Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and a Son

Our Journey in Literature class has provided us a vast amount of knowledge about the terms related to the journey as an internal and external experience and I chose the dual memoir book of a father and a son entitled Along the Way to discuss them. I'm going to present you the summary of the book and right after it I'm going to provide you my own interpretation. 

"In this remarkable dual memoir, film legend Martin Sheen and accomplished actor/filmmaker Emilio Estevez recount their lives as father and son. In alternating chapters—and in voices that are as eloquent as they are different—they tell stories spanning more than fifty years of family history, and reflect on their journeys into two different kinds of faith. 

At twenty-one, still a struggling actor living hand to mouth, Martin and his wife, Janet, welcomed their firstborn, Emilio, an experience of profound joy for the young couple, who soon had three more children: Ramon, Charlie, and Renée. As Martin’s career moved from stage to screen, the family moved from New York City to Malibu, while traveling together to film locations around the world, from Mexico for Catch-22 to Colorado for Badlands to the Philippines for the legendary Apocalypse Now shoot. As the firstborn, Emilio had a special relationship with Martin: They often mirrored each other’s passions and sometimes clashed in their differences. After Martin and Emilio traveled together to India for the movie Gandhi, each felt the beginnings of a spiritual awakening that soon led Martin back to his Catholic roots, and eventually led both men to Spain, from where Martin’s father had emigrated to the United States. Along the famed Camino de Santiago pilgrimage path, Emilio directed Martin in their acclaimed film, The Way, bringing three generations of Estevez men together in the region of Spain where Martin’s father was born, and near where Emilio’s own son had moved to marry and live. 

With vivid, behind-the-scenes anecdotes of this multitalented father’s and son’s work with other notable actors and directors, Along the Way is a striking, stirring, funny story—a family saga that readers will recognize as universal in its rebellions and regrets, aspirations and triumphs. Strikingly candid, searchingly honest, this heartfelt portrait reveals two strong-minded, admirable men of many important roles, perhaps the greatest of which are as fathers and sons." (Amazon)

Martin and Emilio were in a journey together and still they are. Both of them learned from each other many aspects of life and shared his experiences in order to keep strengthening his relationship. In many ways, their personal lives are completely correlated with his professional careers. After fifty years they live a comfortable life with each other, despite their differences about faith. Like Emilio said, "Success to my grandfather was not measured by what a man achieved in his career or how much money he made but by the state of his health, his relationships with his children, and the strength of his marriage. I think that's how my father always defined success as well." (393). Finally, I think I should close this entry by the last sentence in the book given by Emilio. "The man who for so many years walked ahead of me, who briefly walked a separate path, and who now walks by my side." (Sheen and Estevez 394).

Buy it on Amazon!

Facts about Martin Sheen

Facts about Emilio Estevez

Reflection on Blog: Tickets to Paradise!

In our Journey in Literature class, we focused on two different kind of journeys we experienced throughout our lives: the internal journey and the external journey. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, the Journey Journal helped me a lot to know more about myself and keep discovering my internal journey. But my external journal is reflected in the blog we had to work on during the whole semester and helped us to find what identifies us a culture. Creating a blog was a new task for me. Of course, I have social accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but this kind of account was a new experience and an interesting one. During the whole semester, we were assigned to wrote different kind of entries and post them in our respective blogs. At first, I didn't know anything about Blogger. "How I am even supposed to add gadgets to my blog? How I am even supposed to change the background? Or the font and size of the letter?" Well, my doubts about creating the blog were most like these ones. With the help of one of my friends and some practice, I learned how to work on my Blogger account.

