Ice Cream Shop

                Everyone hates their first job and, I am no exception. At the start of the summer of my junior year of high school, my parents decided that I needed to do something “productive” over summer and told me I needed to get a job. Despite my protests, I eventually gave in and went on my first job search. Like many things in life, the first job search is always the worst. I looked in the classifieds of the newspaper to try and find any available job openings but, I didn’t have any experience so did not qualify for any of those positions. Due to this, I decided I would just walk around town and pick up applications from anywhere that looked semi-interesting.

                My door to door job search was quite an experience. I choose first to go to all of the local restaurants, which I considered kosher, to apply for a busboy or server position. This included many pizza places and sandwich shops. Mexican and fried food restaurants were definitively off my list as desirable places of employment and thus, were avoided. After I had exhausted every restaurant in a ten mile radius of my house, I moved on to other obscure opportunities of employment. I applied everywhere from a job at the car wash to a life guard on the lazy river at the waterpark. Eventually after about a week of searching I was hired at a local Ice Cream shop called “Ojai Ice Cream”.

                It was awful. Going into my job, at the ice cream store, I thought it would be fun. I would get to hang out in an air conditioned room all day and eat all the ice cream I wanted. However while I could eat all of the ice cream I wanted, I did not consider the potential downsides to working at an Ice Cream parlor. The first thing I realized was I would have to deal with little kids. My typical customer client interaction would go something like this: Little Johnny would walk in with his mom screaming “YAY ICE CREAM!” Next he would go along the entire pane of glass, which protects the ice cream from the kids, and shout every flavor he knew, while in the process getting fingerprints and spit all over the glass. Finally after about five minutes of debating, he would pick a flavor, always Rocky Road. After this, he and his mother would go sit down at a table to eat the ice cream and Johnny would spill it everywhere and get everything sticky. Then they would leave and, I would have to clean up the soiled glass pane and clean the three foot radius, around where Johnny ate his ice cream, with a mop. It was an awesome summer.

                At first, I thought I was going to have to quit in the first week but, eventually I became semi numb to the effects of children on a sugar high. However, one part about my first job, at the ice cream shop, that I can really remember well, was my first pay check. It was for 192 dollars. I remember cashing it in at the bank and thinking “this job isn’t that bad”. That first pay check was a big step in growing up. I recognized it was the first time that I had earned something. I wasn’t given anything. I earned it. To this day I still look at that ice cream shop and cringe but, I will never forget that it was where I earned my firt dollar.

Sibling

There are few things that can affect your life as much as your siblings. Sometimes you are born already having one and, sometimes they come into your world while you are growing up. The later applies to me. Even though I was only four at the time I can remember how much my life changed once I got my little sister.

                I can’t remember when my parents told me I was going to have a younger sibling but, definitely remember being excited about it. I remember telling my aunt and uncle that soon I would have a baby brother or sister, as if they didn’t already know. I remember asking some of my friends, who already had siblings, what it was like to have one. For some reason, no one seemed as excited as me about this new development in life but looking back, I now see that it was a common occurrence. However, I was four and, I didn’t know better.

                In the months leading up to the birth of my sibling, I thought of all the new possibilities having one would entail. I would have a friend to play with when I wasn’t at school. I wouldn’t have to do stuff alone. Maybe my parents would be too busy with my sibling keep in timeout too. I never even considered there would be downsides to go along with a sibling as well.

                I can remember clearly the day my sister was born. My dad came into my room and woke me up in what I thought was the middle of the night; it was 9:00pm. We rushed to the car with my mom and drove to the hospital. I fell asleep on the way there. Once we arrived my parents both went away somewhere and, I was left with my grandma in the lobby to wait. I quickly fell back asleep. I can’t really remember much of the rest of the night but, I remember my dad waking me up in the morning and telling me that my mom would have to rest in the hospital a day or two so, I was to go home with grandma. I remember her taking me to her house and, when we got there she gave me Thomas the Tank Engine train set. I was stoked. Do kids always get presents on their siblings birthdays? I didn’t realize at the time she was just trying to make me happy because my parents had to pay attention to my sister.

