1st Proposal

   I see my mom, and I think how much I love her. I expect her to be the perfect mom, yet I know that our lives have not been easy. She grew up in a country where the only language was Spanish. I grew up in a world much different from my mothers. English has now come to be my first language.
   I am ashamed that  I let my culture vanish in the midst of a world of struggle. My senior project will consist of me getting back to my roots. I have separated myself from my family. More than that I have separated myself from my mother, the person who has risked her life to protect me. I want to rekindle the friendship and love I once had for my mother.
   One of the things that has kept our family sane, is my mothers cooking. She knows millions of recipes from scratch and can cook almost any Mexican and Central American plate. I have asked her and she agreed that we would make a cook book website together.
   This will not only give us the means to rekindle our relationship, but also a way to help me get closer to my culture. For years I had wished to learn to cook all my moms recipes. Yet, all my life I have consumed myself with work. With things I had to do, and so I never truly learned about my own Honduran culture.
   Through my project I want to show kids that even though we may be in a different country, where the first language is different from our own, we have to keep to our roots. We have to learn that even though we are in a place where we are the foreigners we have to adapt, while at the same time keeping our own identity.
   I am not ashamed of my culture or my heritage. In fact I love who I am. I like that I’m part Colombian and part Honduran, and at the same time I am American. I want to express to others that we have to take pride in who we are. We cannot allow our environment to change who we are.
   We live in a world where we are expected to read, write, and speak a different language. However, people everywhere are adapting much quicker to this new world. It is without a doubt a necessity to adapt, but it is not a necessity to sacrifice our culture, our lives to be a part of this American Dream.
   My cultural cook book project will start in the first weekend of November. We will be cooking several different plates, not only consisting of Honduran plates, but also American, Mexican, and other Central American plates. I will be taking pictures of the ingredients, and the final products. I have started my website, you can visit it at http://www.wix.com/ebelalcazar/rekindle. It is in the process of getting edited, but it will be amazing by the end of this year.
   My project is meant to help others find peace with not only others, but also with themselves. I feel as if I will not be able to live my life in peace until I rekindle my relationship with my family, and my culture. I want to show others that finding peace is possible, and it all can start with a project.