I chose to name my blog "Tickets to Paradise" because it represents a way to escape and feel free to know more about ourselves and our external journey while being in a paradise such as a beach, a park, a rainforest, etc. During the semester, we discussed topics such as education, tourism, traveler, dreams, identity, stereotyping, othering, in-group, out-group, perspective, and location. Most of these themes were identified in the readings, novels, and movies we saw and analyzed during class. This blog was an effective tool to express our thoughts about such topics. Even though there are many posts, my favorite was "Tourist for a Day in Puerto Rico". I really enjoyed writing this entry because I had a lot of fun with my family while doing the activity of becoming a tourist for a day in my own country. In this task, I was able to had my "ticket to paradise" while visiting Boquerón Beach at the southwest of the island and I recommend it to everyone! I like that I was able to share my experience with everyone and received feedback from my colleagues. Overall I feel this helped my writing process and my critical analysis. Everyone should begin a blog in order to discover and know more about their external journey and feel more comfortable to express it and share ideas and opinions with the ones who read your entries.

Ten Reasons to Start a Blog

Reflection on Group Work: Fortunate Travelers!

At the beginning of our Journey in Literature class, we were assigned to work in a group. At first, I was hoping the professor let us chose the people we wanted to work with because I knew two people before we took this class, but the professor selected the groups we would have to work during the whole semester. The first day we had to work in the group we were really a bunch of strangers. We didn't know each other. That first approach was very formal. We told each other our names, we share our phone numbers and emails, and we also create a group message in Whatsapp to establish contact more easily. During this class, we also divide our roles in the group and selected a group name: Fortunate Travelers. Valeria and Liane were the note takers, Héctor and Antonio worked as the researchers, Manuel was the conflict solver and I act as the task manager of the group.

Meeting new people can be an interesting and enriching experience or an awful one. Since we did not know each other, I think we were very timid those first days of class. As time progressed, we started talking to each other more than the beginning of the course and we felt more comfortable sharing our thoughts and discussing our opinions. We are very different, but agree with a group opinion was never a big trouble for us. The first group project we had to present in front of class was about Jamaica Kincaid's novel "A Small Place". We search for information about the author, we looked out for quotes that supported our point of view, and  we wrote about the different themes on the reading. Finally, we made our oral presentation and we felt comfortable with it. Unfortunately, we did not felt very happy with the grade we received  from its analysis and I believe this experience helped us to join more as a group and worked more than we were already working to obtain a good grade in the next group project.

This is the poster we made for the oral
 presentation about Carl Jung's travel to North Africa.

The final oral presentation about Carl Jung is the highlight of our group work. We had the same purpose: obtain a better grade. We took it very seriously and we search for information about the author and quotes that support our argument. We decided to meet up during the weekend to make sure we do a great presentation. During the meeting, we finished our analysis on the different themes such as othering, in-group, out-group, location, identity, and perspective, and we also had the opportunity to prepare a poster to explain better the location theme. This experience helped us to grow as a group and know more about each other. We shared our opinions and we respected each other.

It has been an honor to work with you, guys! We all worked hard and I'm thankful with all of you. I had told meeting new people can be an interesting and enriching experience or an awful one. Well, the last thing I had to say is that meeting Valeria, Liane, Hector, Antonio and Manuel was an interesting and enriching experience! I had learned that group work are not always bad. We can gain a lot of knowledge from many of them.

Benefits of group work

Tourist for the Day in Puerto Rico

Which are the general steps to become a tourist in your homeland? First, you must wake up early. Second, you should prepare a backpack with snacks, towels, and additional clothes (in case you are thinking to go to the beach). Third, get up in the car and LET THE ADVENTURE BEGIN! (Don't forget to establish a budget!)

Keeping this steps in mind, I decided to go with my family to the southwest of the island. We wake up early today and we prepare the stuff we need for the trip (snacks such as Frito Lay's bags, beverages, and homemade sandwiches and backpacks with clothes, towels, shoes, etc.). We get up in our car and took the Road #2 until Road #100 to finally arrived to Cabo Rojo. We ate "pastelillos de queso, pastelillos de chapín and alcapurrias" at a kiosk near the roadside. They were delicious. We continued our trip until we arrived to Playa Sucia, but we can't get off the car because it was full and my mom didn't want to park the car too far from it. Nonetheless, we saw the Cabo Rojo's salt flats best known in Spanish as "las salinas".

