Concluding Contemplation of my Expedition

Through this semester in class we have been making a series of blog post about different readings and activities done inside and outside the classroom in which I’ve learned a lot. In most instances my writing have dealt with the topics of identity, perception and travel. In this post the plan is to expose some of the things I’ve have learned and how my writing ability and organization have changed. In the first two posts mainly I wrote about how I see my self, a sort of autobiography, and my national pride. It’s my personal opinion that in order to be able to grasp the issues of identity, how other people see you and learn about the vast diversity that this world has to offer we must first be in touch with our inner and most truthful thoughts.  After this reflection of my inner journey I was prepared to embark on a venture of analysis. In class we discussed Carl Jung and my main focus here was his Eurocentric viewpoint of the Pueblo Indians. There’s a lot to be learned about other people by observing, but we must acknowledge that we are not in a position to make any judgment because all of our opinion of other peoples lifestyles are based on our context and individual experience.

When contemplating other cultures it’s very important to practice what in anthropology is called cultural relativism, which is basically being able to see people’s customs from their viewpoint in able to avoid generalizations and discrimination. When we do, we are able to learn a great deal more about our neighboring country and their inhabitants. I specially liked learning in my blog post about: Life is a Trip and The Geography of Bliss how in different parts of the world there are more forgiving people and those who search for happiness in a ways which never occurred to me. At the end I was able to apply all of this thinking in creative narrative techniques and even a little of role playing, learning about myself and other people, improving my writing and gaining creative techniques applicable to the rest of my life.

Native envy

A small place is a part fictional part autobiographical novel written by Jamaica Kincaid. In this book he writes abundantly about the tourist that go to Antigua he has a quote that says “But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go--so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they enjoy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for

yourself.” He speaks about how some natives may have certain bad feelings about tourist because they’re able to go places and escape their reality. Tourist many times go to places were there are people that can barely afford a living. For this poor people tourism may even seem like the people who are financially above them are scrubbing their freedom, given by their money, to them. I can

understand the feeling of this tourist, if I where living in boredom and poverty and tourist came taking photos and squandering the money that would be able to give me a good life I too would be envious. In this way it’s understandable why in many places on the world people are not too fund of tourist. In Puerto Rico I don’t think this is something that happens, we usually treat tourist better than are own people because first of all we want people to love this island as much as we do and we understand that this is very good for the economy because of the outside money that is coming in.

Tourist for a Day

As an assignment for the class we had to act like we were tourist in our own country, Puerto Rico, for a day and observe peoples reactions and how we where treated. In my first try I went to buy a “pincho” in Rio Piedras acting like I was from England. To do this first I went with a friend to the place where they sell “pinchos” and stood in front talking with an English accent for some minutes with a friend I brought. 
Then I went to buy the “pincho” telling the guy that I wanted one of those meat sticks, but it all went downhill because if it wasn’t enough that he felt skeptic about my English precedence I had an encounter with a friend that started to yell to me in Spanish from the other side of the road. So in conclusion that attempt was totally foiled and the guy who was serving me did not look very happy that I tried to fool him. After this happened the next day I went to old San Juan to visit my father and we went out to eat so I took advantage of this moment to give it another try. I told my father about the assignment, but this time I decided to do the role of a Dominican because it seemed more believable.

The highlight of the evening was when I asked the waiter to explain to me the difference between a “Mangú” and “Mofongo” both plantain based dishes, it’s one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me in a restaurant. So this attempt was successful, but the treatment from the waiter and the people around us was mostly normal. Maybe it was because we are accustomed to having a Dominican presence in the island and it’s a very similar culture. We where not treated as tourist and no special treatment was giving, but it was indeed a fun experience with my dad and one that we may repeat some other time.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Geography of Bliss is a New York Times bestseller written by Eric Weiner. In this book the author travels from Athens to Silicon valley and even to places like Bhutan, the chapter I will like to discuss, to see how different places define and pursue happiness. 

