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.