Therefore, we decided to go to Boquerón beach and we had a great time together. The day was awesome, the weather was perfect, and we were really satisfied. After we set up our spot in the beach, we stayed a couple of hours in the water. The sun was at its peak, the water was good, and the sand was very hot. While I was in the water, I had the opportunity to analyze the environment which it was very calm and clean. The beach is a great natural scenery in which we can search for answers to our internal journey while we are having fun with our external journey. Keeping in mind that we had to pretend we were tourists, we felt a little bit out-grouped by the other Puerto Ricans at the beach, but we also felt in-grouped when we saw a couple of American tourists near us. I can't elaborate more on this topic because we didn't have the opportunity to talked with the locals nor the other tourists. My perspective toward the Puerto Ricans didn't changed at all because I had already seen that kind of exclusion or out-group by the locals to the tourists. Probably, the reason could be because of the English language.

Every adventure comes to an end... We decide to leave the beach around 5:00 p.m. We got up again in our car and finally went back to our home. I must say that being a tourist for a day is one of the best experiences I ever had in my life. We have to be thankful for all the wonderful places we have in our island. Sometimes we, as locals, do not appreciate all the marvelous places Puerto Rico offers to everyone and we need to be a tourist for a day to enjoy it.

Road #2

Near Cabo Rojo

Only a few minutes to Playa Sucia 

On our way to Playa Sucia

Part of the Cabo Rojo's salt flats

Having fun at Boquerón beach with my siblings

Boquerón beach
Time to say good bye... 

Official Web Page of the Municipality of Cabo Rojo

Reflection to a Conference: "Supernovae Reveal An Accelerating Universe"

I had the opportunity to assist to Adam Riess' public conference last Monday. It took place in the Amphitheater 1 at the General Studies building. The conference was titled: "Supernovas: Dark Matter? Dark Energy? The Surprising History of the Expanding Universe". Adam Riess is Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the John Hopkins University and a Senior member of the Science Staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute, both in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Riess is a renowned astrophysicist who won the Shaw Prize in Astronomy in 2006 and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. Why? Riess' study led to the discovery of an accelerating Universe.  

"The Universe is not just expanding, but actually accelerating and accelerating." His research involves the study of the cosmological framework with the supernovae or exploding stars. Riess indicated three reasons trying (because they really don't know) to explain why the Universe is accelerating now. The reasons are the following: vacuum energy, dynamical dark energy, and modified gravity. Riess started his research in 1998 when he discovered accelerating expansion and dark energy, and confirmed this with more distant supernovae from Hubble Space Telescope.

An important fact that caught my attention was that the Universe is actually 13.4 billion year old. I didn't know this fact before. Another fact that I liked was the percentage distribution of what is the Universe composed. The components of the Universe with their respective percentages are: planets (0.05%), stars (0.5%), dark matter (25%), gas (4%), and dark energy (70%). In general terms, I liked the conference and how he interact with us (his public). He gave an interesting talk and it was never monotonous. I found funny that he told: "How do we really know our Universe is expanding? We checked!" It made me laugh!

The Rum Diary

The film The Rum Diary is based on a book written by Hunter S. Thompson. The movie was directed by Bruce Robinson and was filmed in Puerto Rico. American actor Johnny Depp  interpreted an American journalist called Paul Kemp who hasn't been successful in the United States and started working for the San Juan Star newspaper in our island during the 1960s. 

The Rum Diary is similar to the Jamaica Kincaid's novel A Small Place. Jamaica Kincaid attacked the tourists in a way the reader can assume the tourist's role and felt offended by her writing. Paul Kemp arrived to Puerto Rico without any knowledge about the island. Kincaid said about this: "A tourist is an ugly human being." And why not? At first, he didn't know anything about our culture, the Puerto Rican lifestyle or even the economic status. He was an outsider who was hired to write about horoscopes until he faced the reality of Puerto Rico and started caring about the problems in the island after relating with Sala. Kemp became more interested in the situations of the island: poverty, alcoholism, ignorance, etc. 

