Where Do I Belong free essay sample

A few days ago, I saw a tiny black ant making its way up the pink-tiled wall of my bathroom. Oddly amused, I watched this little creature climb up three feet and then fall to the floor. I found two things  ­extremely shocking. First, I had never seen an ant fall; second, I was actually getting worried about the little guy, and tried to  ­explain to him that he had to stay away from the vertical lines of grout. Never mind the fact that I was talking to an ant. But the most amazing part was that just a second after falling from well over 500 times his height, this little  ­genius found his way back to the wall and started climbing again. One would think that he would  ­either hurt himself or learn a lesson, but he insisted on going up that wall again and again. And he kept falling, keeping me  ­absolutely mesmerized, as though I had witnessed Medusa herself and not an ant, hypothesizing as to where exactly he was trying to go. We will write a custom essay sample on Where Do I Belong? or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Finally, I gave up and went on to what I had to do that day. My final theory was that he was simply trying to get home, because it was already quite late, and he seemed to be scurrying along in the general direction of the crack between the window and the wall. I guess I’ll never know whether he made it. There is, however, a point to my ant story: In the summer after sophomore year, I took a rather uncommon and  ­extensive vacation – to a post-Communist developing country. Having been born and raised in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, I was, on the one hand, returning home to visit my grandparents. But as soon as my mom and I stepped into the Bishkek airport, I realized how out of place I felt. My mom was right at home, speaking her native language with the people she spent most of her life with. But I spoke Russian hesitantly and with an accent, and insisted on talking to my mom in English. The place I had once called home had become a foreign country, and that little girl was now an American – a dreadful thing to be in a Russian-speaking Asian country. When I returned to my now well- ­appreciated South Florida town, I once again felt like a stranger in a place I had called home. I realized that I wasn’t like most of my friends, who had been born in Fort Lauderdale and spent their entire childhood in the suburbs. I had come from an alien world and could  ­never be a flag-waving American. Sometimes, you see, I feel just like that ant on my bathroom wall. I try to get home but the world is so big and dangerous that I don’t even know where home is. Yet I keep trying and trying, no matter how many times I trip over the grout and fall to the floor, because I’m convinced that eventually I will reach a place that will really be my home – not my mother’s and not my stepfather’s, and not my best friend’s. My visit to – and return from – Bishkek taught me, among other things, that I will never feel truly at home –  ­either in the U.S. or in Kyrgyzstan. I  ­realize I must let go of both the places I have called home. Caught between two cultures and belonging to neither, I have to focus not on what country I’m from or what language I speak, but on who I am. And though not belonging isn’t  ­exactly the best teenage condition, I am beginning to understand it is actually to my advantage to be an outsider. In my cosmopolitan epiphany, I may have lost a national flag or two, but I gained something truly worthwhile – an irreplaceable freedom of the soul that can never be taken from me. That’s not to say, however, that I’ve  ­given up scaling that pink-tiled wall. But that little crack between the window and the wall isn’t a country or a house anymore; it’s me.

Gilgimesh essays

Gilgimesh essays Mesopotamias Religious Activities With Mesopotamian civilization dating back as far as 3500 B. C. E. the typical resident exhibited many qualities. However, their main qualities were based on religion. The book, The Epic of Gilgimesh describes how religion played a very important role in the Mesopotamian society. They thought that humans were put onto this earth in order to serve God. Religion was the relevance of their apparent Mesopotamian religion in The Epic of Gilgimesh when it described the great flood. Religion was an important part of their everyday life. The Mesopotamians were Polytheistic, which means they had many gods. Their gods were thought to have control over nature and the environment around them. People saw the gods as having human characteristics. The Epic of Gilgamesh relates to the polytheistic belief because there are many human like gods that are described in the story. Since the presence of their gods were so closely felt people would build temples for them. "Priest became full-time specialists, running the temples and performing the astronomical calculations of the dates for normal flooding, which were needed to manage the irrigation systems." (Stearns, 33) Citizens of Mesopotamia would also visit those temples and leave food and gifts. They believed that the food and gifts would please the gods and grant themselves good fortune. This shows what a major part religion played in Mesopotamian life. We know from many ancient Mesopotamian sources, in Sumerian and in Akkadian, that the Babylonians believed the purpose of the human race to be the service of the gods. (Gilgamesh xxxvii) Before humans ever existed Gods use to have to plant and field their own food and perform all the labor. The Gods would dig rivers and waterways in order to irrigate the fields. Even the rivers Tigris and Euphrates were their work. (Gilgamesh xxxvii) The Gods grew tired of always ...