Gift from the Sea: Book

The book  narrated the meditations of Anne about her youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea. Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore. All that I want to say is "the book is inspiring". It makes you reflex about everything in life. Is those kind of books that are perfect for a rainy day and pass all day looking through the window thinking about you and your future. It's makes you feel less alone

My final project of my literature class consist in writing a paper about one book of your preference. I passed two days reading about different books of traveling before choosing one for the project. I found this book “A Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow. The fist thing I saw was the beautiful cover. I LOVEE the ocean as you can in my blog about me and when I saw those beautiful shells I fell in love withe the book. Then I started to read about the book and it touch my heart. I’m this kind of person that love to read about introspective thought of others, I can learn of them.

One of my favorites quotes is "One does not need a closet-full, only a small suitcase-full... less worry about what to wear" Actually we don't need to much to be happy and to be successful just the necessary, and sometime less is better. Those kind of quotes that makes you want to change your life for good. 

Blog Reflection

         This is the first time I have a blogger... actually is the first time I ever have a blog like this. I'm a very introspective person and the idea to have a blog for my refections, thoughts and my reactions wasn't a correct one. I do have a tumblr (I'll leave you the link here) but a blogger is a totally difference experience. How? well... my tumblr it's a blog but I never put in words my ideas of anything, I just click the reblog button and all is done. Having a blogger is more personal... I will like to say, because you NEED to write what you are thinking.

           This idea was changing  though the semester. My first blog (you can read it here) was very un personal, more informative, just sharing my ideas. After a few blogs I realize that I blog It's MORE about and less "what you should be". For example one of my favorite blogs was my final journal reflection (if you are interest about to know more click here) I definitely become in that blog what really I'm. Took me the whole semester to express myself with confidence in internet. 

          For a conclusion I would like to say that I definitely will keep updating this blog. I'll learn more how to use blogger and start to following more people of my interest. It's very hard to have a blog when you are studying but now on holidays I'll have a lot of more time to think about my experience. Sometime you need to express yourself and I never felt like Facebook media was the best of that so blogger will be my new public diary. 

Let It Go :)

 

Group Experience

        The semester it's almost over. Sometime you have a lot of classes with the same persons but for some reason you never talk to them. You see them on the shopping or even in the hall, but you never say something. I'm VERY happy to say that this semester I made 5 new friends thanks to this activity in the class of literature. We work together the whole semester and was a perfect experience. I have to say that in the beginning I was very afraid because I'm a very casual person and sometime the people don't like my personality.

         In the first work we were very formal and I remember that I have a lot of opinions about the work but I never told them because I was not sure if they want my opinion. Thanks to God the integrants of Six Degrees of Separation were so nice to me. This give me the opportunity to open myself for a new persons and I realized that I'm not that weird than I thought. I felt part of the group and never out side. Now we even help each other in other classes!
        This experience change my perspective about group work! All that I remember are those laugh! I don't now how but we were able to do every work on a very effective and funny way (can you believe that?). Thanks to  Six Degrees of Separation for made this semester a nice one with you friendship.
     

The Rum Diary

       The movie is about this journalist (Paul) take a job in the newspaper of PR. He's job on the newspaper was the horoscope! The time pass and he start to see the real "Puerto Rico". I want to stop here because I want to because something. This part remains me of a book that I wrote a few blogs in here (you can check out if you want) of Jamaica Kincaid's. She said in her book that tourist never see the real soul of the place, everything that you see on a vacation is like a cover. Paul was a tourist but then he start to see what is the real Puerto Rico. Obviously,  he can't wrote about that because that would be bad for the tourism.

        I saw this movie so long time ago on the cinema. I remember that I was very exited abut the movie for 2 reasons: 1) Johnny Depp 2) the setting is in Puerto Rico! I also remember when they were recording this movie on PR, I'm very glad to have those memories.
       When you are a tourist you are part of the glamour. For example, Do you believe that in France there is no poor people? France is not only the capital of fashion is also the home of a lot of people that fight every day for survive one more day. The poverty in France is the 15% of the total population. What I'm trying to say is that no one care about that, no one want to read those things, no one want to travel a place with problems, so they cover everything with a little bit of lipstick and mascara.