Kemp changed throughout the movie. His transition can be defined with two scenes. The first was at the beginning of the movie. The taxi driver asked him something in Spanish and he replied he don't speak Spanish. This is a clear example of his outsider (tourist) view. The second scene is the one at the bowling alley. Kemp asked a tourist: "What you like most of Puerto Rico?"  The tourist replied: “The bowling alley and the casinos." Kemp asked him: "Have you seen a lot of the island?".  The tourist's  wife replied: “We never leave the hotel. It is not safe”.  His last question was: “But you are having fun, right? The woman replied: “Oh yeah, lots of fun! “. Here is Kincaid's voice: "The tourist is an ugly human being." After that, he wanted to write about the issues of Puerto Rico and he can be seen as an insider or partially insider (traveler). 

At the end of the movie, Kemp went back to the United States and became a successful writer. It is also a transition from an unsuccessful to a successful journey. It was a change of his perspective toward Puerto Rico and its locals. Kemp was able to understand the issue's location of the Puerto Ricans and sympathize with them in a good way.

"Teaching" and "Helping" by Jim Cooper

It was assigned to read two chapters from the book Down on the Island by Jim Cooper. In the first one, "Teaching", Cooper expresses his point of view about the syllabus for the English class he was teaching at the Colegio located in Mayagüez. He noticed how much difficult was for the students to learn English because most of them didn't know it very well and therefore they didn't understand the readings they had to do at first. After he visited some public schools, he also noticed some of the teachers were having trouble to speak English. Cooper proposed a syllabus which included strictly language courses to the freshman and short stories and novels to the sophomore students. He would loved to stated that the language program he set up solved the student's language problems, but it didn't at all.

In the second chapter, "Helping", Cooper expresses his point of view about a method implemented by the students from our island. This method consisted of 'helping throughout cheating'. How this can be possible? Puerto Ricans, as Jim Cooper demonstrated, are the most hospitable people in the world and they tend to do whatever they can in order to help others. Many of the students seek for an extra help in their classmates, but this attitude was not only in their everyday work but during the time they were taking exams too. However, students learn how they must behave in the school since they are kids at the primary levels. All I want to say with this statement is that students have been taught since their primary levels to be cooperative with each other.

"When I started asking students why they were looking at another student's paper during an exam, they replied with no embarrassment: because I don't know the answer, and maybe he does. If I asked the other student why he let him look at his paper, I got some such answer as: but I'm just trying to help him. He's my friend."

We all know that this kind of help is actually cheating, but the students didn't realize it. It is also worrying that Cooper stated teachers also promote the cheating attitude. I think we must do everything possible to earn our grade by our own effort; not at the expense of others. Students should help them, but in a good way working on cooperative teaching or learning, but they should not cheat. I'm against it.

Internal Journey: A Reflection on my Journey Journal

As part of our Journey in Literature class, it was assigned a special project that consisted in writing into a journal for eight weeks. At first, I felt scared because I'm not very good in English grammar and vocabulary and I was thinking about  how I was supposed to write in it having this kind of situation. The first reflection took place in the classroom and it was like a challenge for me. First, I must keep my hand moving during ten minutes, but it was  difficult because I had to translate all the thoughts in my mind to the English language and my hand started to hurt at the fifth minute, approximately. Second, to lose control and go for the jugular was a little hard because I think my thoughts weren't really interesting and crazy ones.

After the first week of writing on my journal, I started to feel more comfortable with my writing, but I know I have to continue improving  it. I had also talked about the difficult part of this experience, but I want to let you know the bearable part. The other instructions we had to followed on the journal were that we can't cross out, didn't worry about spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and don't think nor get logical. These instructions were more easy for me because I didn't really worry about how I wrote any word or sentence during the ten minutes. I simply wrote whatever I thought at that moment and most of the times I didn't get logical. Most of my entries are sentences without any logical sense. I like it because it helped me to wrote more fast in a given time. This practice helped me to explore my internal journey after experienced my external journey. I also had the opportunity to wrote about my dreams after I woke up in the morning and I felt more comfortable because I remembered most part of my dreams. The journey journal is a reflection of my inner journey; a journey many people didn't know about and a one from which I had also learned about myself.