Buthan is a place where happiness is a policy, the author mentions that the government measures it success in the inhabitant’s happiness and not how much money has been made, like in most other countries in the world. Before arriving there the author even compares the place to Shangri-La a place invented by James Hilton in his book the Lost Horizon. In overall Buthan is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, but this is not an easy thing to define. Mainly because happiness is an individual thing, what I consider happiness maybe something horrifying to another person. Some people feel that being rich, having a yacht, a big house and a luxurious European car is the best way to be happy. Meanwhile there are people who would be horrified of having so much when there are so much poor people with hunger everyday. It happens the same with Paradise, for me a beautiful beach is the definition of paradise while other people picture a snowy mountain filled with peace on the Himalayas. In conclusion a place like Buthan may be the happiest place on earth, but only for some people, there is no place that encapsulates what is happiness for every person of earth. We have to decide what makes us happy in life and search for it, not follow what other’s dictate what happiness is or where it is. I would like to visit Buthan myself so I can have my own point of view of such a place and then I would really know if it really is the happiest place on earth, for me at least.

A Voyage to my Independence

It all started on the winter of 2010, at that time I was in coursing the tenth grade in Santa Rosa Superior. Two years before, my oldest sister Isabel, had fallen in love with Alfons, an exchange law student from Spain, and had gone to live with him in Menorca, one of the Balearic islands in the Western coast of Spain.  My mother, being as family centered as she is, had decided that we were going to go celebrate New Years eve in this island which in the summer is very similar to Puerto Rico, but in the winter it was cold as a seals armpit because they only have one mountain and the cold air form the Mediterranean pierces thought the whole Island.  So me, Laura, my other sister, and my mother got on a journey that would take an unexpected turn and change us all.

            When we arrived there, there were plans already laid out that we where going to stay in a vacation house owned by the parents of my sisters boyfriend In a part of the island very close to the beach called Canutells. It was a very beautiful house on top of a little hill, with a pool, a beautiful fireplace and four rooms. Everything seemed perfect, the only problem was that this was a vacation house meant to be used in the summer so, except for the fireplace, there wasn’t any heating system. Most of the day’s we spent out in town or adventuring coves and caves, but at night we had to deal with the intense cold that entered the house and which my sister, mother and me being from the tropics were not built to live in. Here was that I learned that if hell existed it wasn’t a fiery pit as most of us imagine but a windy house on top of a hill at wintertime.

            Anyways one night while I was playing X-box with Alfons, Laura came out of her room claiming that she could not breath, but we did not pay much attention. This may seem a harsh reaction, but everyone that has had the pleasure of being with Laura for some time knows that she takes after my father and they’re both a little, I mean considerably over dramatic. It turns out that we should have listened because the day after she did go to the hospital and was diagnosed with a pneumonia that caused her pleurisy, which is basically a build up of fluid in the space between the lungs and the ribcage. This happened the day before we where supposed to head back home and didn’t allow her to take any flight because the change in pressures could kill her.

            Consequently we had to cancel our flight back home, which had no insurance so the money was lost. Laura had to be hospitalized and have a tube inserted to her pleural space until the doctors determined what caused the infection. This was a process that went on for weeks with very few results. My mom and my big sister were loosing their heads, Laura was the most difficult patient ever and I had to be stuck in that house for eternity. Since the beginning of school was very close my mom finally agreed to my request to travel to Puerto Rico alone. I had to take flights from Menorca to Barcelona, Barcelona to Madrid, Madrid to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to Puerto Rico. At this time I was 16 years old and this idea seemed frightening, but like it could be the adventure of a lifetime and believe me it was.

            Nevertheless I packed and was taken to the airport in Menorca where I found out that at 16 years old you’re an adult in an airport so there was no companion service provided. I was happy about this until I arrived to Madrid where apparently the plain to Philadelphia was suffering some mechanical difficulties so after waiting 15 hours I was sent to Europe’s biggest hotel to spend the night. There in Madrid I met some very cool people from the flight, which took me all over town, something my mother still doesn’t know, or she would die from a heart attack. It was the experience of a lifetime being in a foreign country, so young and being able to meet so much cool people. Here I discovered that I could travel the world alone, I obtained my independence in this event and ever since had felt the need to explore the whole world even if I have to travel it alone.