Reflexing on the blog

I never imagined myself doing a blog as a class activity, but it turned out that I did it. The first days were terrible for me because I had never used this kind of social sites and it was a little difficult to me to understand them. Also, it was challenging for me because I’m a little shy and I was nervous of what the people would think about what I wrote and what will they comment. By the time, I get how to use it and I even uploaded some pictures and videos in my blog entries. Then I got to like it that much that I change the appearance of my entries to make it look prettier and maybe a little more interesting. I also tried to give it a funny name (“Open it and you’ll see”) in order to catch the attention of my classmates.

All the posts that I did on my blog contained my pure opinion accompanied with some facts and details of the activities that inspired me to make them. I founded this a great activity because it helped me to expose more my thoughts and opinions toward things and to accept other opinions and points of view of these things. Sometimes it helped me to see things that I hadn’t taken into account and some other times I liked to see that I was supported in my thoughts. With this activity I let people to know me a little more and see the things I liked, the places I’ve visited, my point of view, among other things.   Also I got the opportunity to see the blogs of my classmates and learned a lot from them too and to comment on theirs in order to support their thoughts or to expose mine.

Finally, I really liked this activity and won’t forget about it, since it transformed the way I look upon this kind of social sites. I hope that my entries are interesting for everyone who see them and appreciate them as I do. 

Good Bye!

Puerto Ricans helping or cheating?

Down on the island...

 

While I read the helping chapter in Down On The Island of Jim Cooper, I agree with him in a lot of things about cooperation and competition in education, nonetheless I also understand his discomfort in the way that we Puerto Ricans confuse cheating with helping while being educated. The cultural basis of we Puerto Ricans influence a lot in the way we distinguish between these two ideas and it can be seen as narrow or broad.

The narrow way that explains why we Puerto Ricans usually cheat while schooling is that we tend to be very helpful or cooperative people with each other and this is also one of the values we are tough while we are little kids. Since we are too little to understand the limits of helping and helping others makes us feel good, we try to help our classmates and friends even during an examination because we want our friends to obtain good grades as we do. In the same way, when we are the ones who need this help we are expecting to receive this help too from our classmates.

On the other hand, the broader way to understand why we Puerto Ricans are so helpful with each other is that our island is perceived by other countries as a little, weak and incapable and that enforce Puerto Ricans to be united, to defend each other and to help each other in everything. This is why for a Puerto Ricans value cooperation so much.

I think that during the class it is sometimes necessary to receive the help from our classmates because everyone learns in a different way and we students tend to feel more confident to ask questions to our classmates before asking to the teacher; however, I agree that during the course of the exam, the teachers are evaluating how much you learned and it will be not effective if the students are using each ones help instead of being competitive. To learn to help and also to receive it is an important part of life but we Puerto Ricans should not confuse this value with the process of learning or evaluation.

This acknowledgement is what creates such a big difference in what for me is considered helping and cheating sometimes. Competition between the students sometimes is a way to induce them to be better each time and not only better than his classmates but also better himself again and again. Helping by the other hand is not always a mechanism to cheat. Instead it can be a way in which students develop different skills, such as working in groups and the division of responsibilities to complete a certain job or homework assignment. While we are in the process of learning, it is important to help each other but during the process of examination, we students should be rivals in a competition and give our best without helping this time.  In this way, we will always try to be better and learn each time more independently what knowledge will really help us in the future.

An example of what we should do!

My Internal Journey During The Journey To Literature

During the journey of this semester, I encountered myself doing things I had never done before. Some of these things were doing a journey journal and a journey blog. Both of them helped me developed myself as a writer, as a person and of course, as a traveler.

A writer?

      Yes. During this semester I had improved my writing skills and it happened mainly because of the journey journal activity. Since I had to write whatever came into my mind for a constant period of time, I believe it helped me to acquire the techniques to create a mirror of my mind in the paper. By this, I could write more exactly what I needed to say and to use the adequate vocabulary.

A better person?

     Definitely. While writing in the journal, I understood myself better and consequently learned to know what I wanted and who was the real me… This activity helped me see my limitations and now I’m working on it to become stronger and better. The blog also helped me in my personal construction since I had to personalize it and make it look in a way that shows who I am. Now I know more clear what things I like and what makes me different from the others.

A traveler?