Down on the Island: 2

          On this part Jim was talking about cheating during exams. We can say that is a problem that we have in our society in PR. He said that in Puerto Rico we like to be "good friends" and we love to help "our good friends" in EVERYTHING including those things that we shouldn't help. Then he said that in USA is more a competition, everyone is trying to be better than you.  I don't think that is bad if you forgot one assignment because that could happened, we are all humans. Where is the problem that we have? The problem start when we do this because is part of us (laziness or you just don't care).
           I would explain this to you with a example. On my second year of university I had QUIM3001 on PSI and my friend gave to me her notes for the exam so I can study more of my other exam of BIOL 2. It's was perfect now I don't have to read the book I already have the review. After that I did it again, I didn't study for the exam, I did not read the book and she gave me her review. On the 3 time I was so sure that she will give me her review that i don't even take the time to look what was the test of the week, but SURPRISE! she didn't gave me the review!! I was so mad at her and I told her that she was a bad friend (totally the opposite). After that I told her thank you for beginning a good friend I was too lazy for study, she help me. The point of this is that maybe you think that helping your friend pass the test is good but the truth is that you are doing a mistake. In the future we need responsible adult not cheaters.

Not so good

        We read Down on the Island by Jim Cooper and he talk about is experiences about been a profesor in UPR of Mayaguez. In a very brief summery he said that english in PR have a big problem because of teachers. I would like to tell you my story and how I feel about this. I came from a public school and I have to say.... the english curriculum is BAD. All that I know is because my dad speak english (he live in USA and also he is a veteran of the NAVY) and second I live rock music, video game, books and movies and all of them are in english. Those are the reason I know a little bit more english than most of the rest of puertoricans.

             Why? well... that is easy, teachers in PR (not all of them) are not well prepared to be teaches. Jim give us a few examples like when he visits a school and saw that the teacher was teaching  "He’s taking his lunch” instead of “He’s eating his lunch”. Other experience I would love to share is that thing about the teacher teaching wrong the subject happened to me in grade 11. On that grade we are already old enough to now that something is wrong with the teacher and we were like "excuse me teacher but that is wrong" but what if that happens on 3th grade? Those kids will never know how to learn english in a correct way. We need to do nothing about this now! This is our future and we need to protect our children not only from violence but also from stuff like this. If we want a good Puerto Rico we need to start from the beginning and schools are the principal place of knowledge, we need to make it worth it.  

Tourist for a Day

       My experience was very funny. My friends and I went to Ponce on Saturday evening and we had a blast. First we start everything speaking in english  on a gas station and everyone was ignoring us. It's felt so weird because in Puerto Rico the land that saw me born was rejecting me. Immediately a random thought told me "Now you know how is to be New Yorkrican". That feeling.... that horrible feeling tat you don't belong to anyplace. Then we moved to "El Castillo Serralles". We were 6 and just 3 of us had visited that place! I felt SO BAD! We live here! How that happened? It's no only our generation, this is something that is happening in general,  we completely ignored our surroundings. We dream about traveling the our and we say that the only way to have fun is traveling to Disney; when the reality is that we have a lot in here. Puerto Rico is beautiful!
      After that we went to "La Guancha" for something to eat and we change the language to Spanish because just 3 of us speak english.  We change the language to Spanish but from Spain. My friends are very good in this so the people believe it. This is something they love to do (speaking like a person from Spain).
      Now it is time to eat and one of us said "Give me the best that you have!" and the people were so nice to us! It's incredible how one language can make those lines of in group and our group. We were so rude with the people in the "kiosco" because we have this steriotype about Spanish (they talk with a lot of bad words). We said "joder" like 3 time per sentence and for everyone was totally normal.
    BACK TO HOME! We live in Caguas so we have a long way to talk and reflect about what happened in the day. We conclude that people in Puerto Rico are afraid of speaking english or something like that.  When we were speaking in english we were invisible and then in La Guancha when we were speaking in spanish we were the center of attention. They even ask us stuff about Spain! Thanks to God, my friend do this all the time and they know stuff about Spain, they even have a place in Spain if the people ask them "So... where part of Spain are you from?" Everything was flawless. In my opinion been a tourist in  Puerto Rico is not the bad part, the bad part is the language.

Small Place: book

I'm reading this book "A Small Place" by Jamaica and I was shock. The way she express herself about the tourist. I never read something like this (is not a bad thing). I can feel her anger in the pages of the book. Is not hate is more like despicable. She wrote this book with a strong tone. She is blaming "you" for the bad thing that you don't understand how is the real Antigua. Your point of view of this place is not the real one and you will never know how hard is to live in here like me. You will never be under my black skin, because you are white and a tourist. Woah! strong feeling right. Is incredible how she can exprese this feeling so well. 

