Moving to Miami: Adapting to a New Worldview - Essay Sample

Introduction

Moving to a new country is an issue that is likely to affect an individual for they may be forced to change their way of living, encounter new cultural beliefs that they might be required to follow. Additionally, people moving to another state that may find that the values that they hold are being questioned under the perception that they are not good enough in the current environment. Moving from Colombia to Miami may trigger the need to have a different worldview, and the possibility of an individual encountering crisis.

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One of the difficult issue that a person moving to Miami is likely to encounter is the change in cultural practices, beliefs, and values and this call lead to the loss of identity. A migrant is compelled to interact with a new group of people that are talking differently, and their behavior and attitudes towards various concepts in life may be different. Therefore, there is a possibility of losing identity and feeling lost as outsiders. When growing up in Colombia, there are values that I managed to learn over the years, and moving to Miami as an adult, I found myself in crisis as I cannot practice them. The new values were threatening my old values and making them irrelevant in the new environment. For example, in Colombia, I was used to greetings people using the word "Buenas" while I found it challenging to start using the words "hey" when addressing people. A cop light in Colombia is an indication that someone with a siren or a cop is passing while in Miami, it means that someone is getting pulled over. These are issues that I found hard to understand and accept

In Colombia, the dominant spoken and written language is Spanish, while in Miami, people mainly rely on English to exchange information and ideas. Getting to learn a new language as an adult was a difficult issue that I had to endure to ensure that I had an easier time living in Miami. Another notable change that a migrant to Miami will experience is food changes. The food types and brands that I was using in Colombia are a bit different from what is available in Miami, and this means that I will need to adjust what I eat and the products that I use for the various activities in life. It is a problematic issue to change, considering that even the body will respond differently. Adopting the latest food and brand types represent new values that I found difficult to accept.

Another area that I found the old values conflicting with the new values is in the case of education systems. In Colombia, education starts at the age of 5 years that is followed by basic and mid-secondary levels, but the system is different in Miami that follows the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Therefore, enrolling for an additional learning process was challenging, for I was notified that I had to adjust the system I had used in Colombia, take extra units, and drop others. Therefore, some of the units I had learned in my home country were deemed irrelevant, which was a difficult issue to accept. Most of the issues that I encountered when I migrated to the United States challenged the old values that I had learned all my life and threatened their existence. Changing culture meant that I had to abandon my old way of doing things.