Tourist for a Day

               

The place I choose to be the tourist of the day was Hotel San Juan. I actually work in the hotel thus had an advantage to talk to people from different cultures and perspectives. On a regular basis I do not tend to ask the guest many questions besides those that are only necessary but to make a point started behaving like I was a traveler who found a job at a hotel in his new foreign home and I was subjected to how the “locals” react towards me.

                The first persons I talked to in the day turned out to be Newyoricans and they never broke their identity (speaking Spanish) until they forgot how to say a word in English. I sensed that they actually had forgotten about their native language or that they thought that in some way I did not know how to speak in Spanish, even though I never got the answer because I never asked. That lead me to continue the conversation in Spanish which I think eased some tension between us since the language had created a barriers that was quite notable.  I have spoken with many people that are Puertorican ex-pat but that conversation made an impact on me because they never broke character even though they were not supposed to but after we switched languages they started talking about their “glory” days when they were young in Puerto Rico. That got me thinking if you, as a Puertorican, love Puerto Rico so much and are in Puerto Rico at the moment why not speak the language that is usually spoken?  To me it just seemed as an identity collision gone wrong.

                Through out the say I had many different interaction most which basically involved saying the same things given that because I am at a hotel guest tend to ask many things about Puerto Rico. At one time I was giving a local beer to a North American guy who was staying at the hotel and when he received it at my face he said to his wife in a funny way “oh look honey a Mexican beer” to which I did not respond kindly given the fact that it’s not Mexican, we are not in Mexico and I am no Mexican either, not that I have a problem with Mexicans but the way that it made me feel was that to his even though I am an American citizen my identity to him lied in Mexico.

                To me this activity was very interesting because I had the opportunity to behave differently with different people that had different identities. to my surprise the most identity which I had an impact was when I was myself because when I changed my identity everything went fluently. I do not know if it was because people thought I was not from around and treated me differently. Definitely I would recommend this activity to anyone and as for myself am going to repeat it but in another scenario.

               

                

Group Reflexion

                During the whole semester this was the class in which I spent most of the time talking to my class mates and meeting people. The opportunity to achieve this was given by the groups that were formed from the whole class. Thanks to this I learned that it’s easier and less stressful to pass the class along with your group. My first experience with the group was awkward because I had never had a group to which specific tasks where given to. So for the long run I did not put any restrictions on my mind, my only thought was that I had to “survive” the class with these new found friends. As each class past the group was more communicative and open, brain storming allowed for everyone to input their thoughts. The first project was a little complicated with what everyone had to do and how, but for the next few projects, without dividing the work, everyone knew what each had to do. Aside from everybody doing their work we gave each other a hand so the project as a whole would be better since everyone’s concerns were heard.

                I enjoyed the dynamics that each group had because we were all doing the same things but just like that perspective from each group varied in the sense that basically the idea was the same but the interpretations were different. I think having a group in a class has never been more interesting and enjoyable as this one, many other classes make a group to help each other but at the end of the semester there are 2 or less persons carrying the weight of the whole group where as this class never became that stereotyped college group. In conclusion this class was a new experience, to which I already have even suggested it to friends,  that is very stimulating and serves a  template of how group projects should be held.

Travel Book: "The Motorcycle Diaries"

Che working on his motorcycle "La Poderosa II"

The Motorcycle Diaries is a memoir that traces the early travels of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, then a 23-year-old medical student, and his friend Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old biochemist. Leaving Buenos Aires, Argentina, in January 1952 on the back of a sputtering single cylinder 1939 Norton 500cc dubbed La Poderosa , they desired to explore the South America they only knew from books. During the formative odyssey Guevara is transformed by witnessing the social injustices of exploited mine workers, persecuted communists, ostracized lepers, and the tattered descendants of a once-great Incan civilization. By journey's end they travel for a symbolic nine months by motorcycle, steamship, raft, horse, bus, and hitchhiking, covering more than 8,000 kilometres (5,000 mi) across places such as the Andes, Atacama Desert, and the Amazon River Basin. The diary ends with a declaration by Guevara, born into an upper-middle-class family, displaying his willingness to fight and die for the cause of the poor, and his dream of seeing a united Latin America.

