Wednesday, November 26, 2014

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 :)
 

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

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.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

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.  

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

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.