I did a research about Jamaica and now I can understand little bit more why she is so angry. She was so young when she had to leave the school and dedicate to the work because her family was so poor that need help from a child. Obviously she did not have the perfect childhood and I cant imagine how hard it was. However is nice to have this new point of view about her because I can understand more the book. If you read A Small Place you can tell that she suffer too much and that is the reason why she so angry, or maybe she saw her people suffer even more, or maybe she is just a good author. 

My dreams: reflexion

I love talk about my dreams. Since I was 15 years old I have this notebook that is only for my favorites dreams or my worst nightmares. I write my dreams in there because is the way I can remember them and I write my nightmares because for some reason if I do not write them it scares me even more. For your benefit I re-read my notebook so I can see a pattern more clearly. First when I was younger I use to dream about famous people like Christina Aguilera and Taylor Lautner, now my dreams are more "normal" with people that I know like friends and family but... here is an exception Jared Leto. He is always in my dreams (my favorites dreams) . The other thing I can see is that i ALWAYS, but i mean ALWAYS I become a vampire (cool huh?). My nightmares are another story. In my worst nightmares  there is always demons. 

Dreams are a mystery. I can remember one day I had a dream about dogs, big dogs that was chasing me but the dogs were more like demons. I woke up crying (I was like 6 years old) and I told to my mom the nightmare and she finish my sentence. She was dreaming with the same dogs. The thing is more creepy because my mom was in my dream and I was in hers and the way she told me the dream was exactly my dream. She told me that I was running and I felt and she pick me up because the dogs was too close and in my dream I remember that I felt and she pick me up because the dogs were too close. Any explication? No I never had one. I keep writing about  my dreams because for me is relaxing and I can see that part of me that I'm always ignoring. 

Small Place: Identity

The identity in Puerto Rico is a mistery for me. Born in a place makes you part of it forever? Well, that was I tought. The other day I met this old man, he was very tall and his skin was black. He told me that I'm not a good interpretacion of "una puertoriqueña". I asked him why? He told me that my skin is more white that a latina, my freakles and my green eyes don't help me that much.  He think that a puertorican that likes the rock (like me) is unacceptable. For most of the people the identity of Puerto rico is a big issue, because there is a direct link in between identity of a place and the goverment. For this man the things that i like are more "americans" and that makes me part of them, but the americans don't look at me like "us". So what is my identity? 

When I was reading "A Small Place" by Jamaica I feel the same way "out". In this book (that if you are interest to know a little bit more about   what I think about the book click here) Jamaica is very clear with the "you" and "me". I think that she was trying to draw lines of identity in between antiguans and the rest of the world. In A Small Place the identity of "you" is bad and tourist, the identity of "me" the poor and the slave. However, for me your identity could be different what you think what is your identity. For that man I'm not a puertorican for me I'm a puertorican. For me Antigua is a place for vacation for antiguans is home.

  

FINAL JOURNAL REFLECTION

        I had this work in my class about a journal. There are some rules : Keep your hand moving, do not cross out (not even thinking about it ) , do not worry about spelling or grammar , lose control, I do not think (do not logical) , go for the jugular. At first it was very difficult for because I had never done anything like this before ... you know, be as honest with yourself. It was weird at first, I 'm not going to lie. Write what is on your mind in a pice of paper? Not me! All my fears were " if someone reads what is in these pages ." Let's be honest our mind is a very dark place , it is very easy to go crazy if you read someone's mind . In this journal you are totally free and no one can judge you.

After a few days my fears about " if someone reads what 's on my mind ? If anyone see how cruel and dark I am? " disappeared and began to feel more relaxing. For now I 'm writing my " big issues " of the day , I found it very relaxing. Sometimes it is very difficult to walk through the world with all your feelings inside. If you are a person like me, you 'll love it. I can also say that I discovered a part of me that was ignoring all this time. I would love to explain what part of me was discovered , but you probably hate it. I'm just going to say there 's more darkness in me than I thought. I also realize that is more easily to think how to resolve a problem if you just write it. 

There is a second part in this project "the compass". What it is? Well, a compass but your north is you spiritual, south emotions, east ideas and west physical. You have to rate yourself how do you feel in those point in a scale of 1-3. It was more easy for me that the first part, but the real part of this is that you have to explain why you rate 1 or 2 or 3 in each point. That was my favorite part because sometimes you know how you feel but you don't know why. It's just me? I don't think so. This help me a lot with my internal journal. I really appreciate this opportunity. 

