Sarah Macdonald as a traveler

After saying she would never go to India again, Sarah MacDonald, eleven years later, has to return to this place because of love. Her boyfriend Jonathan was the Australian Broadcasting Company’s South Asia correspondent based in New Delhi. She was going to move here with him because they could not live apart. This is where the adventure of the novel begins and when Sara Macdonald starts to transform from a tourist to a traveler without noticing.

                Sarah Macdonald starts recognizing that by moving to this place she is just not travelling to this different place but starting a new life in a new country. It is a big change and transformation what she is going to go through. She starts to see thing s differently from the first time she had gone to India because know she must learn about the place where she is going to live and this new culture. Now she is paying more attention to details and her surroundings. She talks about the food, how people drive, the importance of the cow known as the holy cow, and about their religion.  The author is a lot more open now to this new culture and learns a lot about it because she has to live in it. We can clearly see an example of this when the author says: “It’s again time to abandon shyness, personal space and privacy and to become spectacle as well as spectator. Eleven years ago, as an awkward postadolescent, this annoyed me intensely, but now I see it’s a fair exchange for my voyeurism.”

                This whole new attitude Sarah Macdonald has to India this time that we can see that she wants to learn and experience different things in India this time, transforms her into a traveler or shows us that she wants to be a traveler now. Now she also has a purpose that she wants to accomplish throughout this new journey in her life. The author expresses this when she states: “Leaving my wonderful job was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but perhaps I didn’t do it just for love. A part of me wanted to reclaim myself, to redefine my identity, to grow up professionally, to embrace anonymity and to get rid of the stalker.”   This lets us see that this time she is in India in search for something, with a mission she wishes to accomplish and as a traveler who wishes to gain something out of this journey. In a way she is in search of a change, which she is not sure what it will be but she hopes to find as a traveler by learning and being open minded about everything that will happen throughout this journey.

Sarah Macdonald as a tourist

                In her novel Holy Cow, Sarah Macdonald starts by narrating a trip she had for her twenty first birthday which her parents gave her the plane ticket as a present. It was a middle class rite passage and had become a family tradition. Her mother wanted all of her children to experience the joy of travel before they settled in their jobs.  The narrator does not tell much details of her trip but she does make it clear she did not enjoy her two month tour in India and throughout the novel she explains little bits or reasons of things that she did not like from India or situations that happened to her that were really bad. After this trip she says she hates India and that she will never go back.

                This trip that Sarah Macdonald did at her twenty first years was only for the experience of travelling and to enjoy the trip. It was a tradition in her family and something that she was expected to do just because she had to.   This was not a trip for a specific purpose but more to have a good time and to enjoy herself before entering the laboring world.  In my opinion this first trip that Sarah MacDonald has is more a tourist’s trip than a traveler’s trip because even though it was one year she was on this trip, it did not seem she had any other purpose in the trip other than just having the experience of a trip.

                Even though we are not given too much detailed information about this trip, Sarah Macdonald can be considered more as a tourist than a traveler in this trip. We can see this because she did not go on the trip searching for a purpose to be fulfilled but more as an experience she had to live. Also we can see this because she does not have a lot to say about the trip and barely remembers it. She tells us more about the place that she did not like and did not want to go to again, India, than the other places where she went.  She does not narrate a lot of experiences she had or things she learned. By these brief things we know about this trip, we can assume she was more in the position of a tourist than a traveler.

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.