                For the next several months it seemed as if everything in my life had changed. No longer was I the sole center of attention in the house. My parents were constantly paying attention to my little sister and, I felt hardly noticed. Even worse, my little sisters crib was put in my room so, she would constantly wake me up in the middle of the night. However, I eventually got used to it.

                The first year of having a sibling was an eye opening experience. I realized, for the first time, I wasn’t the only important thing in the world. In one quick event, my only child complex had been shattered. I began to see everything differently. I realized I had some responsibilities now to someone other than myself. It taught me to be a team player. Eventually I got used to having someone else around the house and after a year I couldn’t even remember what it was like to be an only child. However to this day, I still believe that having a sibling is one of the most important parts of growing up in life.

Conversation #6

I met with my conversation partner for the final time today. As this was the last time we were going to meet I wanted to discuss what her plans were going to be for the summer. Was she going to continue working? Was she going to try and take any summer school classes? Or was she simply going to back to Venezuela for the summer? However once I started to ask her these questions I realized that she was not proficient at speaking English in future tense.

                When I asked her where she was going, she would respond something like, “I go to…” I found this lack of knowledge of the future tense interesting for several reasons. First it was strange how I had never noticed it before. Perhaps we had talked so little about the future in our conversations that talking in the future tense was never required. It is also possible that I had just never noticed it before over her heavy accent. Also, the lack of experience with the future tense interested me because I always believed that the past tense of English was always harder for foreign language speakers to learn. When speaking in the past tense it usually involves changing the verb significantly whereas, in the future tense you generally just add -ing to the end of the verb. Regardless of the reason for her struggles with the future tense, it only bothered me for the first several minutes or so before I got used to it.

                When we finally got around to talking about our plans for the summer, she told me she wanted to know what I was going to do over summer first. I told her that I was going back home to California for the summer to stay with my family there. While I was back home, I said I was going to work the whole summer to make some money for another year of school here at TCU. She then told me that she was going to try and work this summer as well and, that she was going to stay in the Dallas-Fort Worth area the entire summer. I was curious where she planned to work, due to her lack of English experience, so I asked her “what types of jobs can you get with limited English skills?”

                Apparently most of the jobs she was looking at applying for in the DFW area did not require her to know any English. She told me, in almost all of the Spanish speaking areas of the city, the jobs did not require she know any English because all of the customers and employees she would be working with would be native Spanish speakers as well. She even said that her limited English skills were much greater than many of the workers in those areas. This surprised me. I had no idea there was such a big job market in the area for individuals who did not speak any English.

                I asked her how so many jobs, in the local area, could not require you to know English. She informed me that there are essentially two sides to Fort Worth. There is the side I am familiar with where everyone speaks and does things in English. However, she told me that many areas around Fort Worth function almost entirely in Spanish. She told me that in the grocery store she shops in and in many of the restaurants she goes to she hardly ever hears a word of English. This shocked me. It made me realize how oblivious I was to a whole other culture living right next to me that I had never even thought about. It also made me a little sad thinking how even now in the 21^st century we are so segregated, in the US.

                Reflecting back on all my conversations with Peggy, over the semester, I was struck by the fact that she had probably taught me just as much as I had taught her. I may have given her a chance to learn and experience conversational English but, she taught me so much more about the Hispanic community in the Fort Worth area. Thinking back to our first conversation, I had gone into it viewing it as a form of community service. I was helping someone out who needed my help. However, reflecting back upon it now I can see that having a conversational partner is a group learning experience that teaches both parties equally.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Joyce Carol Oates’ short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, like many of the other short stories we have read, is about a young girl transitioning into a woman. However unlike some of the other stories, Oates’ story of transition into womanhood is much darker and is painful for the reader to read and experience.

The story starts with a general discretion of the daily life of Connie, a fifteen year old girl exploring her sexuality as a woman. Connie hates her life at home where “[she] wishes her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over.” In order to escape the prison of her home, she frequently goes out with her friend to the movies and a drive in restaurant, where they meet up with boys. The story draws a clear distinction between Connie’s life at home and away from home.

“Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home . . but high-pitched and nervous anywhere else . . .”

