First Entry: What factors of your native culture have informed your religious world view? Explain the impact of these factors

I was born in Los Angeles, California and lived in Houston for 15-16 years. I am not Christian. Growing up in America for my whole life, I probably am more influenced by American culture than Korean. But even though I grew up in America I still consider myself more Korean than American. I think the first language I learned was Korean(I don't remember) when I was really young but I forgot most of it when I started going to elementary school and started to learn english. Religion wasn't really a big factor because there were many different cultures with different religions. Everyone got along. Also, we were too young to really know that much about religions and cultures. The first time I heard about christianity was when someone asked me if I was Christian. I said "No, I don't think so," and they said "well, then you're going to hell." After that I was a little scared of christianity even though I didn't know what hell was at the time. In American schools, teachers aren't allowed to teach much about religion or creationism so through middle school I still knew nothing about Christianity. I rarely spoke korean in America. My parents speak korean to me and I speak english back to them, so I can understand pretty well but my accent and speaking is not so good. Even going into high school, there were only about 10 korean kids in a school of more then 3,000. Most of them were americanized like me and didn't speak much Korean so we spoke in english to each other also. After learning that I had to move to Daejon for my junior and senior year, I was a little nervous and worried because I knew so little about my native culture. I've visited Korea many times but I couldn't imagine what it would be like to live here. I couldn't speak the language very well and I knew it'd be alot different from Houston. It would also be hard to make new friends because I'm pretty introverted. I wasn't Christian either so I thought it'd be interesting to learn about it since I knew nothing about Christinity it all. TCIS is alot different from my old school. It's alot smaller, more laid back, everyone's nicer, everyone seems more involved. Learning about God in bible class is pretty interesting. I've also never been to chapel before, I actually didn't even know what it was until after I came here. It's a new experience and listening to other people's stories about God, I wonder if I will start to believe too, but I still have doubts. Maybe.