Travel book assignment: Into The Wild

1996 Book

       The book was written by Jon Krakauer and published in 1996 after a true event that happened 4 years before that regarding Chris McCandless. The book was later adapted into a film in 2007 with Emile Hirsch starring as McCandless.

2007 Film

The story goes like this: In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and , unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. 

Blog Reflection

       One of my biggest challenges in my 'Journey in Literature' class was facing the fact that making a blog with many posts was part of the class requisits. It was not because I had to do it, but because I'm a more reserved person and publishing my writing was something I feared. I write 'was' in the last sentence because I learned to manage my fear and write publicly without problem. That courage was the product of my determination to succeed in the class and to learn to manage my fears on writing.

Blogger.com

       In high school I wrote many papers for english class and many other classes so Im proud to say that I learned very well to write an essay. It was much easier to write an essay that only the teacher would read, and it probably gave me less stress that no one else could see it. This time around, in university, things are different. I now write publicly for this class and everyone of my classmates and people around the world can see my writing. At first I did not like the idea of everyone viewing my blog since I'm a little of a perfectionist and it gave me more stress to think that I had to write perfect since many people were going to read my posts. But as time passed I grew to let off my fear and deal with it. For this last post I'm now confident with what I write and I learned to express myself through this social website called Blogger. I recommend it to everyone who wants to express thoughts or feelings because it is a great way to do it since you get feedback from people around the world. 

Group Experience

       Working in a group normally is very difficult since the availability of everyone is not the same always. I usually hat working in them since every time someone on the group works harder than others or does more than others. My experience with this group has changed a little my opinion about working in groups and I will share it with you guys.

       I'm much more than glad to say that finally I came across a group of work that I did not hate at the end. The name of the group is Fortunate Travelers, and it is composed of Valeria, Liane, Alexandra, Luis, Manuel, and I. This is the first group that I even get along with my peers, and have a good chemistry with them. 

      Two moments that I remember being the best of the group I think I have it perfectly thought. The first one was when we all had a tight schedule, but we made time and gathered a saturday afternoon to finish what I thought was one of our best work as a group. Everyone cooperated and we made a lot in two hours. The second moment was the presentation of that assignment we had. The project and presentation turned out to be all as we wanted and our reward was a good grade. 

       In summary I had a great experience with this group. Fantastic people to work with and great friends also that help whenever you need them. If I had another group to choose, I would definitely work with my Fortune Travelers again. Hope I see them again in other courses.

Tourist for the day

       In class I had the curious assignment of positioning myself as a tourist for one day to look at the reactions of the people around me and to view my surroundings from the point of view of a tourist. I decided that if I had to be a tourist, I had to go to an area close to a hotel or to a place that is frequently visited by them. For it I chose the area of Piñones where there are many hotels near by and is also a place where tourist would visit at least one time during their vacation in Puerto Rico. 

Piñones entrance

       Piñones is a well known area in Puerto Rico for it's beach and fried food. A couple of minutes before you see the entrance of Piñones you can see the beautiful ocean from the beach called "Balneario de Carolina". In this road you can see curious things that as a tourist can seem a little odd. For example, the driver's license is tested in this area. Normally in the US, this test is taken in a closed course, not in a public road. Second, there are many cyclists around this area which are in the middle of the road until they reach the part where they have their own road. Third, but not least odd, is that the national airport is right beside this area so you can hear every plane ascending to the skies. 

       For my activity I chose to wear an american brand swimsuit, with a tank top shirt and sun glasses as if I was vacationing with no concern of work nor related things. My plan was first to walk to the "Balneario of Carolina" and ask someone in english for directions. The first person that I approached was a person in the parking lot and I asked him where could I find the best restaurants in the area and the person looked at me as if I were from another planet and responded with a face of confusion "me no speak english." I was kind of surprised when acting like a tourist but being Puerto Rican I know how it is so that did not surprised me much. The face the man made could have been interpreted as a kind of othering since I looked like an outsider and his reaction was that he knew he could not answer me because I spoke another language that he does not know.

       After this event I decided to stop at a kiosk and see what would happened there and how would they treat me as a tourist. When I entered no one looked at me differently, but as soon as I ordered the famous "bacalaitos" (fried cod) the man looked at me in a strange way and did not answer. After a few minutes he gave me the food and I sat down at the table. Now that people knew I "only" spoke english they looked at me more. I felt a little out of group since they saw me as someone that was not from here and everyone's eyes were staring at me, don't know why. 

Beautiful Piñones beach

     I decided to act more like a normal tourist and started taking pictures of the beach. A couple of people where around me so I said "what a beautiful island!" to see their reactions. A couple of minutes passed by and I kept taking pictures, when I heard a little boy tell his friend "mira a este gringo tomando fotos" (look at this american taking pictures) and they both laughed. I laughed at this internally since I know my real identity and felt a little disgust by the stereotype some Puerto Ricans have towards americans, even this kind of young boys.

     

Selfie at Piñones

     
        After a few hours of enjoying the beach, my favorite part of the day arrived, time to eat. After I asked a few people, I finally found what is considered the best restaurant in the area, which is called Soleil Beach Club Restaurant. When I entered, I spoke english and was greeted the same way, impressively. The service was incredibly good. I was so hungry that I decided to go half Puerto Rican food, half US food to satisfy my hunger. Here I saw that both, the people and the employees in grouped me and it felt good even knowing my real identity. I order what they call Puerto Rican treats for appetizer, some "sorullitos de maíz" (corn sticks), "alcapurrias" (fritter) and mozzarella sticks were some of the included, all in small portions. For the real deal I ordered a New York Steak with a side of mofongo (fried plantain). Wow, it was all fantastic.