Clearly Oates is depicting Connie living a dual life. At home she is attempting to maintain her childhood in front of her family and, outside of the house at the shopping plaza, she experiments with her growing womanhood. However this balance cannot last and, Connie’s childhood is shattered when her lifestyle outside her house comes home with her.

                One Sunday when Connie’s family is away at a barbeque, Arnold Friend, a boy who she saw while out, comes to her house to get her. From her first encounter with Arnold, Connie realizes that there is something strange about him. Oates depicts him as having shaggy hair, a style not popular with most boys, and using expressions that went out of date the year before. His unusual appearance and demeanor give the reader an uneasy feeling and seem to foreshadow a traumatic event.

                When Arnold appears in the driveway, Connie goes to question him. She leans out the halfway out the doorway, inquiring as to why he is here. The fact that Connie is halfway in the house and halfway out of it indicates she is unsure of how to act in the situation. Should she attempt to act as a woman, as she does while she is out? Or should she maintain her identity as a child, as she does in her home? In the end she just stays perched in the doorway, forcing Arnold Friend to determine in which direction she falls to.

                After a short bout of flirting between Connie and Arnold, the situation becomes tense when Connie realized Arnold is much older than herself. At this point, she demands that he leave. However, this only seems to make him more aggressive and he proceeds to come closer to the door of the house. This causes Connie to withdraw into the house, into her childlike persona. After several tense exchanges, Connie continues to back farther into the house until she finally reaches for the phone to call for help. Then something happens, which is not entirely clear but, the lines “Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness” seem to indicate a rape scene. During this scene, “She cried out, she cried for her mother” showing that she was trying to grasp out for her last bits of childhood.

                After the rape scene, it appears that Connie has lost all sense of her childhood. With barely any urging, Arnold convinces her to leave the house and “out into the sunlight where [he] waited.” In these final lines of the story Connie leaves the house, and her childhood, behind and steps out into the adult world, which Arnold Friend has forced her into.

Space Race

Note: I accidently posted this on my blog for my english class "Everything is an argument" on 4/16/12 and just realized my mistake so i am posting it on here now.

Thumbing through the pages of the March 3, 1961 edition of Life magazine, one theme was very apparent, the fascination with the space race. The cover of the Magazine depicted John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, and Alan Shepard looking u in the sky. Recently it was announced that one of these three men would be the first American in space. Obviously the thought of a man in space was on the forefront of everyone’s mind as almost a third of the magazine was devoted to this theme of space. However, what I found most interesting in this article was not the fascination with space but, the interest in beating the Russians at every step along the way.

                The article I chose to focus upon spanned pages 32-33 and it discussed the space exploration timetable for both the Soviet Union and the United States. The article started out by discussing what both nations had already achieved in the space race. The Russians had up to this point already launched numerous satellites, landed a probe on the moon, and launched and retrieved to dogs from space. The article then used an exasperated tone to describe the Americans achievements, which consisted of only getting a few satellites into orbit. Clearly the author of this piece was less than satisfied with Americans achievements in space up to this point. It almost seemed as if he were trying to goad the space program into taking greater actions by being pessimistic towards their efforts. From here the article gets much more entertaining.

                The next section of the article discusses the space exploration time table from 1961 to 1973. Back in this time period it seems that the expectations of conquering space as the final frontier where exceedingly high. According to the graphic representation of the space time table the Russians were expecting to have a man on the moon by 1967, only six years after this issue was published. From here, it seems, they expected to have a rover on both Mars and Venus by 1968 and a permanent orbiting space station by late 1969. The fact that the only permanent space station, a project consisting of over seven of the wealthiest nations, has not been completed and it is over forty years later, is a testament to the optimism of the time period. The United States’ space exploration time table seemed almost underachieving compared to the soviet one. The first major US breakthrough, getting a man in space, was scheduled for 1962, almost a year and a half after the soviets had achieved the same goal. From here, the US had no other major projects scheduled until 1971 when it planned to land its first man on the moon.

                What interested me most about this article was the respect it gave to the Soviet Union as a nation. Today every American believes that we are the greatest nation in the world. However back when this article was written, it is clear that we have not always thought this way. The notion of any country beating us in anyway technologically is unthinkable. This is why I found it so interesting that the article says that the Russians not only beat us into space but will beat us to the moon and mars as well. However, it is still apparent in the writing and in some of the other articles in the book that the US Space program and the American people were not going to give up and let the Russians beat them to space and, they would do everything in their power to win the space race.

