I am blessed to be able to call him my brother

           My family moved to Texas and ten years later I saw my brother  Erik again. It was May of 2009 that I got to see him, and I didn’t just see him he also brought his girl friend and his one year old daughter. They mean so much to me he has been someone very important in my life that has thought me about real love towards family. He also proved to me that faith is the last thing you lose, after everything he went through. I didn’t go through his life but I feel like I have went through the experience with him, he is one of the most important persons in my life that I can always trust and count on. He has always done what he thinks is best for the family; Even for me and my little brothers. He changed his way of living when he went to live with us. He told me he stopped doing a lot of things to make sure my little brothers and I would be safe. We lived in a bad place in California it was in the ghetto so of course he would have to fight with others. He would also use drugs and do other stuff he shouldn’t have but he changed for us. I will never be able to stop saying how proud I am of him. He showed me everything: Love, hope, humility, faith, and critical thinking. I am just so proud to have him as a brother and to be able to tell the whole world how proud I always am and will be of him. Since when I was little I have always looked up to him. He has always been my hero. He has not always been close to me because he had to stay in California to help his other sister and brothers but he has always been with me in my heart. He has a two year old daughter named Emalei it will probably sound weird and crazy but I feel like if she were mine too. I just would not be able to live without her, I love her so much and would give anythin for her to be happy. She is my first neice and in November when I go back to California I will meet my nephew. My sister in law will have their baby November 16th and I will get to California on the 20th. I can't wait to meet my new nephew. My family means everything to me!

My older brothers life

I have two younger brothers and two older half-brothers. My two older brothers are not from the same mom. They both had totally different lives. I love them both but I feel a special attachment to one of them. My brother Erik did not have a very good life. They both lived with their moms but Erik’s mom was always gone she used drugs and never took care of them. My brother was always locked up in a room with his other brothers and his one other sister. Their meals where bags of chips and sodas, that is the great meal their mom would give them before she would lock them in the room and get high. Once he got a little older he started going out and being in the streets of California all day. One day my brother went home like any other day but he got home to the surprise of an empty house. He started asking neighbors what had happened. His answer was his mom had been checked up by child services and she got the custody of her children taken away. His sister and his brothers had been taken to a foster home. Erik was also being looked for by the child services to be taken to a foster home too. He decided to hide from them, he did not want to end up in a foster home. He was only twelve and he was in the streets all alone. He decided to go with a friend and stayed with him for a couple of months. Once November came by and he saw family coming over for thanksgiving dinner he decided he didn’t belong in that house. He called his mom and said he was going to turn himself in to the foster home. After he was in foster home for a while we got a call asking if we wanted to take him with us. My dad obviously said yes, but it was not that easy. My dad had to be visiting him and prove that he would take care of him. The foster home was six hours from our house. My dad still went and after two years they let Erik come live with us. After two years of him living with us my dad decided to move to Texas but my brother wanted to stay to take care of his other brothers. He was only fifteen and decided to fight for his family

people with schizophrenia enter criminal career

There was a Danish study that showed us that twenty-seven percent of those that are later diagnosed with schizophrenia enter the criminal career before the first contact to the psychiatric hospital system. If they are not diagnosed on time they might be almost impossible to be stopped in time before they start committing crimes. The research consists of figuring out whether the first contact to the psychiatric hospital system helped them figure out if the patients had been involved in crimes before they had become schizophrenia patients. Within the project they did research on individuals with a first-episode psychosis. This was done for two years on the same individuals from sixteen different psychiatric hospitals. The information collected was done on basic socio-demographic variables like; employment status, marital status, education and living conditions. They recorded different symptoms, these included delusions, persecutory delusions, jealousy, hallucination, being controlled, or influenced, and other kind of symptoms the patients would show. Some measurements were used like the Premorbid Adjustment Scale (PAS). This would measure the social competence and the extent to which the individual is capable to meet their appropriate expectations before illness on set according to their age and sex. The ratings were based on the interview with the patient, the records from the hospital, and interviews with their family members. In this research their results were that the people without abusive backgrounds and with better occupational status (jobs) and with higher education were the ones that are less likely to have criminal records. It was the same for women and men. What they ended up with is that even if someone is having problems with schizophrenia they will not always go into criminal careers. If they are well educated and have support from their family they can be helped and cured. Also if they are not treated about thirty percent of the people do commit some crimes.

different point of view: cant always depend on the gov't

            Another great argument is that the government is not responsible for every little thing that goes wrong with us. The government can’t expect to know when something is going to happen to you and be prepared to give you everything you need. The government does try and help everyone out but it is also impossible to get to every single person out there. It is too many of us to know exactly what person is in the biggest need of help at the moment. If the government gives us everything we need it won’t really help us later on. If they help us with everything people will become too dependent on the state and government. One cannot blame government for all of society’s problems that occur; one is also somewhat responsible of what happens with our lives. If we don’t make the right choice then things will start going bad and everyone can go poor out of nowhere. From one day to the next you could of lost everything and be out in the streets. The government does help and does not want to see anyone especially not families living on the streets. The government does help with food stamps to make sure people have food for themselves and their family. They provide medicade to provide good health; they even give us FAFSA to help us pay for college so that everyone can have an equal chance to have a good education. By providing us with an education they want to make sure we have a good future. By us having a good future it will also help the government because someone with a good future will mean they won’t need as much help from the government later on. Everyone will win with having an education; there will be more money left to help other people that are poor. “You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they can do for themselves.” This quote is also by Abraham Lincoln. It helps us understand everyone poor and not poor, everyone has to do everything they can to get higher in life and to survive. No one can be expecting to have everything done for them in life. No one will be holding your hand through your entire life and get your through everything safely. You have to get everything done on your own for you and your family until they are also old enough and capable of going through their own life’s alone. A lot of people believe that only the government can solve the problems of poverty. That is not true! There are other ways to get through life not just expecting someone to get you through your problem at all times.

government should help the poor

Should government help the poor or should we let private charity (civil society) help the poor? Everyone will have a different opinion on this. Some will think the government is responsible for everything and need to fix it. Others think society should help more and give some back of what they receive.