     Mju. My personal experience and discoveries in this journey make me decide that I’m always going to try to be a traveler more than a tourist because I like to know more cultures and have the real experience wherever I go. I also identified with a traveler because every time I go someplace outside my hometown I tried to figure out the life of the people that I encounter around me. The novellas I read during this journey helped me to get this position and understand what it means in a better way…

      I have to say that I really enjoyed this journey through literature and the internal journey it turned out to be for me… 

A video of my favorite artist, Miranda Lambert, that I want to share with you... 

Dear Cinthya

I’m hoping that you are having a good time this week.  First of all I wanted to say that during the progression of the days in this course, I think I really improved my writing! I’m really very glad about it. 

I also wanted to say that I really enjoyed your class and learned a lot. One of the things that I liked the most of the course I took with you, was that it escaped from the same pattern that is followed by most of the classes. I mean, it had a completely different mechanism to transmit the message of the discussions we had about the different themes we touched, specially the othering one. With the different activities we made, I was capable of positioning myself in the foot of someone else and understand it better. For that reason is that I became more comprehensive with tourists and I expect to not odder them that much anymore. Also, I understand better why we Puerto Ricans are othered in some aspects such as in the criminality rates, price rates and lot of other things.

The class discussions were essential to me to understand the novellas we read but I admit that I enjoyed most of them and I founded them very related to the topic of the class. From this class I liked that the class discussions were open and we could have different opinions of anything and all of them being listened and taken into consideration.

Other thing that I liked a lot from this class was the journal activity because this activity helped to find me with myself in too many occasions and also to organize better my thoughts. The same happens with the blog because it was a chance to expose a little more of me and to receive the comments and opinions about what I wrote and this way I got a different point of view of some things.

This class turned to be one very far from what I expected the first day of classes when I first met you, since when I enrolled in the course it had another professor name on it. I thought it was going to be like one more class but it became one of my favorites and were I could relax of the structure of most of the courses. Finally I really enjoyed this semester with you and hope that it repeats some day.

Happy Thanksgiving

My perspective about Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller and Winterbourne

In my opinion, a traveler is a person that visit other countries to merge with the people of that country in order to learn about their culture. Also travelers usually visit more cultural and historical places than tourist do. In contrast tourists visit a country to have fun and forget about the problems they encounter in their daily life. Tourists prefer to visit places where they will have a lot of fun and do things that they believe that they won’t forget.

Daisy Miller behaves herself as a tourist because she is always willing to have fun and doing things she won’t forget and don’t give any importance to the cultural values of the European culture she visited. This can be seen when the author says: “But he saw that she cared very little for feudal antiques and that the dusky traditions of Chillon made but a slight impression upon her”. When the author says that he makes clear that Daisy didn’t had any interest in the cultural aspect of that country. This thought is supported when the author describes Daisy’s attitude in an historical and important castle to European people when he wrote: “Daisy tripped about the vaulted chambers, rustled her skirts in the corkscrew staircase, flirted back with a pretty little cry and a shudder from the edge of the obliettes…” as the author describes her, she was just trying to have fun in a very serious and meaningful place of history and values.

There were various incidents in the story where there was othering, specially toward Daisy. The first one I will discus is when Winterbourne says to his aunt: “she is completely uncultivated”, Winterbourne went on”. Winterbourne refers that way toward Daisy because she doesn’t present the same cultural values Europeans have. It’s obvious she won’t have them because as she doesn’t live there she doesn’t practice them and for that same reason Daisy is othered. Winterbourne assumes that she is lack of cultural values instead of understanding that, as she came from a different place, she has different customs.  Another moment when Daisy is othered is when Winterbournes aunt says: “that she is the sort of young lady who expects a man, sooner or later, to carry her off?”. Winterbournes aunt refers this way toward Daisy because she believes that the only intention of Daisy was to take advantage of their fortune as it has happened to Winterbourne before with other girls. Without even meeting Daisy, she assumes she is that kind of girl and dislikes her. Daisy is othered again when Winterbourne says: “I have never as yet had any relations with young ladies this category”. When Winterbourne says category, he is in fact categorizing Daisy Miller as a flirt as he had heard that young American ladies are.

Daisy’s perspective toward everything seems fine to her like going out with men during the night, walk around with a man alone and that kind of things. She has a very liberal perspective toward things.

In contrast, Mrs. Costello was a very conserved woman and for her, everything that Daisy do is wrong. Daisy represents the liberal feature of the American culture while Mrs. Costello represents the conservative and strict features of the European culture. Winterbourne, can be categorized as a middle point of this two cultures because he has been related to both of them. This way, he is represented in the novella as a conservative man but not so strict as his aunt Mrs. Costello. With these descriptions it can be seen that the cultural environment in which the characters evolve affects directly their perception of things and their personality.