Conversation #5

I met with my conversation partner for our fifth conversation meeting today. At our last meeting, my partner had informed me that she would no longer be attending the TCU English learning classes because she was just too busy. This set the tone for our last conversation, in which we discussed alternative ways she could go about learning English such as reading and TV. To follow up on what we had discussed last time, I asked my partner how her English progression has been going since leaving the TCU program.

                The first topic we discussed was how the media and TV were helping her learn English. Previously, I had suggested that she attempt to read a few books in English but, she hardly reads any books in Spanish, let alone English. Due to this, we agreed that watching more television in English would help her learn to listen better to English conversations. I asked her how much English TV she usually watches per day. She said that she mostly listens to the news in Spanish but, there are several TV shows that she likes to watch. She said that she likes to watch the shows “Revenge” and “The Jersey Shore” on TV. Naturally I asked her whether she thought watching “The Jersey Shore” was helping to improve her English. She told me, that while the show was entertaining, there were a lot of words she couldn’t understand, and weren’t defined in a dictionary. This came as no surprise to me as, I can’t even understand some of what the actors on that show say. I explained to her that the actors in “The Jersey Shore” speak a “dialect” of English which is not formal and, it might not help her learn English as well as watching some more wholesome types of shows might. While explaining this to her, she told me that Venezuelans feel that some of the countries surrounding the Gulf of Mexico speak a dialect of Spanish that is considered inferior in Spain and some south American countries.

                The notion that some dialects of Spanish were considered inferior to others seemed interesting to me. I imagine that it is similar to some of the views on types of accents in the United States. For example, most people view African American Vernacular (or Ebonics) as an inferior dialect of English. It even occurred to me many people in California, where I live, consider Texan and Southern accents inferior because of the slow speech and drawl, which they consider to be a sign of being less intelligence. I asked my conversation partner if any of the Spanish speakers in Texas ever tell her she has an accent. Apparently, she gets asked all the time, by people she doesn’t know, “where are you from?” because of her accent. She told me that many people think she is from Spain because she speaks in a much more formal tone than is generally spoken in Texas. She compared the difference between her Spanish and Texas Spanish as similar to the difference between English from England and American English.

                  I thought it was odd that she was able to tell the difference between different types of English accents, since I am unable to tell the difference between Spanish accents. I told her “I can’t distinguish between any Spanish accents. How are you able to distinguish between English ones?” Apparently, the only way she is able to distinguish between English accents is whether she is able to understand them or not. She told me she can’t understand people from Australia, Boston, or Minnesota so, she knows there must be heavy accents in those areas. I confirmed that those areas definitely had distinctive heavy accents. At this point, our conversation was drawing to an end but, she told me that for the next conversation she would bring her laptops so, she could show me a video compilation of all the different types of Spanish accents.

The House on Mango Street

                When reading through Sandra Cisneros’ novel “The House on Mango Street”, I was struck by its broad appeal to many types of readers. Both an elementary school student and a college student would be able to read the novel and get something out of it. While the book may seem adolescent, due to its short chapters and relatively simple writing, the concepts that are underneath the surface of the writing are mature enough to draw an interest from more experienced readers. This notion that a seemingly simplistic novel has so much more to it under the surface is what struck me most about it.

                The chapters in the house on Mango Street seemed to reflect many of the short stories seen in Ernest Hemingway’s writings, due to the widespread use of the “Iceberg theory of writing. In fact, “The House on Mango Street” can even be seen as a modern day equivalent to the Nick Adams stories by Hemingway. In both of these sets of stories, the protagonist is an adolescent who is growing to adulthood from the experiences they are facing in they are facing in their lives.

