Bucket list: Travel the world

          I’ve always been really sure of this big ambitious wish of mine of travelling the entire world.  I’ve always told myself I can’t die or have any children before seeing the whole world. My biggest wish is to at least visit a part of every single continent, although the country that I most desire to visit is Italy. I wish to learn about all the different cultures, religions and people that are outside of Puerto Rico. My mother always tells me and my sister how if she ever wins the lottery she wouldn’t waste any money on material things, she would just get on a plane and see the whole world. I have always love this idea and wish to follow it even if I don’t have a lot money because we should always follow our dreams no matter what and that is what I hope to do.

            I can’t finish this class without expressing my biggest wish in life because even though this is something that has always been in my life plans, this class has encouraged me to start with this plan as soon as possible because with this class I have learned a lot about journeys and I am excited to start having my own journeys. I’ve also learned about the different types of journeys we can all have and how we learn something new in each one. But the most important thing I learned in this class is that I want to travel the world as a traveler not as a tourist. A traveler visits different places with a humble attitude willing to learn something from this place and with a purpose he or she wishes to fulfill, while a tourist looks for commodities and to have a good time not necessary to learn something new or about the cultures.

            Now I feel that after this class I know almost everything there is to know about journeys and I am really glad I took it. I am ready to start my journeys with a whole new perspective about journeys and about life because like I have said before life itself is the biggest and most beautiful journey anyone can have.  Hopefully soon I will begin travelling the world and writing about my different journeys also. But the most important thing I wish is that I can have this journey with my personal pilot and the love of my life, my boyfriend. Every journey I take with him, I know it will always be a great one just because he will be by my side. My bucket list is not just about travelling the world, but also growing as a person, learning about life and about the world but especially accomplishing every one of my dreams with the company of my loved ones.

 

Blogger’s life

             Having a blog is like having a little piece of you on the internet. I have really liked this experience and it was something that I have never done before but now I hope to keep it and keep posting more things in it. Each word, even if not many people read it, is something that you want the world to know about you. Everything in your blog is something that has you written all over it. You write and you let feelings be free and let your works be who you are. It is a world where you wish you could live in because you have created it just the way you like it. It is something that is your own and you begin to love it and get attached to it because it allows you to scream the words that people don’t let you even whisper. A blog is a free world where words cannot be silenced or stopped because you are the one in charged of it. Your words are like art and they paint your blog with what you need to say, how you need to say it and they help you express what you want others to know.

            Life should be a never ending blog for everyone where we could freely express ourselves anytime anywhere in hopes of talking or writting about things that could make our world a better place. Everyone should be able fight for their beliefs and talk about everything with everyone but in the same peaceful one can express themselves throughout a blog. People should learn how to express themselves with words or with art in a way that doesn’t disrespect or hurt other people. Everyone should respect different opinions and ways of thinking and learn from it, in the same way we do this by reading books or by reading what others put in their blogs and comment about it. A blogger’s life would be a much better way to live, more free and more democratic. A place were all thoughts could live together in a free way where they wouldn’t clash against each other in any form of violence but just hear and learn from each other like in the internet world or the blog world.

A little journey called LIFE

            I never would have imagined that when I chose my English literature class it would be something as significant and incredible as this class has been for me in my life. The last thing you think when you see a class named “Journey in literature” is that you will actually talk about journeys that people may have. In my case a thought it would be about how we can go in a kind of like journey though the reading of literature. But for my surprise the class was about everything that had to do with journeys, from the different types of journeys that we have daily until the kinds of people that have journeys.

            This class has opened my eyes to a whole new world I would have never thought that I was living. It has helped me change my perspective upon life itself. Now, I see everything that I live and that surrounds me as a journey. I have learned that every path and every challenge we have in our lives is a new journey that we live each day. I now know that life itself is a journey with an arrival day but with an expiration date we do not now. This is why we have to live each day as if it were our last and it is something really amazing to see each day a new journey in which we discover, learn, accomplish, and overcome different things.

            In my life I have had a lot of journeys both internal and external and if I had to choose my favorite ones from the pictures that I have on my Journey Journal I would choose one of my favorite external journey which has my trip to Spain in 2011 to the World Youth Day which was also for everyone a really strong internal journey and an unforgettable experience. I would also choose the pictures that represent my daily journeys, with my family, with my friends and with my love journey with my boyfriend. I would choose this because the best kinds of journeys that we have are those that are with our loved ones. The last picture I would choose would be the one where I am giving a talk to a group of teenagers in my church because helping others and talking to them about God is a journey that I have every day in my life because God is always the center of my days.

            This Journey Journal has been the thing that has helped me the most throughout the class to understand what journeys are about and to see life as a journey each day. Through writing in the journal I could think as a traveler and live as one each day. This is an incredible experience and I hope I always keep doing it or at least have it in mind. Internal and external journeys was something that I also learned to differentiate with the journal because I noticed that every day I had different internal journeys but also that in every external journey that I had I also experienced an internal journey. Do you know why? Probably your answer is right. It is all because we live in a little journey called LIFE.

Student Conference Panel

           From the moment of writing the paper without even knowing about the possibility of being chosen to participate in a student conference panel until the moment I walked out of the conference it was all an incredible journey.

            At first when the Professor indicated that some of the works we had handed in for the midterm paper were going to be chosen for them to be read in the Student Conference Panel, all I could think of was how I wished I would have done a better job. I knew I had done a good job with my essay but I probably would have made it a little bit more mine. The Professor explained how this would have been a great opportunity for those who were chosen and something we could even mention in our future resumes. I was really excited and hoped that I would be chosen but I was not sure if I would be chose because I thought my work could be better.

            When the professor started mentioning the people that would be reading their essays on the conference I was starting to get really nervous and she started mentioning a lot of my classmates but not me until the last person to be mentioned was me. I was really happy and it made me feel special in a way that I was chosen and I was glad that I would be able to have that experience. Then the Professor asked us to write a small biography of ourselves to be presented in the conference before we read our essays which had to be in 25 words. For me, this was something kind of tricky because I like to write a lot but I managed to do it in a bit more than 25 words.

            Finally it was April 10, the day of the student conference and everyone was really nervous. It was a really nice experience to hear everyone’s paper and their different opinions on journeys and travelers and tourists. I was a bit nervous when it was reading my essay but then I liked reading it to everyone. In my opinion I would have liked if there were a bit more students and professors hearing our works but I liked a lot the whole experience. I also would have liked if I did not have any class after the conference so I could have stayed and answer some questions.   

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.