My Journey Journal

To conclude the journal activity, here I discuss a series of experiences I had with this project.

 

Changes

In my journal activity I experienced various changes during the course of the weeks. The most obvious of all is the quantity I wrote. The firsts entries of my journal were not very long and that was because of many reasons. First, I didn’t knew what to write about and sometimes I stopped writing to think a little while wondering what to write about again or to pick exactly one specific thought I preferred to write about. Another reason was that I didn’t knew how to write exactly what I had in my mind, my thoughts sometimes were just images or feelings that for me were just too difficult to explain. Other thing that changed from my journal was that at first I worried a lot about my handwriting and also that when I finish the journal it must have end as near to the edge of the page as the day before. By the end of the journal activity I realized that I could leave apart all those restrictions and the change was notable because of the change in my handwriting, grammar and length of the entry. 

First thoughts process

I had never in my life experience an activity in which I had to write all my first thoughts, for that same reason my first entries were the most confusing ones because even that I selected which thoughts to include, I always ended up writing things that have nothing to do with one another. After a few entries more, I came to know what I was exactly doing and could then make a good journal exposing my real thoughts as quick as I could write them when they came into my mind. It was very difficult for me at first to get in to the jugular and I tried to force other thoughts to come to my mind and kill those, but then I surrender to oppose myself to those topics and it was then when I felt totally free to write everything that came in to my mind. By the end of the journal activity, I was capable of writing exactly what came into my mind but also to tie one thing with the other not leaving any possible theme discussed.    

Life compass activity

      In my journal, I did a total of four life compasses and also explain in each of them the reasons why I gave the numbers I did to the different categories. The compass numbers were very low and I founded that the lowest numbers of all the compasses were on the mental part and in the emotional part. I also arrived to the conclusion that these low numbers on these areas are completely linked with one another and depended mostly in how busy was my week. I can say that this life compass activity helped me to understand the mess in my mind and to deal better with myself.

Internal Journey

      This journey journal helped me to organize my thoughts and I learned to write exactly what came in to my mind. I appreciate this a lot because sometimes it’s hard for me to understand what I am feeling about something, but with this writing technique it is more easy to uncover this thoughts and discharge them in the paper. Writing my thoughts has become a way to get off the mess of thoughts that can mix together in my mind and fade the solutions when I have a situation.  This activity has worked for me to understand better myself and interpret my feelings and emotions. In this journal my internal journey has helped me to get to know myself better. 

 Click here for additional tips if you ever decide to do a journal ;)

My Internal Journey as a Tourist

This activity was one in which I had to pretend that I was a tourist in my own Country. I have to admit that it was very difficult to me because nothing was different the day I picked to be a tourist but my will to complete this mission. Since I wanted to feel a little atmosphere I went to the shopping to see how Puerto Ricans do their shopping a common Saturday in Barceloneta’s Outlets. 

I decided to put aside who I really am in order to think about everything I saw and experienced as a tourist would. It was a strange feeling sometimes to judge and prejudice about Puerto Ricans without feeling tied to the people but at the end I could complete this task and I had some observations as a tourist during that day. I did the observations with the perception I had about Puerto Ricans during my internal journey as a tourist.

With those observations and experiences I can say that some of the stereotypes given to Puerto Ricans are true but others are not. Different people can have different perceptions toward Puerto Ricans depending on the certain experiences and moments they had when they visit the country or by what they have heard from other people.

I believe that every time a same tourist comes to Puerto Rico, he or she can change their opinion toward certain aspects of Puerto Ricans such as their humor, personality, and customs, among others. From what I could perceive as a tourist, Puerto Ricans have a large variety of those characteristics and that makes it almost impossible to characterize them in a general way. 

This activity helped me to understand how we can set a series of prejudgments toward people of another country and I know that it will also help me to be more open minded at the moment of visit another place.  

Barceloneta's Outlets

Reaction to the movie: A room with a view

A room with a view

The movie “A room with a view” is a film from the 1985, that among other things it is most of all a criticism of the woman oppression by that time in England. In one part of the movie, the main character, miss Lucy Honeychurch, makes a trip to Italy with her older cousin and during this trip there are some events that caught my attention because I could relate them to our discussions in class. 