Another thing we had to do in our journal was three life compasses per week. These compasses helped me to have a better understanding of my everyday situations inviting me to think about my spiritual or natural, mental, emotional, and physical state. Life compasses were variable as the entries, but I have learned many things from each one of them.  This activity also helped me to being relaxed and satisfied when doing my daily's reflections. I'm looking  forward to keep discovering and working with my internal and external journey throughout my entire life.

Journal Writing: 5 Smart Reasons Why YOU Should Start doing it TODAY

Discovering Yourself Through Dreams

Dreaming is an act of communication between our unconscious mind and our conscious mind. It is a kind of bridge that connects our inner thoughts and expresses them in our external journey. Dreams can be defined as those images, activities, and feelings experienced by the mind during sleep. They are also related to a lot of things including creativity, events throughout our life, and emotions. Clinical psychotherapist, Jeffrey Sumber (2011), states that dreams allow us to process information or events that may be painful or confusing in an environment that is at once emotionally real, but physically unreal. 

Emotionally real, but physically unreal: that's the disadvantage (or advantage?) of dreaming. Dreams have an enormous power to connect us with what we have been thinking during the day or what we want at most and it's very difficult to confront reality when we wake up because most of the times we want to continue with it just to know what would happen next. Where these dreams come from? To where these dreams go to? What would happen if you would love the dream? That's the cruel reality. You will wake up and possibly you will remember some details of it, but not at all. Therefore, it is recommended to follow some tips in order to remember the most of it. These tips are simple and very easy to follow: you just have to wake up and write down everything in your mind. EVERYTHING!

As an activity of the Journey in Literature class, I had the opportunity to follow these tips and I got a great outcome. The weird thing in all of this is that I have a lot of short dreams during sleep. It's insane! Doing a retrospective review of the dreams I can remember nowadays, I notices I have dreamed being chased and falling down a couple of times. I have also see the death in my dreams, the desperation, the nature in its tragic point, and love. I'm sure many people desire their dreams to become reality...and I'm one of them. 

Simple Tips for Recalling & Recording Dreams

30 Common Dream Symbols and Their Mysterious Meanings 

Jeffrey Sumber's Interview  

Reaction to "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid reveals her experience under the English colonialism and her thoughts about the tourists who visit Antigua. I notices her voice as one mix of feelings: sadness, nostalgia, contempt, and so on. Kincaid talks as an insider of her country; as an expert of it. But from her expert point of view, she classifies the tourists as "an ugly human being". Are the tourists "ugly human beings" just for being tourists? Here is when the author expresses contempt from the tourists.

"An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you [...]"

Roberts (2008) states that the notion of identity in human society is based on two fundamental factors: the perception of sameness/ difference and instinctiveness of man to be a social being. The perception of sameness/difference implies that those who are perceived as different are treated different. Kincaid expresses Roberts statement of this sameness/difference perception when she says:

"[...] that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness (you do not look the way they look); the physical sight of you does not please them; you have bad manners (it is their custom to eat their food with their hands; you try eating their way, you look silly; you try eating the way you always eat, you look silly); they do not like the way you speak (you have an accent); they collapse helpless from laughter, mimicking the way they imagine you must look as you carry out some everyday bodily function."

It's all about culture. As I stated in one of my last posts, culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." (Tylor, 1871). But culture can be also modify throughout the years and be in constant changes since there are countries which are actually colonies from other countries. Kincaid expresses how she felt living under the English colonialism and how the racism and poverty were noticeable.

