A small place by Jamaica Kincaid

        There are so much different feelings in this novel! It is really extraordinary how the author goes from the beginning of the novel until the end describing Antigua with infinite details. First she stars describing how Antigua is seen from a tourist eyes and how much he tourist does not know about the place, then she describes a little about Antigua's history and how it had been an England possession, then she critiques every aspect and gives her opinion about the political status that Antigua has gone through and how this has affect this place. Finally she states that although Antigua had gone through all these things and worked so hard for a self-government which is not even good, says the author, this small place is still remarkably beautiful and incredible in every aspect.

     You can definitely feel the passion the author has for Antigua. She describes the place as unreal because of all its beauty. You know that even though the author critics the government and some aspects of this place, she only those this because she truly loves Antigua and wishes this place could have only the best. She wants the library to be restored because it was one her favorite places in Antigua, she describes how much she loved that place and she wishes she could do something to make it better. In my opinion the author shows us that she wishes she could fix every aspect that is  wrong or damaged about Antigua.

     She is also very sad about all the things Antigua had to go through and she refers to slavery a lot.  I love the ending of the novel because we can notice that she is angry because of this and because of these people that had considered themselves superior to Antiguans . The last line in the novel she says that everyone the masters or the slaves they were all equals they were all just human beings. I liked this phrase a lot, it made me think a lot and it the most powerful phrase in the novel.

A room with a view

    

      This movie was really good and it does have a relationship with travelling and journeys but I think it has more to do with personal journeys and decisions. The main character Lucy has to make personal decisions about her life which she is really struggling about but all of her problems begin with a trip that she made with her cousin Charlotte to Italy. They both arrived there as tourists with no concerns but to have a room with a view. They did not go there with any purpose but Charlotte did find out how travelers are like through a writer that helped her see Italy a little bit differently and Lucy did find something in Italy that she did not expected: Love. 

      I liked a lot one of the phrases a resident told Lucy when she told him she was a tourist. The man said that residents pity tourist because they do things unconsciously. He stated that they just want to see specific places that they have in mind and get done with the place and leave as soon as possible. I think this is the main difference between a tourist and a traveler. A traveler is very open minded and wants to see the place where he is going in every way possible and learn and acquire an experience or a sense of satisfaction from it, he or she goes there with a purpose to fulfill. Meanwhile a tourist is only passing by and seeing what a tourist always sees when he or she goes to these places but they don't acknowledge the experience or get something out of it.

      Lucy's personal journey has a lot of factors involved but her main problem is that she is engaged to a man when she reencounters with her love from Italy. She struggles throughout the movie with if she should marry this man that she is engaged to but knows she doesn't truly love or if she should leave him for her true passionate love from Italy. This man from Italy named George was a traveler in London where Lucy lived and his purpose was clearly to find her even if he did not quite know it. When Lucy finally makes her decision to leave Cecil her fiancé she wants to travel just to escape from this reality, which is another factor why tourist also travel. But Mr. Emerson stops her and she meets again with George. Then they travel together and were extremely happy and in love.  

A small place- Second Chapter

     In this second story the narrator is someone that has lived in Antigua for a long time and knows how it used to be when it was ruled by England. Her opinion is that this empire did a lot of harm to Antigua and that they never should have left their home. In this time Antigua had a Government house, a library, a bank and a Mill Reef Club. At this club the only black people accepted here were as servants. There was a lot of racism towards the native people from the English. This is why the native all thought that that this people had bad behavior.

    The native saw these strangers as rude but they did not think of them as what they were: racist. The doctors were racists and the schools were racists, they even referred to the natives as monkeys. The Antiguans even saw themselves as superior to the English because they were better behaved. Antigua revolved completely around England even though they made millions of Antiguans orphan. Antiguans saw them as crazy or ill-mannered but never as racist.

     This relationship between England and Antigua is similar to U.S.A. and Puerto Rico in the aspect that we do not see the bad things and the bad aspects that this relationship has. We see ourselves as if we completely dependent to the United States and do not find ways to be autonomous by ourselves. We see them as the good ones when they are the ones that sometimes take advantage of us.

