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