That political state Kincaid is narrating us from Antigua let me think and compare it with our Puerto Rican history and political state. Puerto Rico have been since under the power of Spain through the American power nowadays. We have been in constant changes and adaptations since the Spanish until the American colonialism. We have incorporated to our culture many American aspects or festivities. We celebrate their holidays as if it were ours. We introduce a lot of English language to our vocabulary as well as we wrongly translate many English words to Spanish...we have created a 'Spanglish' vocabulary. However, instead we can talk English we have an accent. As Peter Roberts says, "language can sharply distinguish between insider and outsider through difference in accent, idiom structure and word". Therefore, we will always be outsiders in another country with a little knowledge of an insider.

"A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid (Section 1 and 2)

"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see." Jamaica Kincaid, writer and novelist, introduces her book letting know the readers about the topic and place of interest: Antigua. Kincaid starts the first section of A Small Place, 1989, giving thoughts and experiences of the tourists who visit Antigua. She recreates the tourist's point of view as one from comments like "What a beautiful island Antigua is" since the airplane descends to land or "Oh, what a marvelous change these bad roads are from the splendid highways I am used to in North America" while the taxi driver is carrying them to their destination at the island. Kincaid describes the tourists as those who are interested in the natural beauty of the island, the beach, the sunny days or the hot and clear air instead of knowing what is really happening in  Antigua.

Between all these tourists' utopia there is an island filled with problems like corruption, drug dealing, poverty, health services, education, criminality, draught and racism. The author keeps narrating the tour on the island while explaining some of these problems stated before. About the corruption, she states the government encouraged the banks to make loans available for cars. Therefore, most of the people drive expensive Japanese cars, but filling the gas tank with the wrong kind of gasoline. About the drug dealing and criminality, she focuses on a mansion which is the house of the drug smuggler and everybody knows about him and what he does for living. As another example, she states about the health services that there's the Holberton Hospital which is staffed with doctors that any Antiguan trusts including the Minister of Health. On the other hand, Kincaid describes the building of the Pigott's School as one which is full of dust and would be easily confused with some latrines. The author also mentions the damage library which it repairs still waiting from the earthquake of 1974.

On the second section of the book, Kincaid focuses on a retrospective view of her life in the old Antigua ruled by England. She mentions the different circumstances in which racism and poverty were very noticeable. "People can recite the name of the first Antiguan (black person) to eat a sandwich at a clubhouse and the day on which it happened; people can recite the name of the first Antiguan (black person) to play golf on the golf course and the day on which the event took place." Jamaica Kincaid expresses her insider view of her birthplace, but I firmly believe every tourist should became an outsider insider by searching information of the place they will going to visit.

"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." - Jamaica Kincaid

Tips to Antigua's tourists

My Island, My Home...

What is home? Roberts (2008) described home as "variable and may be the place of birth, place of residence or may be defined by the popular notion 'where the hearts is'. But I think that home is more than just the place of birth, residence or 'where the heart is'. Home is something that we can identify with. It is not just a place, it is OUR place. 

Our island has its unique enchantment as one of the most beautiful places to go on vacations, but it is also more than this. In the research I have done, I found a lot of comments of tourists who came to our island and talked about some of the realities of Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, other tourists made pointless comments about our country. Outsiders have their own opinion; their own perspective. As a Puerto Rican and insider of my country, I have another perspective of what I called home. Some of my points match with the statements of the tourists; others not. As an example of the pointless comments, one tourist wrote: "No mountains near the beach. Not Hawaii, but cool for what it is." I think this tourist never went to beaches like Playa Escondida in Fajardo nor Flamenco Beach in Culebra. These beaches are surrounded by mountains and they are such really beautiful. However, Puerto Rico is more than its beaches and the Old San Juan. The center of Puerto Rico is full of history, fauna, flora, and many interesting places to visit not only as an outsider but as an insider too. Instead most of the tourists emphasizes at the perfect beaches, great food and weather, the one that caught my attention was the comment about our unique culture. "Culture...that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." (Tylor, 1871). We identify ourselves with our culture and the language is an important part of it. 