A small Place- Frist Chapter

     In the first chapter of the novel "A small place" , Antigua is described as if it was being narrated by a tourist's point of view. The place is described as a beautiful island where the sun always shines, which is exactly what the tourist is looking for because he or she is trying to escape from the cold. The tourist observes that the roads are really bad in this place and your driver is reckless. But like every tourist you do not know the story behind this place. You are not aware that the hospital and its doctors cannot be trusted or that the library is damaged. You watch a couple of mansions and expensive Japanese cars but you do not know that the water you  are using to bathe and to clean your teeth ends up in that beautiful water you lung to swim in. Neither are conscious that most of the food that you are eating comes from a plane from Miami.
      This lets us know that tourist the majority of times go to places without knowing its history or any kind of information about it. This is way natives laugh at your strangeness because you don't fit it in, you are not familiarized with their culture or customs. They think you are silly or have bad manners; they do not like you. This is why tourist feel out of place and a little foolish, when they are travelling. But we should always remember what this chapter tells us at the end... Every native is a tourist somewhere and every tourist is a native somewhere.

Burguer King

  

  The most recent journey or adventure that I had was the first of February, a Friday, when my family had to go to Miami to get my sister's passport because it expired and she has to go to a school trip to Santo Domingo. I did not want to go because we were leaving Friday morning and returning Friday night, but finally I had to. I got up really early that day like at five in the morning and at 7am I was already on the plane on my way to Miami. When we arrived we quickly went to get our car for the day so we could go to the place where we were getting the passport. But when we were at the car trying to figure out where the place was it was really difficult because the GPS did not register the directions. Thankfully someone told us were it was and we followed instructions. Finally, we arrived to the office and everything and everyone was really quite and boring and we were all really hungry. My dad and I went to eat while my mom and sister waited to be attended. We went first to Checker's so that I could order what I wanted and then we went to Burger King so that my dad could order what he wanted and stayed there to eat. After finishing, we stayed there waiting for my mom and my sister. Later they arrived to eat but left again to the office to pick up the passport and my father and I waited again at the Burger King for a long, long, long time until they got back again. We practically spent the whole day at that Burger King at Miami. Can you imagine being at a fast food for a whole day? Smelling the food and being in those uncomfortable tables? It was pretty boring; I read my homework in my tablet while my dad saw videos on my phone. We took advantage of the wi-fi. But I also observed that other people also stayed there for a long time just waiting for something, like us, or letting time pass by. There was even a man that took a long nap after eating and then left. The good thing was that after my mom and my sister got back we went to visit my aunt at her house and I met one of my little cousins that was there. He was completely adorable and shy with big brown eyes and blonde hair which I will never forget. After this short journey we went back home to Puerto Rico.

Helping vs. Cheating

I found really interesting how in Chapter 8 we are described that the students were actually categorizing cheating as helping. They were not aware that what they were doing was bad because they were always taught to look at their neighbor’s paper if they did not know the answer. “The teachers not only let them cheat, they teach them how, they encourage them.” said the author. This problem was essentially a cultural problem because Puerto Ricans are taught from their childhood to be cooperative not competitive. It is in their nature to be helpful to others because they are taught to be this way. They could not understand why they could not help a friend when he or she needed help in a test because they are very emphatic people.

In my opinion this is a problem that is still happening frequently in Puerto Rico although the students are now more conscious that this is wrong and that it could get you in to a lot of problems. I think this problem is still linked to a cultural aspect but I do not think still has to do with helping or empathy. I think that this is has to do with the fact that Puerto Ricans are lazier and prefer to copy the answers from others instead of studying. I also think that they have this theory that they are never going to be caught or they are just not afraid to get caught and they are indifferent if they do.

I do not think that helping or cheating is fair when it comes to being evaluated because through evaluations is the only way to see what you have really learned and to know what do you have to get better at. I think that we should all help each other in the process of learning   because we should be kind and help does who need us. But when it comes to evaluation we have to demonstrate what we have learned so far for ourselves. Helping or cheating is not fair because you are stealing someone else’s knowledge and work, not proving what you can do for yourself.  

