Keep Up and Blog on!~

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Blogging for me was a very new and rare experience. I was writing about critical reflections all the time, but what I really enjoy the most was analyzing my life in many aspects. My blog helped me to combine aspects as thinking, writing, and aspects of presentation. In this personal blog, which it was not so personal, I wrote 11 posts about way different things, each one with a unique idea. Having a blog, it doesn't need to be so perfect, because you are writing whatever comes out of your mind using critical thinking about a theme. However, I think that I use so much time trying to covert my blog in a beautiful space. I covered it with photos, and made all of the post easy to read and to understand. I understand at the same time that when you blog, you’re always aware that you have an audience. And so you write out your thoughts just a little more clearly than you might have in a journal nobody but yourself was going to see.

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I think that let students write public blogs is immensely valuable,  because it allows us to experience writing in the real world. When we link to sites or to other blogs, the other bloggers will be able to read or search what I suggest. So also, it is very nice to a student to receive a comment from that blogger and classmate that read your post. Experiencing that what you write actually matters outside of the classroom is a great learning moment. I really enjoy blogging, and also expressing my thoughts and my feelings in a post or a comment letting my argument established and understand.

Visit for more information and opportunities for bloggers in Puerto Rico: http://www.elnuevodia.com/tecnologia/tecnologia/nota/regresaelpuertoricobloggercon-2083686/

Native does not like the tourist

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author/show/39237.Jamaica_Kincaid

“That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. 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 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 envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself." (Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place)

As Jamaica Kincaid express in this quote, people in life can be native or a tourist at some point in their life. So, she explain that the native doesn't like to be rush for the tourist. So, native will like to be resting, and because of the tourist they have to work and be more kind that they are in a normal day. But, native are jealous for the tourist because they want to become a tourist. We can say that the feel envy or angriness for them. Native will always want to take some vacations to forget bad things or to leave responsibilities by a side. But, as she say, native are too poor to become a tourist. However, I think that they must love their homes and the places that they visit in their land, and see more than the boredom or banality so that home become a source of pleasure. Its very rare that tourist view your home as a paradise, and native view tourist's places as a paradise. Its a very fun fact. 
People that travel should be grateful. They are natives and tourist at the same time. I will like to visit other places in the world, because here in Puerto Rico or in Florida, I don't feel like a tourist. In Florida, I have my family so I can feel like I was in home. However, I like to travel. I like to be with them. However, I feel grateful, because I have been in both position, so I can view and felt the reality of them. 

Tourist for a day

So, this weekend I experienced what is to be a tourist in my own island. I went to a coffee shop located in Condado this weekend and I wanted to buy a muffin. Tourist visit Condado a lot, so I think that they believe me. This coffee shop, called Starbucks, is very visited bye natives and by tourists because it is located in front of a hotel.

When I enter the shop, I started to talk with a Colombian accent. Before I ask for my order, I searched in the internet how Colombian people said "muffin" and they called it "mantecada". So, I said to the employee, "Hola, desearía una mantecada por favor" with the accent.

She treat me very well but she doesn't understand me and ask me again. I laugh so she understood and thought that it was a joke. However, I then explain to her the assignment and she was laughing with me.
After I did the assignment, I walk to Bahia urbana and saw tourists walking around. I really spent a very nice day but I didn't fell like I was a tourist, just an assignment. But, I understand that I people feel different as a tourist in her own island. I feel more like a tourist in places more far from where I live.

So, I think that tourist may be treated better than people who lives in the island. But, it may be influenced by the person who is server.
Also, I agree with Jamaica Kincaid, who express that the native is jealous of the tourist. Tourist have all the money and the time to spent in vacations, but the native have to receive them. However, all of the natives, will be tourist in some time. Also, tourist are natives in some part of the world.
So, I think that tourists are happy but their trip is influenced by the treat of the natives at that place.

The girl behind the mirror

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I can see a girl behind the mirror and I think I am the only person in the world that know her and know her feelings. As a little kid, she was sent to a daycare, where she found happiness and love. She found there her best friends and what she call today, her second family. In there, she learned how to be a great human being. When she left, she started in a school where she spent 8 years of her life. In that school she create memories, but also she have so many anecdotes. For example, it was in that school where she pull the fire alarm and makes all the people run outside, and it was in that school where she hit a door with her head running then to a hospital for stiches.

However, she needed to make a change in her life. So, she started in another school for 9^th grade. The memories were more peaceful in this school, but in there she started to develop leadership. It was in this school where she notices her passion for sciences and it began to be more like a vocation than a simple class. Before she finished high school, she went to a summer program where she confirmed her passion for science in special for medicine. Then, a new journey begins. She was accepted in the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. In this college, science became a life. She has created a new album of memories in this college. This trip has been marked with professors, classmates, and grades. In this college, she was inspired to be a community leader. So, she founded an Organization and because of that, she use to see people smile in every activity. The most inspiring activity that the Organization have done, is giving food to homeless people. In this activity, she understands that people may be very grateful for a glass of water. Also, the people that are in worst conditions are the most inspiring ones. They are always believing in God and also, having faith. So, now… every time that I look at her at the mirror, I see a more grateful person and also, a more mature one. However, she still have many goals to came true. She wants to be admitted in the school of medicine, to make more research and to be more successful in her Organization. She want’s to make more people happy and she wants people to remember how kind she was with them.