Our island is also recognized for its crime, violence and drug problems and a poor economy. It is also important to establish here we have a lot of poverty and many sceneries in which we can easily contrast between the ones who are economically well instead of those who are not.  However, these problems are not only from our country. There are many countries that are equal to or worse than us. Therefore, I recommend Puerto Rico as a place not only to visit, but also to live. Puerto Rico is our home. Puerto Rico is MY HOME! 

Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society shows the story of a group of students at Welton Academy that are influenced in some way by their new professor of English Literature, Mr. John Keating. Some of the students experienced changes in both their internal and external journeys proving that Carpe Diem is something extraordinary. "Seize the day": it's all about it. It's what Carpe Diem is about. Tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence. These were the four pillars that rules the lives of the students at the Academy and the ones they had to overcome by thinking for their own and achieving what they most want to. Throughout the movie, Neil Perry and Todd Anderson are the ones who changes at most.

Neil loves acting, but his father wants him to become a doctor because he has opportunities that he never had at his age. Mr. Perry seems to be a strict, demanding, and serious man who rules the life of his son at all aspects.  As the movie starts, Mr. Perry ordered Neil to quit from an extracurricular activity and Neil didn't have any option instead of followed his father's instructions.  Once Mr. Keating started teaching at the Academy, Neil proposed his friends to make the Dead Poets Society. He started to see the world from other point of view. This is when his internal journey starts to be revealed. As the movie continues, he became excited because he was selected to be the main character of a play. Consequently, he disobeyed his father's rules by didn't quitting from the play, but he was really happy doing what he loves. This act reflects his external journey as a consequence of his internal journey. But there's more. After his performing at the play, Mr. Perry took Neil home and Neil commit suicide with   his father's gun. Does he have some other option? Neil's internal journey led him to commit suicide because he couldn't handle his father's pressure and his father would never let him to study an acting career.

On the other hand, there is Todd Anderson. He seems to be a very shy young who shares room with Neil Perry. Once he started taking class with Mr. Keating, he seems to deal with his situation. Mr. Keating helped him to overcome his biggest fear: let his voice being heard by others. "YAWP!" This is a reflection of his internal journey: overcoming self confidence and leaving shyness behind. Todd's external journey is reflected after the death of Neil. He became sad and he screams out loud. That was the "YAWP!" technique. At the end of the movie, we  see a valiant Todd who decides to be the first to honored Mr. Keating after he leaves Welton Academy. This is his climax; his internal journey reflected at his maximum point in an external way.

We can accept our parents guide us throughout our lives, but we must never accept them to force us to study something we don't like. NEVER! We must trust in ourselves and achieve our goals.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." - Mr. John Keating 

My Life in Bright Colors

Hi everyone! My name is Alessandra Torres and I'm twenty years old. I came from Colegio Nuestra Señora de la Providencia in Río Piedras in which I studied from fourth grade to Senior year of high school. Before that, I coursed first to third grade of primary school at Colegio San Pedro Mártir in Guaynabo. I was born in San Juan and I have the pleasure to be the daughter of extraordinary and lovely parents who are the ones who have been always there for me and still helping me to design my own script. I have two siblings that I love too much: Camila, who is seven, and Fabián, who is thirteen years old.  Being the oldest sister is a special title: it means that I'm their role model. Fabián came to the world when I was seven and I have to let you know that I was very excited and I still was after his birth. I begged my mother to give me a   little brother to have someone to play with. He was like my "baby" when I played to be the "mom" of my dolls. Camila came to my life when I was thirteen and I got thrilled too. I'm also pleasured to have a stepmother and a stepfather  because my parents got divorced when I was just a baby.  