Route Che traveled in South America

Blog Reflexion

                When I started this blog the first thing that came to mind was how will I make a blog, which I have never done before, and present it in a somewhat way of saying “hey I’m a blogger read about what I have to say”. For sure as you can read I was terrified of the blog the idea of revealing my ideas to people and a professor I did not know felt like I was put the task on of portraying myself as someone who knew what he was talking about. For the first half of the class I felt very pressured by the blog and the ideas I was going to blur out on the internet but after having my journey journal with me for a while I started opening up to my opinions because the journal had given me the right tool I needed to make the blog which was helping me think in a straight idea without starting to write about something completely different after my mind had wondered off somewhere in an theory called “first thoughts”.

                Throughout the class we were given topics that would make their way into the opinions of our blogs. The first blogs I struggle to find my way through it because I’m not a fan of writing a lot so it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Through those topics I could channel better my writing until I felt more comfortable writing about my first thoughts. I can see from my blog that from every blog entry I kept learning more and more about the way I write, the way I should write and if I was transmitting the idea I wanted to transmit through my writing. I defiantly can say I have improved on my writing as well as my confidence in expressing my opinion through it. My experience with this blog was not half as bad as I imagined it from my first post. I think that this is an experience every student has to go through in order to reassure themselves about their thought process as they have to be able to support their claiming through writing in the internet. You do not want to be the guy that is caught in a lie by himself.

Jim Cooper

   

Cover of the book "Down in the Island"

It’s very interesting how perspective shifts between people from different places, many that travel abroad to settle in another culture, after a few years, are still treated as outsiders. Why does this happen? Outsiders at the same time might not fully grasp on to what makes their new home different from their old one. As portrayed with an American Professor teaching in Puerto Rico in the book “Down on the island” by Jim Cooper. Jim cooper had to adjust to Puertorican lifestyle quickly as he started teaching in the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez  where he arrive with the idea that he would have the same influence of Puertorican culture  from his students as the students would have of his North American culture.

     On the teaching chapter of the book the first his first clash of “procedures” happened when he was given the syllabus of his class at the colegio because he did not make any sense of it other that it what completely improvised and not adjusted well enough for student needs. The course was made up supposing that every student at least had 3 years of some sort of English class on high school and given the fact that student numbers were growing and most were from public schools who may have given the class or not. To his surprise the English department was not taken seriously and students are forced to go through the class instead of learning actually anything from it. Given the point that some professors do not know the proper way to pronounce or teach the course, as they just “follow the book”. I think many students from the UPR system can relate to at least one class where the professor really does not care and this is one of the things that the professor and I too think, that should be done differently.

   

Jim Cooper (actually)

When Professor Cooper started his second year at the colegio he was encountered with a situation that he shared with among his fellow professors and it was the outrageous ways that the students cheated during their examinations. This was his second clash with the identity of the Puertoricans, for which he later understood when he found out that students during their elementary school where encouraged to “help” each other when somebody did not know the answer to a problem. He had to cope knowing that his students will continue to help each other because they were raised that way the same way North Americans are raised to be competitive in everything including not helping others during examinations. By helping , students even thought that being  nice to the professor would be enough to earn a good grade even when their work was poorly done, top which the professor did not tend to incline and to what he found out that many of the relationships where based of the same facts that lead him to figure out what encouraged young college students to cheat during their college days.

On his trip down to the island the professor had to deal with the burden that came with teaching his culture while learning from a new one in a simultaneous process. From what I could take out from the book the professor could not assimilate completely into the Puertorican culture even though he accepted the way things were done here because he understood that he could still make the difference teaching, his students at least, what needed to be taught.  In the book he could grasp an essence of what is like to be a student in the University of Puerto Rico, if he could not understand how the syllabus work around for the preparation of the student, imagine how would a student react when he is forced to take a course that he does not understand when the professor does not understand either.  All in all I enjoyed reading these chapters because it was something I could identify with and it was interesting see it from the other perspective as a professor.

