Personal Narrative: Creating My Cultural Bag

I found creating my Cultural Bag was challenging, as I do not feel I had a vibrant culture growing up. Both my parents were born in American. One of my grandfathers came from Germany and spoke German, but I never meet him. I had a grandmother who grew up farming, but lived in another state and I never saw her. When I think of culture I imagine people learning traditional cultural dances or having grandparents that shared their cultural experiences. I feel I missed out on discovering my family’s culture because my parents were withdrawn from their relatives. While looking through the presentations, I realized everyone views culture differently. Some people identified their culture by faith or family structure. Knowing that everyone does not …show more content…
Some of the similarities were small family size, European lineage, and the love of sports. Growing up my family consisted of eight immediate family members. I felt having a small family was a good thing as holiday gathering were intimate. Like other people in my class, my family descends from Europe. I did not have to opportunity to know my European ancestors, but I was able to travel to Germany and soak up the culture. Sports are a big part of my family and I was pleased to see other classmates feel the same way. As my family grows older and schedules are crammed, we still find time to come together for football games. Going through the presentations I was able to list more cultural differences than similarities. Some cultural differences that stuck out to me were vegetarian life style, speaking another language, and traditional cultural dance. Growing up my dad wanted the same type of meals every week, dinner would consist of a meat and vegetable. Being a vegetarian was never mention in our house or practiced. I have a limited cultural experience growing up; I was always envious of people who could speak other languages. I feel speaking another language connects you to your culture and it is something that can be passed down to the next generation. Another cultural difference for me was not having a traditional cultural dance that I could identify myself with. I knew what cultural dances were, but I was never introduced to them going up. Looking through other Cultural Bag presentations, I feel like I know my classmates a little more than