I started taking ballet classes since I was four years old and jazz classes since I was seven.  I really loved it, but when I became 10 years old I decided to leave the dance and to take tennis classes. My tennis affair lasted only one year. Then, I wasn't doing anything! When I was fourteen years old, I started dancing with the Folkloric Ballet of Guaynabo and the Ballet Folklórico Nacional de Puerto Rico directed by Tony D'Astro. Dancing is my passion and it is also one of my hobbies. During my school years, I participated in many activities and one of them was the Talent Show. I have a twin whose name is John Travolta. It's joking! I did the Travolta's character in Grease's performance on a Talent Show. It was a little hard for me, but I did it! Otherwise, I have been in some places like New York, Orlando, Arizona, Dominican Republic, and Culebra. Someday, I will like to visit Europe. That's one of my life goals.

My family and friends are very important for me. About that, I suffered my first and only big lost with my grandpa's death. If I were asked to point out the most saddest day of my life, I will definitely answer that it was that day. My family, specially my parents, were my support in such difficult situation. They have been for me through my life. I can proudly say that I'm the person I'm today today because of their dedication and guidance to my life; their interest in gave me a good education and prepared me to college life; and the respect they always show at my own decisions. Therefore, I graduated from high school and got accepted at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus where I'm a Cellular & Molecular Biology major student. About my future, I want to be a  forensic pathologist. That's my biggest life goal. Getting a bachelor degree is my short-term goal. "If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney

Reflection on Billy Mills (2)

As I mentioned in my last post about Billy Mills, he was very focused in his principles because that's what defines him as an Indian. Today, we saw a Billy whose determination was being affected by his own decisions. But we can't just blame him for that. We have to put on his shoes and think about it. We have to move back in time to those days Billy was a college student. What if your family can't accept your 'new life'? Does it will going to affect your academic and extracurricular performance?

For Billy, the response was clearly affirmative. Just after the visit of his family, he started to be the last in the racing practices. Those days he wasn't focused at all. He was floating on his internal journey. "I want to be back in the reservation. The reservation is my home. I don't know what's happening." This is not all. Unfortunately, his brother, Frank, committed suicide and this situation devastated him a lot. He didn't wanted to go back at the university nor stayed at the reservation. Therefore, he joined the Marine because "I have to find my own place in the world" as he explained to his sister in the letter he sent her. After all, he started training again because he was focused in accomplish his dream: be the winner of the 10,000 meter Tokyo Olympics. His external journey is reflected again after he established his principal objective. Billy's determination to win the Tokyo Olympics made him to clear his mind. He wanted to make history for his community...and he did it. At the end of the movie, spectators can see a happy, successful and proud Indian athlete, Billy Mills.

"It doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always." -Oprah Winfrey

Reflection on Billy Mills

Running Brave is a movie based on a true story about a Native American, Billy Mills, who won the 10,000 meter Gold Medal in the Tokyo Olympics from 1964. Throughout the movie, we can see how Billy has to deal with "both worlds": his internal and external journey. The movie shows up racism and marginalization taking from the point of Billy's origin; of Billy's way of being. Billy was raised in an Indian Reservation in South Dakota and he encounters with the opportunity to go to the University of Kansas because of his marvelous performance in running. As he arrived at the University, he started facing his external journey. Everything was different from his life at the reservation. He started to dealing with racism for being an Indian. Something that caught my attention and relates to this racism is the scene where Billy was asked if he was from Puerto Rico. Why did that student asked him this? I think it's all about the racism not only with the Native American people, but also with people from other countries and ethnicities.

Do people must change and leave back his feelings and emotions away to try to fix in a group? No, and this is what specifically Billy teaches us. Here is the point when both internal and external journey merge together. Instead of the request from the coach to play dirty, he was convinced in himself and on what he can do and therefore he followed his feelings and emotions. Billy's decisions shows how his principles were defined.  It's not about to live and survive the unexpected situations from the external journey; it's about to deal with the feelings from the internal journey to succeed in the external way. 

"But my thoughts changes from 'one more try, one more try' to 'I can win, I can win, I can win'." -Billy Mills

About Billy Mills: http://indianyouth.org/billy-mills

Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F5iCsymMj0