                The theme of racism is apparent in both the short stories of Cisneros on Esperanza and those of Hemingway on Nick Adams.  In the Nick Adams stories, we see him experience racism in the stories “Indian Camp” and “Ten Indians”. Through these short stories we see Nick recognize the stereotypes His friends and family put on the Indian people such as Alcoholism. Similarly, see Esperanza experience stereotypes through the short stories “Cathy Queen of Cats” and “Those who don’t”. The only difference between Nick and Esperanza’s experiences on racism seems to be Esperanza is actually receiving it whereas, Nick is just an observer. We recognize this when Cathy tells Esperanza the neighborhood is getting bad after she moves in and, when Esperanza reflects on how people tend to stay away from her neighborhood or drive fast through it.

                In both sets of stories, we also see the characters attempt to age prematurely by trying to act older. In Nick Adams’ case, we see him and his friend trying to act like adults by drinking whiskey and talking about novels. However in the end, they revert to their childish nature by walking out into a storm with shotguns while significantly intoxicated. In Esperanza’s case, she and her friends try to become women by wearing seductive shoes. However when confronted by a bum who wants a kiss, they quickly hide the shoes and act as children again.

                Perhaps the most important parallel between the two sets of short stories is the responsibility they place on the reader. Both writers tell their stories as if you are present at the scene of the action. They give no underlying information or analysis of the situation. They simply tell it how it is. This makes us as readers responsible for dissecting the story and figuring out what is going on behind the scenes. For instance in the stories “Cathy Queen of Cats” and “Ten Indians”, we are never told that racism is underneath the surface of the stories. However, we are still able to pick up that racism is the theme because we are able to critically analyze the story.

                Clearly Sandra Cisneros modeled some of her writing in “The House on Mango Street” after Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, particularly the coming of age stories on Nick Adams. This is certainly evident in the “Iceberg” style of writing but, it is also clear that many of the same coming of themes, seen in Hemingway, are echoed in Cisneros’ novel.

Climbing the Mountain

                Growing up I always had a fascination for the outdoors. I think some of this originated from my exposure to it from an early age. I went on my first camping trip with my parents when I was five years old. Four years later, at nine I went on my first backpacking trip with my father. There was always something exciting about leaving the house, and city life, behind and going on an adventure somewhere new, whether it be the beach or the backcountry of Southern California. However, despite my affinity for the outdoors I had never been camping far from my home. I really wanted to go to one of the famous national forests that dot the American landscape Yosemite, Yellowstone, or the Redwoods. This was when I decided that I wanted to climb Mt. Whitney.

                Located in central California, on the opposite side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains as Yosemite, Mt. Whitney stands as the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. I’d grown up hearing about Mt. Whitney in elementary school geography. It was one of those facts about California teachers tend to bring up, “We have the tallest mountain in America.” However, I had never seen any pictures of it nor did I know what the climate of the area was but still, I was eager to climb it.

                It was the summer going into my eighth grade year, when my father and I decided we were going to attempt the climb. In the days leading up to our departure I prepared everything. I packed my backpack with all of the essentials tent, stove, fuel, food, sleeping bag, clothes. However the night before, I suddenly felt nervous about the trip. What if I can’t make it to the top? What if I get altitude sickness? Will I get tired and turn around? These were the questions I woke up to when we loaded the bags into the car to leave.

                The drive there was long and boring. From my home town of Ventura to the mountain is about a five hour drive through some of the monotonous terrain in California. Driving east from Ventura we hit the inland desert. From here it is a four hour drive north through the Mojave Desert, the hottest place in North America. I remember stopping to get food in the town of Mojave and having the soles of my shoes melt if I stood in any one place to long. The temperatures in the summer months can be hotter than 130^oF. From Mojave, we drove north, through seemingly never ending desert, for three more hours until reaching the town of Lone Pine. Sitting at the base of the Eastern Sierra Nevadas, Lone Pine is a small town made famous by two things, the Alabama hills surrounding it, where many old western movies were shot, and Mount Whitney looming directly above it. Standing in town in 110^oF heat, I remember seeing the snow in between the crags of Mt. Whitney and thinking it very odd.

                From Lone Pine, we took the winding road up from the shrubbery of the desert valley floor into the pine trees forest that dominates the mountain range. About twenty five minutes up the road, we reached the end of the line, Whitney portal campground. This is where we spent our first night before leaving for the climb the next morning.