The stereotype and the truth about Puerto Rico

      There is a lot of things that people say about Puerto Rico. Are they say the truth? Or, They are wrong? We discuss alot of point of views about what people (not puerto ricans) think about us. The discussion was very interesting because I thought that every people in the world have a bad perspective about what is Puerto Rico and puerto ricans. Most of the comments was about how wonderful and friendly we are. As a puerto rican I believe that is true. I've been in a few states in USA and the people are very introspective. I love to smile at random people and when I was with my dad at Philadelphia they look at me like I was a crazy! Maybe is because I’m use to the act that most of the people smile at me back.
     Sadly a bad comment about us was that we are lazy and I think there is a little bit of truth. Is bad to say ALL the puerto ricans are lazy, but we can’t say anything about that because our reputation around the world is that we live “great” thanks to the money of USA. Lets be realistic we like to party a lot. Our favorite parties are after the hurricanes, we even celebrate 4 of July and the Independence of Mexico. I think if the people look at us and all that they see is the parties and celebrations they make this conclusion: a person that party too much can’t work a lot. The truth is that some of us like to party and some not.
    In conclusion people have this extreme point of view about us: We are lazy, we like to party, we are almost indians (some of the people think that PR is like 1920 and we still living like Tainos). It’s frustration what I feel when I read all this stuff, but lets be honest, we all have this idea (stereotype) about that one country.

Dead Poets Society (movie)

The movie of Dead Poets Society talk about a profesor that makes the difference in a institution were control and order was the only way of teaching. Mr. Keating was that professor that change the perspective of the students and makes them to fall in love with poetry. However, he was not a traditional professor and that was a problem to the school. Mr. Keating was totally different professor from other classes; he teaches poetry using sports and walking outside the classroom. His class was relaxed and that was the defense because the students were exited about it they did not feel obligated. For my experience literature classes (not this year) was mostly the same, they try to put everything for one perspective; everything is definitions and a lot of boring books that I read years ago. Mr. Keating was more that a teacher for those students, he was a role model. This class makes a partnership “the dead poets society” that makes this group of friends more close to each other, more than they real parents. This friendship was powerful and encourages each other to be part of something else. For example Neil encourages Todd to participate in the Dead Poets Socity.

This new experience makes the boys change in some many ways like Neil was following his dream and let it go all his fears about not be the perfect student that dreams to be a doctor; Todd was shy in the beginning of the movie and then he was the first rebel student that was standing in the table of the classroom. This kind of changes was very difficult to them because Welton was a school of boys that represent the best students ever. We can compare Chris’ school that was mix (boys and girls) and Welton: Chis school was normal and Welton was very strict in every aspect.

Mr. Keating was the captain (Oh Captain, my Captain) of the internal journey of this students. For example Todd a super shy student and Keating makes him improve a poem in front of the class, Keating help him to let out his talents and makes feel Todd like a very special student when he thought that he was nothing important. In the other hand the captain choose to be silent when Neil said that his father knows about the play because he is just a guide not his father. However his mother stay in silent when her son was suffering. When something like that happens to me in life I prefer to stay in silent sometimes you don’t understand the full complication of the situation, I can understand the point of view of Keating. Also I can relate to Keating reaction because he was his teacher and teachers have this line of personal problems that they can’t pass. Maybe I’m old fashion but if a professor is to close to you he can’t teach you that well because he will be supporting you in a lot of stuff, teacher should be a little strict, it’s the only way the student can respect the class.
           Nail suicide was an exaggeration because there was other options like at the age of 18 he can do whatever he wants and start his career as an actor. I try to understand why he did that but I can’t, but if I were in a depression like he was I probably can’t think that clear as I can think right now. Something that I did not like was that the school was searching for someone to blame about this tragedy. The only person that we can blame (apart of Nail, it was a suicide not a homicide) is Mr. Perry with “You’re going to Harvard, you are going to be a doctor”. Maybe this could work on Nail before Mr. Keating class, but it’s was too late, Nail at the end of the movie was a free thinker. He prefer to suicide than be something that he is not. Mr. Keating was nothing but a good mentor and he lost his job. After all the boys sign a document incriminating Mr. Keating. From my point of view I would not sing the document because they own all the freedom that they had to Mr. Keating. The professor teaches more than poetry he was teaching about life and honor. Part of have honor is to be loyal to all those things that they learned as a student in the class of Mr. Keating. Teach poetry or any kind of literature needs passion because art needs to be like that, full of freedom. We can learn to be free, it’s no easy but music, literature and poetry can help us in the journey.