Why should regular civil society have to give more money to help the poor? Everyone already has to pay taxes on every little thing possible. The government tries to take as much money from us as possible. We even get phone calls asking for donations for police and other random donations that they expect us to give. People work very hard to get what they have and can’t afford to receive little phone calls asking for money or see someone on the street and be expected to give them money. Even if it’s just a dollar for every poor person, it would still be impossible for us to give them money or we would end up as one of the poor ones too. If the person was born in the U.S they are American Citizens and should be able to get as much help as possible from the government if they actually need it. The government is not expected to help them get everything in life and forever but we do expect to have a roof over us and a plate of food for our families. No one can be denied the basics in life. Everyone needs somewhere to live, something to eat, something to dress in, somewhere to go when they get sick (good doctors), and somewhere to get an education. If the government wants the U.S to continue strong they need to help everyone not just a certain number of persons. Everyone needs to be equal. As we see in the article by Michael Tanner the government wants to put a five year limit to the people receiving help from welfare. But nothing guarantees that the person and their family will be more stable in five years. Five years may seem long but for some families it is not long enough to have earned money to have their own home. The government needs to make sure everyone has good health and a stable home and job in order to limit the help they will be receiving from the government.

Puerto Vallarta

Puerto Vallarta, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been at. I went to the beach in Mexico it's about six hours from my town called Valle De Guadalupe. I went to this beach two times. The first time I went to Puerto Vallarta was with some friends. We had so much fun and the hotel was really nice, the rooms were great with a huge window that lead to the beach. From my room I would wake up with the sun shining through the windows. I would get up and look out the window and see all the beautiful palm trees a huge pool outside and of course the beach with the sun over it. Everything was great their, even the food. They had a fancy restaurant with all of this great food, everything tasted so good and the best thing that it was outside near the beach. We would be having breakfast looking at the beach and hearing all kind of noises that were so peacful. Just hearing the water and the little birds was so peaceful. We loved that beach and the hotel so much that the following year we decided to go again. Well the second time I went with all of my family. It was my grandparents 50th anniversary so we had a huge party at El Valle then the entire family went to the beach. All of my dads brothers and sisters and their children. It was the best vacation ever. It was seventeen grandchildren, my dads three sisters with their husbands and my dads two brothers and their wives and of course the most important ones my grandparents. It was about thirty-three of my family members at the same beach, same hotel. It couldnt have been better. When we tried taking the picture of the whole family we had a lot of trouble trying to get all thirty-three of us at the same place and same time. Some would be in the room relaxing, some in the ocean, in the swimming pool, at the restaurant, the store, so many places that we had to be looking to find all of the famil. Finally after we finally managed to get the whole family together then we had to all stay still and manage to fit all in one spot to take the picture. It was just so many great experiences with the family, that I will never forget.

Valle De Guadalupe Jalisco, Mexico

I was born in California I had a lot of my family in California. My dads brothers and a sister and my moms brothers. I was happy in california playing with my little cousins and with my two older half brothers. When I turned six all of that changed. My dad came to Texas because of his work. My dad is a truck driver and he use to move wine to different stores. His company decided to send him to Texas to bring wine to HEB about ten years ago. While my dad was here he decided to visit his aunt, one of his mom's sisters. He decided to visit them and went to their house and their happened to be a small house for sale in front of his aunts house. My dad called my mom and told her to start packing because we were moving to Texas. I was only six years old so I don't remember too much and I was to young to say I didn't want to move to Texas. We ended up buying that house in front of my aunts house and lived there three years then we moved to a bigger house and lived there for four years. Now we live in Cibolo out of the city. It's more calm no neighbors to bother you, you can do what ever you want and not bother anyone. I never knew why we moved to Texas all of a sudden, I was young but I still knew I had cousins at California and two older brothers that I miss so much. Now my dad tells us we moved here so that we can go visit our family in Mexico more often. When we lived in California it was a really long drive to our town called Valle De Guadalupe it's in Mexico and it took us about twentyfour hours to get their by car. Now that we live here in Texas it's still a long drive but not as much as it was from California. Now we can wake up at five in the morning and be at El Valle De Guadalupe by six in the afternoon. Now we only take about fourteen hours to get their instead of twentyfour. I have always traveled to Mexico to our little town almost every vacation that we would get at school. I have been going to El Valle since I can remember. I love California because my older brothers are their but im not sure why I just love being at Mexico. It's so different over there, there is so much more freedom, different customs and beliefs from the ones from the United States. I was born in California but everytime someone asks me where im from I tend to say Jalisco, Mexico then they think im illegal and ask me how long I have been here. I am an American Citizen born in California but im not sure why without thinking about it I always say im from Jalisco, Mexico. I just love going to Mexico so much, even the air feels different too me. If I could I would probably be over their right now but I can't do that to my parents. They want me to finish my career first and thats what I intend to do. After my career then im not sure where I will end up at.