So, Who is she? She is a very strong woman. She is the light of the eyes of many people, and the friend of many others. She is the model of 130 people who look at her and see a leader, a president, and a future M.D. However, she is a very simple girl. Her life has been surrounded of love and family. She has been blessed with her parents, grandparents and friends.  When she was a kid, she used to brush his grandparents hair. Some years later, she is still brushing their hair and getting the same love. That girl behind the mirror is happy of what she has and what she done. She is full of dreams and that’s why I am protecting that mirror everyday.  The mirror is where I see myself and in which every morning I can know how she’s thinking and how she’s feeling. Every morning, I visualize how happy and grateful I am, and I can give the strength and the power to that woman behind the glass.

How happy are you, out of 10?

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Geography of Bliss is a book of Eric Weiner that challenges your happiness in life. How happy are you? Maybe you think that you are happy but maybe you try hard to be happy.  Or it may be that, like Eric Weiner before he began his quest, you are addicted to sadness. 
Weiner is looking for the finding of the happiest country in the world. For me, it is Puerto Rico. But, Buthan is rated as one of the most happiest places in the world. But, what our author find in his research?
There our author finds both the expected and the unexpected. In happiness terms, extroverts beat introverts. But there are some things that make us happy but are not necessary for happiness. For example, while marriage brings joy and happiness, having children confers no advantage. And although university degrees make us happier, advanced degrees bring us down.

How is all this happiness measured?  "How happy are you, out of 10?" They reckon the results are reliable. Which is cheering for Weiner as he embarks on his quest.
Bhutan's happiness is indeed high. Why? Karma Ura, who runs the country's only thinktank, explains how great expectations seed happiness and unhappiness. Every evening, he tells Weiner, he is happy simply to have lived the day well, and to be able to say: "It was OK". 
So, we must evaluate our days and grade our lives. For me, I am very happy and living in Puerto Rico makes me more happy than other person in the world. 

Naipaul and his autobiography as a literary event.

Naipaul
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To become a writer, but to make an autography, he would have to find ways of understanding the three similar but very different cultures. For example, his family’s homeland from India, the Indian colonial society in the West, in which he grew up, and the apart and distant world of the English novels he read.

In this essay of literary autobiography, Naipaul navigates through memories of his childhood in Trinidad, his university days, and his earliest attempts at writing. Those helped him in seeking the experiences of his life and his reading so he can prepare and get better in his imagination. Naipaul’s profound reflections on the relations between personal or historical experience and literary form, between the novel and the world, reveal how he came to discover both his voice and the subjects of his writing, and how he learned to turn sometimes to fiction, sometimes to the travel narrative, to portray them truthfully.  He really balance the method that he express his personal facts by an entertaining the reading. He just made the reading interesting and not as an autobiography is. Sometimes, an autobiography is interesting only for the person who writes it. But, as the method of writing of Naipaul, anybody could read it.

Naipaul's Book: Reading & Writing

So, how is the best way to write an autobiography? I think, that as Naipaul did, the best way to write it is like telling a very interesting story. So, when other people read it, it doesn't feel like we are reading about yourself. Autobiographies are often confused with memoirs. An autobiography is the inspiring story of a person’s entire life and the societal setting thereof, while memoirs have a narrower focus on the narration of a particular span of time within the subject’s lifetime. So, Naipaul inspired a character by memories and treat the character as his own. He made the story interesting, letting the reader confused about the identity of the character called in silence as "Naipaul".

A journal... make it personal.

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At the beginning, I didn't realized that this journey will help me in some way. Through the pass of the time, I did notice that my fluency in english was better and also, I was more relaxed. I think that this is because I was talking my feelings
to another "person" that listen to me every day and in every moment that I need. Through this experience, I notice that my room is my favorite place. When I was doing the Life Compasses, I scored the highest numbers when I was in my room. I think that I was in a place that identifies myself as a person. Through the pass of the time, I followed the anti-rules and also, sometimes when I started writing I didn't realized that I was writing till the clock stops. That teach me that I had found my jugular and I was developing the writing from the unconscious.
In my compasses, I notice that I did them when I was in a relaxed mood or in a very stressful one. I think that this helped me to evaluate myself and to see in what state I was that day. If I had to sleep or if I could continue studying.
I dedicate my journal to my mom and my grandma. Those are the two womens in my life and they always teach me to express all of my feelings. If you put your heart in something, you wouldn't notice you are doing that until you finish. They have been always present in my life but they always motivated me to write, read and also, to let my thoughts be free.
I learned so much from this project that I ever can imagine. The process of writing and to express what I am thinking, thought me that you can have a journal in every moment in your life. Then, when you read it again, you will notice that life is a roller coaster like the title of my blog. Sometimes you feel bad, or sometimes you feel awesome... but, every day is different and special because you are present in them. The most important thing about each day, its not about the feelings, its how you react to how you feel. And, a journal, is a very good opportunity to clear your mind from every's day rutine.