Project Reflection

Immigration Project Reflection
By: Haileigh Smith
Literature Circles: In the Immigration project I have learned many different things. In the project we read books about immigration. The book I read was called Ashes of Roses. The book Ashes of Roses is about a girl and her family who immigrate. The book talks about their experiences, and what it was like going through the immigration process, and how they came through Ellis Island to America.

I really liked the book Ashes of Roses, because of all the different conflicts that went on. I have learned a lot from this book. I have learned what it was like for some people to immigrate during the 1900’s, and what the immigration process was like. I also learned about Ellis island, because in the book that is how the family entered America.
While I read the book Ashes of Roses, I have found many significances between me and the book. I learned that an immigrant was willing to give up everything they had, and hope to have a better life.

In the LC meetings I think that maybe we could have got together with our group to share our thoughts, and have a chance to agree and disagree on things in our book.I think that if we were to do that then we would understand more of the book. I say that we should do that, because sometimes when you read a book it can be confusing in some parts, but when you have other people that read the book they can help you understand what is going on
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In this part of the project we blogged about the book. I liked blogging, because it is a lot easier, and I think that is makes it easier to say everything you are feeling about your blog. I also thing that it is easier, because you can just write what your thinking without being interrupted by someone else speaking. I think blogging makes things a lot more organized.

While blogging I didn’t have any problems posting. Blogging was very easy for me, but I do know that others had problems posting. I thought that posting was a good way to express what we thought about the book to our other group members. It was interesting to see the different opinions my group members had towards the book. It was also interesting the way we all talked about the book in different ways.

Art/Literature: In this project we also created paintings with our book. We all made different paintings on either painting an interpretation of the book, a scene that struck you in the book, a cultural component, a famous painting redone of your book, the theme of the book, and a new book cover. I chose to make my painting an interpretation of the book Ashes of Roses. I chose to make an interpretation of my book, because I wanted to show people my understanding of the book, and see if people agree with me.

I think that creating my art piece was a little challenging to me, because I also wanted people to see what the book is kind of an out, and also have them thinking at the same time. I wanted people to see my art as a mystery. My thought was to get people thinking and questioning, what is the book about, and what could this mean?

I think that my painting is good, and it is the way I imagined it to be, and even better. I think that I have created as much as I could trying to make it look interesting. I wanted it not to look so boring, and easy to figure out. I really like that my painting has got to where it is. I am amazed with myself, and the effort I have put into the painting. In the painting I think that the background could have blended more, and the painting wasn’t so dark colored, but the things that I have done to my painting is what makes the painting more exciting.

From the experience of creating a painting to the novel we had read, I think is very creative. I learned a lot from this experience. I learned more about my book by going back and reading some parts, I also learned how to make a water effect.

Interviewing: The last part of this project was interviewing an immigrant. When interviewed my immigrant it was kind of hard. When I interviewed her she was very shy, and she had a strong accent so it was hard to understand. Throughout the interview she was a little more open, and not so shy.

When I heard that we had to interview someone, I didn’t know what to think. I have never interviewed anyone I didn’t know before, so I was afraid when I heard we had to interview someone. I was with the IRC, so I interviewed them only twice. It was interesting getting to interview someone, and it was interesting interviewing someone around the same age as me.

In the interviews I learned many things about my immigrants culture, and country. My immigrant is from Cambodia. I learned that they have many temples there, and that most of Cambodians are Buddhist. I also learned that they ear a lot of fish and rice. Another thing that I found interesting is that in there history they used to wear different colored clothing. Each different colored clothing was a symbolization of a day. Like red would symbolize the day of Mars.

I think that interviewing someone for another country helped us, and me understand the immigration process, because all of the things they had to go through to get to America. I also learned from the interviewing the differences of immigrating from then and now. It also showed me the many differences that America has compared to Cambodia, and other countries. I thought that many countries have everything America does, but ow I realize that from someone else's perspective, there is a big difference. I think now I have learned why so many people come to America.

At the end of interviewing our interviewee we made them a gift that meant something special. I made my interviewee a calender so that she could remember the different temples and places in her home country. I had put a lot of time in effort into my gift to show that I am very thankful that they could take time out of their day for me to interview them.