Journey Journal Reflexion

     In conclusion to the whole experience of having a journal for the first time, although I have to admit it was a process, I have to say I liked it because for me it was really an internal journey learning experience.  All most every day I registered my thoughts and how my life was going moving on forward, that gave me insight into the direction I was headed and the way the path was being made because later on I could read what I was thinking only to laugh about how my emotions clouded my judgment and that got in the way of a solution to something that was right in my face.  The journal also helped me to be more careful in the way I do things because even me reading some of the things I had done in the day seem to have different meanings depending on the situation.

The way that the journal was written using first thoughts made me realized I had to improve in my thought process and develop faster thinking skills in order to write exactly what I want so I do not have to cross something out later. I took this as a daily exercise because it allowed me the time to reflect on my thought process. Even though I say it as it was easy it really was not, to say the least having this opportunity was harder than I expected for personally I do not tend to say everything I think out loud and this was certainly a way of doing so.

     After all it was an enjoyable learning experience to which I still have mixed feelings to whether if I would do it again but I defiantly recommend it to anyone who can and have the desire to do so because you do not know what might you encounter yourself with.

Supernovae reveal on an accelerating universe by Adam Riess

         

Adam Riess

  Adam Riess is an astrophysicist born in the U.S.A. known for his motivation driven research of supernovas. Riess won the Shaw Prize in astronomy in 2006 and by 2001 he had won also the Nobel Prize in physics along with his colleges for their reveal of an expanding accelerating universe through supernovas.

            The supernovas studied by Riess where a type 1-A white dwarf which are powered by radioactive nuclear decay, have ¼ the mass of the sun and are not stable (energy-wise). They used this type of star because a supernova produces consistent peak luminosity given by the uniform mass that explodes via the accretion mechanism. This value allows these explosions to be used as like candles,process first discovered by Edwin Hubble, to measure the distance relatively to earth but can be used for other galaxies because the visual magnitude of the supernovae depends primarily on the distance. When a white dwarf explodes it releases the brightest light it can emit and Hubble helped discover the distance it was from the earth relative with the speed of light. Later by conclusions from other scientist it was determined that if a star is twice as faint, compared to the explosion, it is 4x farther that the Hubble constant and if it is thrice as faint the supernova is actually 9x farther. Thanks to Hubble, Riess can measure distances which can help him determine whether the universe is expanding at a scaling speed.

          

Timely evolution of the universe

  Riess learned that the universe was expanding with acceleration by taking different distances from different white dwarfs around the universe and comparing them throughout different period of time and to other near galaxies, he got to the conclusion because he found out that the planets where every time getting more distance in between them, each time farther and farther thus the theory of the accelerating expanding universe was born. Using this new found knowledge the age of the universe changed, and it was not only because of the supernovas. The age of the universe first became known using the Space Telescope to be from 10-11 billion years which was not taken seriously after a few years because a scientist discovered a piece of rock that dated back to 13.5-14 billion years which threw off the equation by around 3 billion years. Using the white dwarfs, the same way Riess used it to measure an accelerating universe but in reverse, there was found a more accurate result of 13.8 billion years to which the scientific community took in as their new data. Riess almost did not get the appreciation he deserved after all those years trying to decipher how the universe was expanding because he knew he had another team of scientist, working on the same thing, on his heels so when he got his conclusion he and his colleges decided it was time to change the astrophysicist world by publishing it before the other group. The other group had to publish it a year later and it was found that they had almost the same conclusion but a small detail was that Riess and his team found it faster.

            I really enjoyed this conference because it was entertaining and because I am fascinated by space research, a little confession I envy anyone who get to travel and to study space because they get to see what people on earth never get to see or even do. There is not many thing known about the universe, the same as in  earth with our oceans, but that is was interest me the most, look a all the bizarre an amazing thing there are in space and it is hypothesized to be only less than 1 % because every other thing is either dark matter, dark energy or gas.