The cultural event that I decided to attend was a church event called an “Overnighter” at All Nations Church. One of our interns organized this event specifically for high school seniors. Every Friday there is something called Friday Night Life (FNL) where high schoolers go to church from 7-9:30pm and participate in activities organized by the different interns. The seniors who were going to the overnighter were to participate normally in FNL, and just stay after for the overnighter. It was a time for seniors who regularly attended different Sunday services, to get to know each other as a community, through different activities and fellowship. While playing games, we slept over at the church and bonded with each other until Saturday afternoon. I usually never attend church events, not only because I didn’t have the time/leisure to, but because I had no friends since I never spent time at church other than the Sunday services. Since the event took place after a week where teachers loaded me with homework and exams, I figured it was a good excuse to step out of my crazy school schedule and my isolation to meet and bond with people in a different community I was involved in. My church has a goal for us high schoolers: the 3, 3, 3 goal. It’s a goal in which they want us to have at least three mentors, three peers, and three mentees (whether that be at the church or in a different community) we can openly share our lives with. Just as we have learned in high school english, having different kinds of relationships are important in life. It is what helps defines us and helps determine our identity. As someone who definitely doesn’t open up easily, I was reluctant to create relationships where I was required to open up to, but thinking about the theme we’ve learned until now at school, and thinking about how the church was correct about how good relationships are needed to live a content and healthy social (and religious) life, I decided otherwise. Going to this event, I asked myself, “Will the stress in my personal life be alleviated if I create new, loving, and caring relationships? Will I be able to become comfortable with them someday, enough to break my shell?” Like different ethnic cultures, different religious cultures think and value different things to different degrees. In my case, being a Presbyterian Christian, our respectful but intimate relationship with God our Savior is something we treasure. And in the case of my church in particular, they want us to use our treasured relationships in society to bring ourselves to become more close and open with God as well. I learned that culture, whether it be religious, ethnical, or racial, is not something that remains isolated from people’s outside lives. The different community that the culture brings someone to participate in, is not independent, but rather dependent on what type of ideals/ values the person has already been influenced by. Culture is something that’s capable of bringing different people from different backgrounds (much like how other seniors who went to the overnighter were from all over the place: Granada Hills, Golden Valley, Stevenson Ranch, Orange County, Burbank, Altadena, etc), and uniting them under another category of values that they share. I think that is the beauty of culture. The overnighter was what I had expected. We played light-weight, funny, ice breaker games, transitioned into more deep and serious conversations, and then had free time to either sleep or stay up to bond and create deeper relationships through similarities and differences. However, although I knew that was all going to happen, what I got in return was beyond my expectations. Not only did I create new Christian peer relationships, but just as the church had wanted, going to church every week became a lot more inviting and less schedule-like. Although I wouldn’t be able to say “Going to this changed my life,” I can say that it definitely changed the way I viewed our church’s “motto.” 3, 3, 3 was an idea I thought to be unrealistic and useless, but after having met peers that I really might be able to get close and intimate with, it allowed me to understand the value of that motto. Going to the overnighter didn’t feel good just because I didn’t have to be a loner on Sundays anymore, but because going there created a warmer and more comfortable environment in which I can go and maybe even openly show myself to. Although it was a simple night of fellowship with strangers, it proved to me once again that the relationships people make might seem trivial, but in the long run, it is them that creates us. Just as I am learning in class that the different kinds of relationships among the main characters in Kite Runner determine what type of fate and identity the character has, and just as many books I read (like Invisible Man) emphasized the importance of interacting and being a part of society, going to this cultural event re-emphasized that theme. When my english teacher asked us in class, “Would you rather be in chains with friends or in a garden with strangers?” I had initially said I would rather be in chains with friends, because no matter what bad relationship you might be in with them, at least you were with people that truly cared for you. But after going to this event, and thinking about that question once more, I wouldn’t mind being in a garden full of strangers. When you’re in chains with friends, you know your relationship with them, and that’s the end of the story, but when you’re in a garden full of strangers, while knowing in your mind and heart that you have friends who care for you elsewhere, you can shape new fates with new people and create new stories to adventure through.