I went to one presentation and a poster. First one was Sydney Irias’s. She talked about how economic, age and educational factors affect one’s adoption culture. She found that having higher educational degrees and income leads to a positive impact in adopting in Honduras. As a person who lived in Honduras for three years, I figured she would talk about religious factor in Honduras. In fact, she did. Honduras, also countries in Latin America, is known for their Catholicity. Looking at the virtues of Catholics, the adoption rate for Catholics was higher than the non-Catholics, since more access was granted for Catholics.

Also I went to Nancy Grazon’s presentation. In her presentation, the main topic was immigrants. She mentioned how the children who have immigrated have hope and desire for their better future, mostly told by their parents. I found it very interesting since it resonated with my Spanish class. In my Spanish class, we watched a movie called “Almost a Woman”. It talked about a child called Esmeralda, an immigrant from Puerto Rico. She had high hopes for her future due to her mother. Her mother had high hopes for the future for Esmeralda since she had more opportunities. It surely had negative impacts on her, putting too much pressure and stress, but positive impacts led her to a success, being able to graduate from a public arts school. The student mentioned negative impacts and positive impacts of the parents’ influence and they were reasonable.

IS symposium was great, providing people with new and interesting ideas.