First of all, during the whole trip, Lucy and her cousin, kept surprising themselves everyday because there were too many things that they always though that were some way and by being there they could perceive how different it was from what they imagined. During the class and during the presentations we gave about how is Puerto Rico perceived in the web, some groups mentioned and discussed why it is important not to believe everything you hear about someplace, but to experience it yourself for it to be a real experience and by that you could decide your own opinion about that country. This is because not everyone perceive what is around them in the same way; for example, maybe something that impacted so much Lucy was the man that was wounded in the middle of the street while she was trying to have some fun.

Also, I could noticed that the fact of being in another country than theirs, make them feel a bigger level of libertinage and I could perceive that because in one of the parts a woman says to the other that two women in an unknown place was like an adventure. By saying this, I could see that they were as most tourists; when they go to some place, they just wanted to live an adventure and to have fun and sometimes don’t care about nothing else.    

Eduardo Lalo's Recognition Activity

The past Wednesday, October 9^th I had the opportunity to assist to Eduardo Lalo’s tribute and conversatory, celebrating with his work colleges of the humanities department and workmates his most recent and very important award “Rómulo Galegos 2013”. This is the international award for novels and the competition was executed in Venezuela where he was selected unanimously by the judges who were evaluating 200 different novels coming from 17 different countries. The novel with witch Eduardo won this award is called Simone.

The activity was celebrated at the university in the first floor of the AJBR building. I could just stay for a very short time because I had class before the activity and also after but for the time that I stayed, I quickly had a good impression about this professor because of the way that one of his workmates was referred to him and his discussions toward Eduardo’s books. Even that he was referred to Eduardo’s books in a funny or deceptive way sometimes like with his novel called Los pies deSan Juan, the irony of his words were well understood by the public and just made Eduardo’s books look more interesting than ever.   Also, it was perceptible every time that Eduardo talked, the knowledge and awareness he has about the actual conflicts in Puerto Rico such as political, economical and most of all, social and cultural.

It is a pride to have a writer like him (who is considered puertorrican even that he was born in Cuba) wining this important competition and by the short meeting I had with him on Wednesday, I can say that he deserves it. 

University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus

The Rum Diary Movie

                          Rum Diary Trailer

When I saw the movie, I had many different emotions during its course. At firs the movie presented Puerto Rico as an island of beauty, pleasure and a lot of fun. During this part I was proud of the good things that were pronounced from Puerto Rico but during the course of the movie I became mad because I saw so many things that are not true about Puerto Rico. The thing that most impacted me was that I felt that the movie was exaggerate the poverty situation because it only presents the places where very rich people lives like the house of the private beach of the editors friend and make see that the rest of the people in Puerto Rico are very poor, living around trash, disorder or dirt. It was something that impacted to the editor too. Something ironic was that the friend of the editor even treated Puertorricans like savages when they tried to go to “his” private beach.

Even that I felt that these themes were exposed in an exaggerated way; it doesn’t mean that the poverty, the fights or the alcohol abuse was absent.

Something that I didn’t like either was that North Americans were always referring to Puertorricans as if we were ignorant and as savages incapables of anything and that they could impose us anything with their cleverness.

Even though I believe that the movie overall defines a personality for Puertorricans that is not far from reality and also includes some of the Puertorrican culturehobbies.

 :)

Chocolate

I love chocolate! 

My name is Stephanie Rivera, I’m twenty years old and I live in Toa Alta with my both parents. In my life I’ve been in a few places out of Puerto Rico. Some of them are New York, Washington D.C. and Texas. Most of the time I travel to visit my family but I always take a glance to the cities and enjoy the trip. I have four sisters and a niece that is three days born. Soon I’m going to travel to Maryland to meet her. I also have traveled to Dominican Republic and Haiti in a church mission to make donatives and home restoration after the devastating earthquake.

One of the most exciting trips for me was the one in which my sister and I traveled from Maryland to Texas in car. We spent a lot of time in the car to get from one place to the other back and forth but I treasure that time because we did a lot of things together to deal with the boredom like singing, laughing, playing with molding clay and eating a lot. We both like to travel long distances in car and doing stops wherever we want to see new things an enjoy them. I remember that it was during the winter and we were yet in Kentucky when a snowfall got us and we had to stay in a hotel because it was impossible to keep driving.

I’ve also traveled around different towns of Puerto Rico and enjoy them a lot too. I remember that ever since I was a little girl, my dad used to take us to different places around the island and show us new places every summer. 

List of places I've been:

• Haiti
• Dominican Republic
• New York
• New Jersey
• Texas
• Boston
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia
• West Virginia
• Kentucky
• Arkansas
• Washington D.C.
• Maryland
• Tennessee
• Louisiana