This Week it was an amazing experience to be in a classroom that brings real world problems to the discussion. It never clicked for me that so many people have changing life experiences that can change the structure of their family. It made a huge impact on me and how I saw other families. I know that many of us can go through events in our life that test and trial, that make us break down and feel like we are running in the dark with no sense of direction. We can be worried about what will happen and how things will change, for the better or for the worst. We may start out to have the best intentions but it doesn't always happen to what we think may be the outcome. I know that these hopes and dreams that we thought could set us free, actually bind us to a new bizarre culture that we aren't use to. This molds our family differently. For example, this week we talked about a family trying to immigrant to the United States from Mexico. We discussed how difficult it would be to get enough money to just send one person ( such as the father, to test the waters). The family may think that it will only take a couple months till they can come join, but on the other hand, it takes years instead. Their whole family system is now upside down because of the changing roles of the parents and the children.

When people think of cultural, they think that there is a difference between, skin color, race, or location. But have you ever thought about cultural from your family. Most of us don't realize there is a cultural that our families have. There is a set of beliefs, or traditions that we follow as a group that some other families do not. Most of us don't realize how those traditions were set up, They simply were already there and you just follow along. Sometimes it isn't easy to recognize the rules we have set up because they aren't written down on paper, they are just established from the fact that we learned through experience. It is a quite interesting part of life.

 I am really into my class that I am taking at BYU-I, It is amazing how there are so many things that contribute to the family that I never realize are apart of it. This week we talked about how the family has different relationships and different boundaries that they perceive about themselves. We related the boundaries to fences, there needs to be a balance between how open and closed off you are. Some families have relationships that have a cinder block wall, that means it is a solid line that shows to other people that they are private and not friendly or open to other people. Another situation would be if there were no boundaries, It is too open to the outside and have no protection. People don't understand that there should be some privacy. The perfect in between is having a white picket fence. It shows to other people that there is a boundary and keeping things to the family, but it also shows there isn't a cut off of friendliness because of the spaces. I think we need to make sure our families have a good boundary around us.