Living in a small town with few cultural differences, people after years living around each other having adapted to each other’s culture-made it difficult for me to choose a place. After, asking the professor for an advice about where to complete my ethnographic report, as suggested to visit a church, I decided to visit the Sikh temple located in Delano on Sunday, January 7th.
I drove by the temple, but no one was around, but a sign with the local number. Having called so many times-no response, I decided to visit the near by gas stations to directly talk to a Hindi. After, failure to recruiting one, I decided to visit this last gas station, in which I was happy to see a Hindi. There in the gas station he informed me about the Sikh services on Sundays (only) and the time 11:00am-1:00pm. As excited as I was, he encouraged me to invite as many friends as I wanted, so I decided to invite my sister and friend. However, he did not inform me about a specific way to dress, and I forgot to ask, but I figured we would go on a skirt, long shirt, and a scarf. We made arrangements a night before to be there 30 minutes before their actual service start time.
On Sunday morning, my sister and I were nervous and excited …show more content…
I noticed that they had live music; one man was singing and the other two playing an instrument. There was a man on the very front where money was deposited, who had a stick with feathers on it, swinging it to the right and to the left. As we sat on the women’s side we noticed everyone quietly hearing the music. The level of the music was perfect it wasn’t loud. The temple sides started to slowly full of men and women. Kids were hardly around. The few kids around were constantly distracted and not facing forward as the rest of the grown ups. I noticed that before dismissing themselves from the temple they have to bowed to the ground and walk