Travellers vs. tourists

     Most of the times that I have travelled I have always felt like a tourist because we just go to places to entertain ourselves or to have fun but we don't really think about where are we going or what we are getting out of it. We are just thinking that we have to go there because everybody goes there or because we want to have fun in a different way. In my opinion this is mainly what a tourist would do but a traveler is much more different, a traveler goes to a place with a specific purpose. A traveler wants to learn something from this place or he or she is going and be a part of this place and of its culture. The traveler does not want to have fun or entertain himself or herself but wants to acquire something of this place. A traveler goes to a place with a mission that may or may not be accomplished in the trip. A traveler wants to see the world and its culture and be a part of it. In the future I hope and I want to be a traveler and see the world as a traveler not a tourist.

My favorite journey: JMJ 2011

      

I could write not one or two pages about this journey that I will tell you about, but more than 20 pages if I could and if I had the time. I would consider this journey the only journey that I have had because it is not the same a journey as a trip. In my opinion in a trip you enjoy everything but in a journey you discover everything. This is what happened to me on this journey, I did not just enjoyed it, I learned things about me, about other cultures, about my religion and my believes and especially about God. Sometimes I even suffered a bit, because it my first long trip without my family.

     My journey physically started on August 11, 2011 and I was going to Spain for the World Youth Day 2011 (Jornada Mundial de la Juventud 2011) with a group of 50 people of my church and from other churches with the same patron saint. But the spiritual preparation for this journey began a year earlier in 2010 when we were chosen to be a part of this journey. I always dreamed of going to this kind of journey and I was really happy to have been chosen. Once the group of people was decided we started to receive spiritual retreats to prepare ourselves for this pilgrimage we would have, but also that we could get to know each other.

     In this whole process I learned a lot more about my religion, about praying, about being in peace with myself and with God, but especially I got to know all the extraordinary people that were going to accompany me on my trip. Some of which, became my really good friends, others my brothers and my sisters and one special boy became and still is the love of my life.

     The whole preparation was really useful and I enjoyed it a lot, but the journey itself was what helped me discover a lot of things about who I am and what gives meaning to my life. We went to a lot of different places in Spain like: Segovia, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Sallent, Vic, Barbastro, Fusimaña and Madrid. All of which I thought they were beautiful and I hope to visit them again, because we mainly went to see chapels in all these places. Although in Segovia we got to meet a lot of people from all over the world where I learned about themselves, their culture, their language, etc. This was one of my favorite parts of the journey, but I also liked learning a lot about my patron saint and about the martyrs of Barbastro.

     Although I learned a lot about my religion and of other cultures, I think what was the most meaningful part of this journey was learning more about myself. I learned that I am strong, and can do things by myself without my family. I learned that I can accomplish anything I set my mind into doing. I learned that I am a good friend and I worry about people and always want them to be happy, but I also learned that I had new friends who were also there for me. I grew as a person and my boyfriend and I grew as a couple. But the most important thing that I learned was that God has always been with me and blessed me with everything. I learned that I would always be able to feel His presence and feel Him with me if I could be at peace with myself and look for Him at the most humble places in life, like when I felt Him in a small chapel in Fusimaña, Spain. 

 

We are always travellers

     Life is a never ending journey and we are travelers all the time even if we don't look at it that way. We come into this world with a ticket that has an arrival date which is the day we are born and we arrive at this journey called life. It is strange because we don't take our time in life to just enjoy it while we can. We don't realize that life is a trip and it comes expiration date also, which we don't know and never will know which day is it. We should always remember this and be aware of it, we should live life each day as if it were the last because we don't know if it will be. We are all travelers every day in this world, and our journey is called: life.

     Trying to imagine yourself as a traveler all the time is not easy at all, you try to see everything that is around you in a different way, but you can't because you are so used to living life automatically with the same routines each and every day that you can't do it differently. It is not easy to stop time and just look at the incredible world that is around you and enjoy it. It is really hard because we have so much things going and happening and so much things to do that you can't just STOP for a minute, just to open your eyes and see; see everything that surrounds you. This is why sometimes we are not even thankful for the things we have because we don't even notice them. We are used to things or people just being there because they have to be there.

     I really wish I could stop time every once in a while to just look around me and reflect upon everything, about life, about my life, without being pressured by time. I wish I could go all alone to the highest mountain in the whole world and just be at peace and think about everything that I usually don't have time to think about and know that the whole world is just in pause waiting patiently for me to come down with everything figured out and at peace with myself and with my life. I wish I could escape and see things differently, see them as they truly are and be genuinely thankful for them.