                In the morning, we packed up all our gear and started for the beginning of the trail. The trail starts in a narrow valley with thousand foot granite faces looming up on either side. At the beginning is a wooden sign post that reads Mt. Whitney 14mi. What it doesn’t tell you is 14mi plus six thousand feet of elevation. From here we set off on the trail. Much of the way up is the same, granite and pine trees predominate most of the hike, with the occasional stream crossing the trail to break things up. After about five miles on the trail we came up to our first major landmark, Lone Pine Lake. This lake is the first of three dotting the trail up to the peak of the mountain. It was here we ate lunch and rested for the second half of the hike.

                Throughout the afternoon we continued on a steady pace through the pine trees and undergrowth until we reached the edge of the tree line. At this point the pine trees cleared away because of their inability to grow in the harsh climate of eleven thousand feet. At this point we were only two miles away from the summit and, it was here we planned to camp for the night. Taking out our stove we cooked dinner and set up camp for the night. During the night I was woken up by the sound of thunder and the battering of rain on the tent.

                In the morning we awoke to a steady down pour of rain on the tent and the continuing rolling of thunder. It was at this point, my dad said we couldn’t go to the summit because of the danger of lightning. I couldn’t believe it. We had done everything right. We had prepared for weeks for this and because of nature we would be unable to complete our goal. It was at this point, I realized I wasn’t in control of everything. You could do everything right and still not be in control of any situation. Although I was disappointed I think I learned a valuable lesson about control. Even though I couldn’t make it to the top I didn’t get mad at myself because it wasn’t my fault and I could always attempt it again.

Conversation #4

Today I met with my conversation partner for the fourth time. I was not sure whether I would actually meet with her again because she dropped out of the language program at TCU. Naturally the first thing I asked her was why she had decided to leave the program. She told me that recently she had started working part time and that the time commitment of the TCU program on top of a job was too much for her to handle. This surprised me because I would have thought that to her learning English would be more advantageous to her in the long run than the money she would get from a job. In response to this she told me, while the TCU program is a helpful way to advance her English skills, it is not the only way. In response to this I asked her the other ways in which she planned to advance her education of English.

She said there are many opportunities to learn the language; she just has to take advantage of them. For example, recently she had started to watch “American television” instead of stations that broadcast in Spanish. She also said that listening to more music in English helped her recognize words and slang terms better than when she was in class. While I recognized that these were ways to listen to and understand English, I wondered how they would help her to improve her conversation skills in the language. She said that her entire family, which he is living with, is fluent in English and she has asked them to try and speak some English in the house rather than Spanish exclusively.

The notion of talking to my family in a language other than our native English seemed strange to me. While my entire family can speak Spanish somewhat, I would never imagine us using it to talk at home about anything. Even if we lived in a Spanish speaking country, I think we would still use English in our home. I imagine that using a non-native language to converse with your family would lead to a loss of conversational intimacy. I asked her whether she had started to talk at home in English already and whether she had encountered any problems with it.

She told me that speaking in English at home turned out to be more difficult than she originally had imagined. At first, she thought that speaking English at home would have been easier than in public because she knew her family better than she did strangers so, they would be able to understand her better. However, she said talking to her family in English brought about a whole new set of problems. The primary difficulty of talking to your family in a different language turned out to be simply reverting to Spanish when the conversation got to difficult. Obviously this is not an option when speaking to strangers and, would not be a problem. The other major dilemma when talking to your family in your nonnative language turned out to be the differences in skill level. Since my conversation partner knew the least amount of English in her family she would often be the one who had to be corrected by the others on her speech. She said that constantly being corrected by her family members made her feel somewhat inferior to the other members of her family. She also said that her family was much more critical of her English that anyone else because of the closeness of their relationships. “Sometimes it even feels like I am being talked to like an infant.” These were problems I had never even considered when talking to a family member in a different language.

Talking to my conversation partner about speaking English in a family environment made me realize how impractical it is. Even if it helps you learn English a little better, the tradeoff of tension in conversation does not seem to me worth it. I encouraged her to continue to try and advance her English skills in a classroom or public setting, even though not at TCU. She said that our conversations helped and would like to continue having them. 

