This course exceeded in increasing my knowledge of customs, religions and traditions. The assigned readings also went into details regarding non common religions, Global Migration, various languages, racial conflicts of the South and a host of other pertinent information that I would have not known until registering for this class. I have had great luck selecting classes that I feel will increase my educational achievement and this class was no exception.
The weekly assignment that stands out to me was the discussion boards. I love the array of questions and the freedom given to express our thoughts on the topic, and reading our classmates post gives us the opportunity to get different perspectives from others. This was a very good class, I would take it again....minus the blog.

This weeks reading gave us a great definition of a Jihad and up until this week, I always thought of the term to be something negative. I stated in one of my responses to my classmate, that we as American must enlighten ourselves regarding international affairs. We cannot allow mass media to dictate our perception of world issues. I love learning about different cultures and traditions, but learned during this course that I must explore more that what I see or hear in an article or news segment.

I spent the last week thinking of my topic for my final paper. I knew I wanted it to reflect a topic of world culture that intrigues me, but was not sure which way to go. While at work, I come in contact with many people of different religions and cultural backgrounds. After talking with one family in particular the idea hit me like a brick. I now feel a lot better about the assignment.

Dowries

As I was reading and researching the practices of dowries, I just could not understand why a price needed to be placed on a person with regard to marriage. I understand that at one point it was intended for the bride to have in case her husband experienced an unfortunate death or to help with the expenses of a growing family. But to put a price on a person based upon their social status to give to the parents just does not make any sense to me.
Once my children get marriage, I hope to be able to give them a monetary gift to buy a home. I think large weddings are a waste of money and will not pour thousands of dollars toward it.
Thank goodness I have two boys and only one daughter.

My closes friend cannot believe it is 2013 and I have no idea on how to use a blog. Oh well, hopefully, by the end of this course, I'll be a little more knowledgeable. Yes, this is really how I feel...