Tomb Sweeping Day: Similar to Memorial Day?

While I was reading my autobiographies I was searching for certain items, dates, dynasties to stick out at me so I could be interested in writing this blog post about them. There were a few instances in which I was deciding between dynasties that Johnny wrote to me about and a festival day called "tomb sweeping." As I am not real big into history I decided to skip the dynasties and look into what they call "Tomb Sweeping Day." In my autobiography I received from Alice, I'm assuming that she thought I knew what tomb sweeping day was because she did not explain it at all. In fact all she put was a picture of herself (Selfie) of her standing by a tree with a caption saying "Me on Tomb Sweeping Day." I was immediately intrigued and wondering if this day in China that they celebrate was like our american holiday Memorial Day? I wrote back to Alice asking many questions about this day and why she would put a picture of her on this special day, when I'm connecting it to Memorial Day; yet she seemed very happy in the picture.

When I started looking into Tomb sweeping day it seemed more and more like memorial day. According to this article based on Chinese Festivals, Tomb Sweeping Day is said to be the most important custom during the Qingming Festival. This Chinese festival is always near the beginning of April because this special day is a festival for more then just honoring the dead, but it is closely related to agriculture. This festival marks a point in the year where temperatures begin to rise and rainfall increases; meaning it is a crucial time period for plowing and sowing.

Also I found to be very interesting day because when they honor their lost loved ones they clear the weeds from the tomb and plant fresh soil to show care for their dead ones. On top of that their family takes the favorite food and wine of their loved ones, to sacrifice for them, along with paper to resemble money. These actions of leaving their loved ones their favorite items and burning it on their grave is to show that their loved ones are not lacking food and money.

I now know why Alice took a picture of herself in the graveyard because it is an important tradition during the spring for their agriculture and a day for the gathering of family and honoring of their deceased loved ones.
      

MSU Service Learning Experience

I went to two service learning speeches while I was at MSU for the trip. First was the poverty lecture, the message itself through the lecture was very interesting. The message portrayed was related to my groups project because like their presentation it discussed poverty, starvation, what people do for money to stay alive, health problems of hunger and so on. Hearing about people that have actually done something to help the world puts a different perspective onto my groups project because it incorporates actual cases of people helping the less fortunate in cases of need.
Although the lecture was interesting and portrayed evidence that supports my groups service learning project the documentary with Omer, and the rest of the refugees in it, was fascinating.  Omer and many others were very kind and generous by giving their own time out of their lives to make any number of less fortunate families more accustomed to the new country they are now living in. Overall the documentary was factual and interesting at the same time. The film showed many camps where the families had to flee their past country just to survive and coming to a new country was not easy let alone the amount of stress it had to put on them to survive in the new country. Omer and the rest of the people made this transition much easier in their new world. I think the documentary and the poverty lecture definitely opened my eyes to people in other countries who are struggling to survive while we Americans get angry if we don't get the iPad we wanted, or the apple computer we wanted, etc. Anyway, I loved the trip and I think you should definitely do it next year with your future class and I hope they get as much out of it as I know our class did! 

Global Perspectives - Food Insecurities

Our project consisted of Chris, Colton, Drew and myself but only Chris and I did the powerpoint together. Our project was over food insecurities and how we could help struggling individuals get the proper food they need in order to maintain a healthy life style. Our project presentation summarized how we would get the food to the food banks, food kitchens, etc and all the resources we would need to complete the mission. I have attached a link to the presentation over our Food Insecurities project.



https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3IlyK61g1J8UHZDazEyMkJBMDQ/edit?usp=sharing

Letters From China

These letters surprised me, I didn't expect them to have the reaction they did to my comment about 'Typical White Girl.' In almost every response I recieved from them I had a comment about typical white girls and wether or not I got into trouble for saying that about these girls. Most of the chinese people thought I was a humorous guy, but others thought I needed to step out of my shell and do something realistic and fun because apparently my life was boring to her.

I got asked many questions in the letters including questions about our society, our school-life and how we go to school for only 6 hours. Also I got asked repeatively about the "Typical white girl" comment if I was prejudice towards women or if I got in trouble with the girls in my class, etc. I got asked if we have lots of homework since we only go to school for such a short time, compared to them.

The responses to my essay excited me to see what people from a foreign country thought about our average teenage life. With the responses I got about my name of my essay, "Adventures of Ryan's Daily Life," I have decided to change the title to "The Average Daily Life of Ryan."

In all I was thrilled to get responses back about it and have so many questions to answer and to ask them.

Project Service Learning

When the MSU ladies came, they really helped out and even changed my ideas. Krispy, Colton, Drew, and I are now doing a group project since we all can be related via Food Insecurities. Our main goal is to provide food to those who can't afford it. Drew and I both work at restaurants who waste food at the end of the night. The idea is that we will retrieve all leftover food and bring them to one location for the poor. I come in because without this many go hungry and this leads to an unhealthy life. Krispy's point of view is to show the health hazards of not eating. While Colton is going to talk about the springfield area poverty.
A possible link for research is our poverty rate in town http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Springfield-Missouri.html

Kids Giving Back

Watching the 60 Minutes Show and seeing that kids are actually doing good in the world instead of being a average kid and playing basketball in the streets changed my perception of the world. Kids are being enslaved in foreign countries and the government isnt doing anything, but instead kids are. These kids are all 12 years old, thats ridiculous, when i was 12 i was outside playing basketball or texting girls and talking. Not saving peoples lives from the harm that could ruin their life. Also the 15 year old kid that came up with a way to detect early pancreas cancer is huge in the world. His invention will save thousands of peoples lives from cancer, he is only 15 and thinking of ways to save peoples lives. That makes me think... What have I done in my 18 years?

Passionate About Passion

What are humans actually passionate about? Not one person can be passionate about the same thing and in the same degree as another. We can make relations to the intimate feelings called Passion but never feel what someone else is feeling. Helping someone when they are in need is essential for humans to be able to survive as long as we have. And due to people like the "Half4Hungry" organization people today are still being helped through the worst of times. 40% of the food Americans have is wasted. 35% of adults are obese and there is still hungry children and families dying for just a bite of food. This organization is set up to pay the full price of food at a given restaurant but you only are given half the amount of their regular size plate but then donate the money saved from only making half of the food to children and families in need of help. This organization is very helpful to people in dying need but like every other helpful organization somebody always ruins it by taking advantage of it. Last time I personally tried to help someone in need of assistance he was asking for money so he could feed himself. So I instead of giving him money went to McDonalds that was right around the corner and bought him two burgers brought them back to him. He looked at me in disgust because he didn't actually need to feed himself. He wanted to money for drugs and the vodka in his bag next to him. That was the last time I attempted to help someone in need and he has ruined it for everyone else. I think that this organization is in need but there will always be greedy selfish, uneducated individuals who try and  take advantage of the help that is being provided them because they are unable to support themselves.