I can ride a bicycle

It was Christmas morning of 1998, I had been up all night in eager anticipation of every child’s favorite day of the year, Christmas. Nowadays, Christmas is about family, good food, and a break from the stressful situations of college. However, back then it was about one thing, presents. I had been waiting for months for this morning it was the morning when all my desires would be fulfilled and I would get everything I could ever want, until my birthday at least. After waiting, what seemed to me, as all night, my parents finally told me and my sister we could come out of our rooms and open up our presents.

                 Storming out of my room and down the stairs, I hardly noticed the colorfully wrapped presents or the many Christmas decorations that adorned our living room. My focus was on one thing, the shiny bicycle sitting in the very center of the room. I had never owned a bike before but, seeing the cool fourth and fifth graders ride them to my school every morning had made a bicycle the pinnacle of my eight year old desires. Over the course of the next hour, I impatiently waited as my parent and little sister opened up the rest of the Christmas presents. I had one thing on my mind, to get out and ride my bike. Finally after what seemed like the whole morning, my parents told me I could go outside and try out my bike.

                I had been waiting for this moment for so long. I was the first of my friends to have a bike so, I had never ridden one. I could just imagine the looks on my friends’ faces when I pedaled up to their house on my new bike instead of walking like they had to. During this daydreaming, I had wheeled my bike to the center of our driveway so I would have a clear path for my first bike ride. I lined up the bike so that it was pointing directly at the end of my drive way and swung one leg over the bike. Holding my balance, I placed one foot on the pedal. Pushing down on the pedal, to get the bike going, I picked my other foot of the ground, prepared to ride forward. However, the moment I took my foot of the ground I lost my balance and promptly fell off the bike and onto my face.

                For the next week, I refused to even try to ride the bike again. It was not possible to do. In all my daydreaming of getting my own bicycle, I had failed to even think about the fact I would have to learn how to ride it. To make matters even worse, two of my friends had also received bicycles for Christmas and learned to ride them within the week. I was furious. I would see them riding around the neighborhood, while I could only walk. However, I still hadn’t built up the courage to try riding it again.

                At the end of the week, my dad came home from work and said he had a present for me. He told me to come out to the garage and see what it was. Naturally I hurried out to see what present I could possibly be getting so soon after Christmas. There in the garage was my bike. However it was different. On both sides of the back wheel was an extra set of wheels. I had gotten training wheels on my bike. With a little encouragement, my dad persuaded me to try to ride it again.

                With the little extra confidence the training wheels gave me, I once again mounted my bike in our drive way. I placed one foot on the ground and the other on the pedal, as I had done previously. In this position, I sat for several minutes brooding on the result of my last attempt to ride the bicycle. Finally, I plucked up the courage and kicked off, to ride down the street. This time was different; I shakily pedaled several times, going almost fifteen yards before eventually losing momentum and falling off. Even though I had fallen off, I had actually ridden the bike! From this point on I was not afraid anymore.

                Over the next several weeks, I was able to ride farther and farther distances until I was rarely falling ever. It was at this point, I realized that learning to ride a bike was a major step in my childhood. I was no longer confined to the walking distance of my neighborhood. I could ride to school. I could ride to the store. I could ride to my friends. Learning to ride a bike didn’t just give me a source of entertainment. It gave me my first real sense of independence.  

Charter fishing

                When I was a little kid, back in the kindergarten and first grade days, my three favorite things in the world were boats, trains, and trucks. So when my dad told me, one afternoon, that we were going on a charter boat to go fishing I was more excited than if we were going to Disney land. We spent the whole afternoon getting our fishing gear ready for the trip and pulling our “fishing clothes” out of the depths of the closet. Just as the sun was sinking behind the rolling California hills, we set off driving to the Ventura harbor where the boat awaited us.

                The drive was a short one only fifteen minutes. When we got to the harbor, we met up with my dad’s longtime friend Paul, who I had always referred to as Uncle Paul. At this point it was fairly dark and we decided to get some food from one of the restaurants on the harbor before the fishing boat left in an hour. I was so excited about getting on the boat that I hardly paid any mind to my dinner and quickly finished it. After finishing my fish ‘n’ chips, my dad said we were heading to the boat to get ready to cast off.

