After living in US for two years I have realized that this country is truly a land of opportunity. This country gave me a chance to educate myself and become what I want to be. In US there are many opportunities to success in your life. As long as you have curiosity and of course you are working hard you can start your carrier any time you want, it doesn’t matter how old are you. This is an extremely huge and new country, with national diversity, contrarily my little, old and one nation Armenia. Even though US is a big country, it is also very organize country with high technology. Here in US the government caring for the people and gives the benefits to the people and makes lives more comfortable.
I love this country and I want to be a part of this big community. I want to build my own home and raise my children here. But there is one think that I will miss that is my homeland; my Armenia. And this feeling will stay with me until I die.