My Story

Lets start from the beginning, I was born and raised in Caguas, P.R. I’m the first girl in the family and for a long time I was the only girl. My parents get divorced when I was 6 and when I was 16 my mom had a baby. I always wanted to be like my big brother Gustavo (he is from my dad’s first marriage) because he was always playing with my dad, they was

“the cool guys” for me, so I started to play video games at very young age, my taste in music was Queen, Bon Jovi, Black Sabbath and The Beatles and I never missed one game of the Lakers (NBA); apart form that I got a lot of cousins of my age and all of them are boys and of cause we can’t ignore that my dad was in the U.S NAVY… and you can imagine that he is very strict. Everything is fun when you are a kid but in high school for me was impossible to have girl friends; I was so DIFFERENT from other girls. Obviously my mom was worry about my skateboard and me so she inscribed me on modeling classes (which I hated it), apart from that I was a very happy girl.

In my family I’m the smart one but when I was in second grade my teacher asked me “What you want to be when you grow up?” and I my answer was “I want to be a mermaid”. My mom told me that was impossible, but she also told me that I can study marine biology and since that they I feel in love with science. I figured out that I want to be a doctor on high school when one of my cousins at the age of 2 years was diagnosed with cancer. That day I realized that I want to help people, but if you don’t have a “Dr.” before your name no one in this planet will let you help them. I got a lot of plans for my future as a doctor in medicine and one of them is to donate all my money to pay the treatment of children with cancer. I never had a lot of money so I can live without the glamour. I really hate the idea of have a lot of money just because I’m a doctor. I can’t live in peace knowing that those children are dying and I’m here making me rich.  I just want to help those kids 100%.

Since I was a child nothing has change too much. I can look myself in the mirror and see the same girl that dream to be a mermaid and to be honest I don’t want to change that. I’m 21 and my hobbies are the same: play video games, watch Pokémon and sing in the shower Bohemian Rhapsody. I want to be innocence because see the world through the eyes of a child makes everything more interesting. I want to learn everything that I can, eat a lot of food, smile to strangers, laugh and talk to elderly people. In conclusion I want to stay simple.

Reflection on Billy Mills: Part II

In this part of the reflection I’m going to explain a bit more about what I said in the previous blog: how the change in the environment (external journey) can have a big influence in the internal you. Billy is a normal man with a dream. Everyone in the world needs to fight for what they want and Billy isn’t the exception. The true is that Billy needs to work a mile extra because of his race. He is a Native American and we can see in the movie how the people stereotype him. In freshman year Billy won every single raise, he was young, full of hope and energy. The time passed but the stereotypes about him was getting worse. In some way or another those stereotypes was affecting his confidence.

Billy found love with a white girl, she loves him but her parents didn’t like the idea of the marriage with a native. The funny part is when his family (the natives) visited Billy for the first time; they make themselves feel like they don’t belong there. After see how his family reacts, Billy realizes that he was alone. In the world of the white people he was a stupid native and with his family he was a traitor. Billy quit everything and decides to move to his hometown. On the reserve everything was back to the normality except that a lot of people admired him for his work. He was running, feeling free not like in Kansas that he was just a running machine.  He was a example of overcoming for a lot of natives in the tribe including for Frank.

Frank told Billy that he always wanted to travel, get out of the reserve, however for him was to late but not for Billy. After that conversation Frank committed suicide because he was running away just like Billy did.

Reflection on Billy Mills

Billy is the main character of the movie; he is an American native member of Sioux tribe. We can see in the beginning of the movie that Billy is a very talent person and thanks to that talent he found a scholarship that will help him to enter to the University of Kansas. In the movie he practice all the time, for him running is more than just a simple sport, for him running is freedom and spiritual.  To follow his dream he has to leave his family and move to Kansas, but that is not impediment for him. Later in the movie he found out that everything is going to be more difficult than he thought.

First lets see his external journey. He had to move from his pour and confortable house surrounded by his family, persons with the same ideas. When he arrived Kansas everything was new for him including jokes, games and food. We can see in some moment in the movie that his external journal start to affect his internal journal. Billy is a strong person he know very well the felling of losing someone that he loved (like his dad) but we can see in the movie that been far away from his family is a very important thing to him. In the begging of the movie we can see Billy very happy and full of hope, but then we can see him writing a letter for his family very sad, tired, with a lot of stress for his classes and felling alone.

We can see very clearly the interconnection of his internal and external journey. Moving to a strange place with strange people that make fun of him is a big influence for him. We can see that changing his environment also changes his fears, feelings and the way of thinking.