Blog Week 1

POST 1

1. My name is Alison Nguyen, but I go by Ali. I use she/her/hers pronouns. I grew up in Bellevue, Washington my whole life. For high school, I went to Holy Names Academy, also located in Capitol Hill. I love Seattle!
2. One of my favorite things to do is make new music playlists. I love listening to new music. Many of my friendships were made by our connection through sharing music. I feel music is a beautiful way that brings people together.
3. In high school I took a world cultures class, and in it we briefly discussed Islamic culture. I hope that from this course I become more culturally aware and understanding of how the media portrayal of the Middle East affects my own views of the culture and people.
4. In the past I used to say that reading and writing have not been my strong suit, however in the past few years I could say that I have definitely worked very hard in trying to improve both my reading and writing skills. Always trying to improve!
5. English is my first language.
6. I have not request as of right now. I am intrigued to what this course has to offer!

POST 2

I learned that T Lawrence of Arabia was a British man who fought for the Arab guerrillas during World War one. Because of his family situation at a young age, a lot of his life was hidden, until his family moved to Oxford for reason that his parents thought it would give their children better opportunity for success. In his early years of college, he had an interest in military history and the architecture of the Middle Ages. He embarked on a journey where he found major interest in travel and the culture of the Middle East. However, before the war he became familiar with the studies of archeology and photography. On his walking tour of Syria, everyone welcomed him and offered him places to stay for dinner and rest. He impressed the people of Arabia in that he did not have the frailness of most Europeans, but he was able to work in scorching heat for longs hours. I think it is interesting how strongly he identified with the people in Arabia, so much so that he adopted their dress. I wonder if anyone during the time question whether or not this was culture appropriation or not? I could tell he is an important historical figure, as he lead many victories for Britain and Arabia during the war. I am impressed by his hard work for creating a name for himself considering his family had to start a new life. From the book, it seems as though he is a smart and charming character. I understand that he traveled East and became fascinated my the region and culture, however I am still a bit confused on how he was able to gain so much popularity and praise by the Arab people. I have much to learn about both Lawrence and the Islamic world.

“T.E. Lawrence.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 28 June 2019, https://www.biography.com/military-figure/te-lawrence.

POST 3

You know that one dream you’ve had plummeting off a cliff; waking in a pant and a slight break of sweat? Yeah, we’ve all had it. Since I was a kid, I had always been curious of how and why we have dreams, so I decided to do some investigations on the science behind and the significance of dreams.

So what is a dream? According to WebMD, dreams are a series of images and stories that are collected by our subconscious during the phase sleep known as REM. REM, standing for rapid eye movement, or in other words is the state of sleep where your body is in deep slumber. I was once told that we have dreams every night, it is just a matter of whether or not we remember it. For the most part, most dreams are difficult to remember, this is the body’s mechanism to keep our actually memories and our formulated memories (dreams) separate from each other.

I think it is interesting how dreams, are a collection of our memories of stories and senses gathered from our lived experiences, and that our body keeps us from remembering all of our dreams to help us decipher from our dreams and reality. There have been many times I would have a problem that would occupy my subconscious, and creep into my sleep. My dreams would then give scenarios to the consequences of my actions either relieving me of my stress or leave me in more confusion. It is said that “dreams are a window to out subconscious”, and has the possibility to reveal our desires, motivations, thoughts, and fears; some of these things being things that could have lots of power over us. It almost seems as if our subconscious self is preventing us from discovering these deeper things about ourselves, so that our conscious self can discover these things in real life, not in a dream.

DerSarkissian, Carol. “Dreams: Why We Dream, Nightmares, and Lucid Dreams.” WebMD, WebMD, 5 Nov. 2019, https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/dreaming-overview#1.