Soleil Beach Club

     Finally after this great meal, I decided to head home. Looking back at the experience I could sense that Puerto Ricans have two ways of reacting towards an american tourist, the first are the people that do not know english and react kind of scared to your questions, and secondly the ones that do know english and socialize with you because they are confident of their dual linguistics. This is what normally a tourist would encounter in a question scenario with a Puerto Rican. I think this is not only here in Puerto Rico but also around the world, a person that does not know the language of the asking tourist gets afraid and does not act normal as if it where a native from the land. 

Timothy Leary: "The Harvard years" reflection

Timothy Leary in his Harvard years.

       The book Timothy Lear: The Harvard years is the first collection of this psychologist's writings. It's author, James Penner, is a University of Puerto Rico professor who describes many experiments Timothy had using psychedelic drugs on people to see their reactions based on their experiences. In Leary's time, 1960's, LSD and psilocybin were legal drugs and were used actively for research at universities. 

       Here is a link to see James Penner's book.

       

       Many of Timothy's writings have been lost and others where very difficult to find, said the presenter of the conference and author of the book. During the 1960's, Leary was aware of his fame on this type of drug usage, and all of the negative comments but he did not care because he wanted that attention. For Leary, psychedelic drugs were great because they separated the social role and promoted the entire being to experience it's own identity from a deeper perspective.


       James Penner read his prologue and explained some details of it. As an audience member of this conference, I saw how the author was well prepared and very much knew all the details of Leary's life, showing his hard dedication on this book. I was fully surprised when he said that people saw Leary's work as a thread, at a level that he even was fired from Harvard's president at the time. This was a nice conference that I learned about psychedelic drugs and many other curious things about the time.  

Reflection on The Rum Diary

The film starts with the main character, Paul Kemp, in a hotel in Puerto Rico. Kemp is an author coming from New York with not much success. On his way to the interview, we can see the identity of the Puerto Ricans of that time which rebelled against most of the North Americans that resided in the island. After a quick chat with Lotterman, the newspaper’s editor, he formally gets the job where he is given the horoscope section with the promise of more.

Immediately after getting hired, the editor introduces him to Sala, which we come to now after that he’s an alcoholic as Paul. We can see an in group in this part of the film as Sala gets Paul acclimated with the surroundings while drinking in a bar. We can sense another in group when Sanderson approached Kemp at the office saying that they would talk after because he liked Paul’s writing. We come to know that Sanderson was a wealthy business man in the island who was looking for a writer that could do a job for him. Sanderson introduced Kemp to his group and made him feel part of them, offering him the job to write favorable coverage of what we can see is a property scheme.

From the start of the movie we can sense the harsh environment towards those who were not native of the island. Americans felt superior in this island, we can see out group from Sanderson when he was with Paul and realizes that young men were in his property and abruptly tells them to get out of his land. The Puerto Ricans leaving this situation with resentment, we see another out group, but this time it was towards the Americans when Sala and Kemp where at a little restaurant. The guys that Sanderson threw off his land where in the restaurant too and when they saw Paul, they gathered as a group and forced them to exit. Not only did they force them to exit the restaurant, they also chased them to throw things at their car.

For perspective we see important ideas. Kemp came to the island without knowing the reality of the poverty that faces some of the habitants and the excessive riches of others. When Paul realized this, he rapidly changed perspective of the “beautiful island”. He saw that the tourist only sees the beautiful beaches and what is in the coast, but the problems of poverty where ignored. Paul wanted to write about this but Lotterman told him not to because it was bad for tourism. At the end, everyone knew Paul could expose all of them and they closed the paper and took the machines away so Kemp could not print it. Kemp steals Sanderson’s boat and leaves towards New York where he meets with Chenault, publishes the story and gets married with her.

Jim Cooper's Teaching & Helping Chapters

                On these chapters we can certainly say that problems in the education of Puerto Rico have been since way long back in the 1950’s. In the ‘teacher’ chapter we see Jim Cooper, a continental North American, who teaches English in The Colegio at Mayagüez, PR. Jim is the only young continental teacher left and discovered that teaching English in Puerto Rico is teaching a culture that does not manage the language very well since it’s a challenge for them, so he faced his own challenge in teaching these kids. In the ‘helping’ chapter we can see how big of a problem is this teaching of English in the island.

        I refer to “a big problem “ in the ‘helping’ chapter since the teaching is not resulting the way it should be and the students, knowing nothing on the exam, decide to cheat to avoid failure. Visiting high school English classes to learn how his students adopted their attitude, he found out that since first grade the teacher are encouraging the students to look in the neighbors paper if they had doubt. The continentals who visited where infuriated with this encouragement from the teachers and said that no wonder the students did not understand them. When the students had a bad grade in an assignment it always came down to “why you gave me a bad grade, don’t you like me?” and yes he did but his job was to teach English not to give away grades without them doing anything.

        The ‘teaching’ chapter talks about how Jim was a second year professor at UPR Mayagüez where he understood how horrible the English class was for the students in the island. The chapter kind of tells Jim’s quest to change the current English program so that the students would actually learn something in classes. In recent years an innovation was released and were does from a doctor called Charles Fries. A teacher called Pauline Rojas took the ideas from the doctor and made a series of textbooks that she thought would help the Puerto Rican students learn proper English. It was to be incorporated in a series of public schools but the only problem was that the program needed at least 20 years to start doing effects in the population.

        We can clearly see the problems in the education of this time and that it has passed onto our generations some in a good way and some in bad ways. The good way has been that now most of the Puerto Rican culture has English as second language, making them bilingual. The bad things that were present in the 1950’s was that at that time the students used cheating as a resource to not fail the class, unfortunately that still happens in the present and is a big problem in this society. Certainly this is still a problem that has to be resolved for the generations to come.