Immigration Project Reflection

Literature Circle books/Blogs

During this part of the project I was able to choose my own Lit Circle book to read. The book that I chose was called "What is the What" by Dav Eggers. This book was based on a true story told by a person that actually went through the immigration process. While reading this book I was able to learn more and more about immigrating and different things that go on in other places. I thought that my choice for the book was a good choice because I learned a lot about there home and about immigration and how everything is not the same. My main focus was to actually learn about immigration because that was what it was all about. In this book I thought that it had very good explanation in it, meaning that if there was something I might not get it would have described it later so I could get it. Something different about this book or significant was all the different things that I got to learn about going on in South America. It described a lot about the different wars or how different people were treated and what the write himself had to go through or see.
During this process I also was required to write on my blog about the book. I did not find it really hard to write about it because it described a lot that I could talk about in my responses. This book had a lot of different things that I could relate the questions to that were required for the response. I find that blogging it was better than the actual meeting during class I thought it worked better because we can read the blogs over and over so we actually understand it and then we can respond on what we think about it. I found it easier than the way during class because we can have an amount of when to respond and time to read it over and really understand it. I think that my group could have done better in this because sometimes we did not have our blog posts up so it was difficult to respond without something to actually respond to. I thought that overall this was a lot better than the class lit circles because I found it more organizing in our own way.

Art and Literature

In this part of the project I thought that I did not have a hard time figuring it out of what I was going to do. For this part of the project I wanted mine to show the most striking scene to me that was in my book. For this part of the project I decided to do a scene where it was something that the writer had seen himself. I wanted to show in my painting one of the things that he had to go through and that I was also able to learn about myself from his story. I thought that my painting had started out very plain with nothing much to show people about my book and that was what I really wanted to show, was what was happening in my story. Or what I had a chance to read about and learn about.
I though that my picture shows a little piece of the book to my audience. In a way it tells them a little part of the book that I got to read about and something that I got to read about that the writer witnessed and could tell many stories about that. There is a connection between my book and my painting because it shows a scene from it and I think it will make my audience wonder about other things that he maybe had to go through besides just this. Because this was not just the only thing that was happening during my book.
Overall on this part of my project I thought that it came out good on showing what was going on in my painting, and it makes people think about it and wonder. I thought that I had made a big enhancement from my first few drafts to this. Because now it actually shows things that make the audience want to read about it. I think that in my painting I could have maybe put in a little more detail on mine showing a little bit more of what was going on in my painting. I think that this experience helped me understand and go more deeper into that specific scene and really read over it to make it my own and how I could paint a scene from the book.

Interview process with participant and gift

The process with the interviewee went very well for me. I thought that the interview went well because we were able to flow with asking questions and getting answers. I felt that I got a lot of information just from the first interview I did with her. I found all the information that I had gotten out and learned helped me lean into getting new questions for more interviews to come. I found that my first interview was my favorite because I got a lot of information for just the first one. I was so happy to know that there was a lot to be able to learn about her expierence that she went through. I thought that one of the parts I most remember the most from one of the interviews was when I had asked her if there was anything she really had to leave behind. Her answer was some of my family, I thought it was very sad to know that she had to leave her family back home. When I read that specific part it made me think what it would have been like for me to leave my own family and basically not see them for a while. I was trying to think of how she really felt about that, when she had to.
The gift that she had wanted me to make was a calendar, the calendar I did was a mix of her culture with our culture. Such as for my gift I put the months and days in German and put German holidays in as well. For the background I was able to input different types of holdays along with the month's. I also included pictures with each month, what I wanted to do was also put some of her culture and ours mixed together. So what I decided to do was put in some pictures from Germany and some from U.S. I wanted it to make sure that it was not only one subject included in the calendar. Basically I did not want it to be boring, I wanted it to show that I thank her for all that she let me learn about her expierence.
Overall I felt that I put all my effort into this project and I tried my best to put all my hard working into this, because I know I really won't ever get to do this again. So I feel I learned a lot about her home place and what an actual immigrant had to go through and what she left behind and and what she likes better here than there. There were a bunch of different things I learned about her and I thought it was a great expierence for me