                When we arrived at the dock the boat was on, I could hardly hold in my excitement. The situation was only exacerbated by the fact that it was already well past my bed time and we hadn’t even hit the open ocean yet. The captain of the boat came onto the deck and told us we could board the ship. I was in awe I remember thinking I wanted to be just like him one day, a captain of a ship all my own. Once on deck he explained the safety rules but I was hardly listening. In fact, I only noticed when my dad pushed a life jacket over my head and buckled the straps around me. Then the members of our group started discussing the details of the rout we would take in the ocean and began collecting a pool for whoever could catch the biggest fish. After what seemed like an agonizingly long time we set of towards the mouth of the harbor and the open ocean.

                At the mouth of the harbor, the surf started to roll in and rock the boat back and forth in a rhythmic motion that was only interrupted by the occasional rouge wave interrupting the rhythm. I couldn’t believe it we were at sea. Soon we left the harbor far behind, heading out into the blackness of the ocean that was only interrupted by the glistening oil rigs in the distance and the white caps of the waves on the ocean. I remember it was a fairly calm night with little wind to pick up spray from the top of the waves. At about two miles out my dad set my line and pole and I started trolling for fish along with the other twenty people on the charter boat. I was convinced that I would catch something the minute my line hit the water but, sadly I was mistaken.

Over the course of the next few hours we trolled back and forth several miles out to sea. Many of the people on board the boat seemed to be getting lucky and reeling in some good sized fish. My dad caught two White Sea bass, which he informed me were good for eating. More exciting to me, however, was my “Uncle Paul’s” catch. He had managed to catch and reel in a small shark. I convinced him to let it go though because I told him the mom shark would get mad and come after him. However, in all this time I had yet to get so much as a bite on my line.

Finally three hours into the boat ride, I got my first bite. I felt my line jerk and instinctively looked at my pole. It was bending down towards the water and I knew this was the sign that I had caught a fish. I began to try and reel the line in but it was quite hard for me, being only a 65 pound 6 year old at the time. With some help from my dad we slowly reeled in my catch until we could see the fish alongside the bow of the boat. It was a big fish. My dad reached down with the net and brought it on board. I had caught a barracuda! My dad told me that a barracuda was a vicious fish that ate almost any fish smaller than it. I felt so proud at having captured such a predator. However my glory was short lived.

Only moments after catching my fish the rolling of the ocean finally got to me and I became seasick. I spent the next hour of the trip leaning over a bucket in the bathroom sick. I decided then that boats were not my favorite anymore; I liked trains and trucks much better.

When we got back to the dock, we all got off the boat and weighed our catches. My barracuda weighed in at 22lbs over 3lbs more than the next closest fish. My dad told me that because of my fish I had won the entire pool for the boat a total of $225. But I didn’t care about the money I only cared that I had caught the biggest fish on the trip.

Conversation #3

I met with my conversation partner for the third time today. We had not met in a while because  she had gone back to Venezuela for two weeks to sell her house and do a few other things so she could focus full time on living in America. Naturally I asked her how it was returning to her home country for the first time in a couple of years.

When I asked her how it was to return to Venezuela, Peggy responded with a mixed reaction. On one hand, she said that it was good to be back in a familiar place surrounded by people she knows and loves. But on the other, going back was an eye opening experience for her. She said it made her realize how lucky she was to be living in the United States now instead of Venezuela. While she loves her home country, she is disappointed in the government and the many problems it has caused. She told me about the political turmoil in Venezuela surrounding the upcoming election. Apparently in October, Venezuela is holding its six year presidential election. Since 1999, Hugo Chávez has been the president of Venezuela but, in the last election there was much speculation about the legitimacy of the outcome. My conversation partner says that right now feels a lot like it did back then. She said that most people are excited and hopeful that they have enough support to elect a new president. However they are also wary that the election might be rigged so that the majority vote does not count. This was shocking to me. I couldn’t imagine living in a country where I was distrustful of my government on some of the most basic levels, such as the integrity of an election. Trying to change the subject to a more lighthearted one I asked her what she enjoyed about going back.

The best thing she said about returning to Venezuela was getting to see her friends again. She told me that for the two years she has lived in the US she has hardly made any friends because of the language barrier. Going home, she said, was a blessing because she got to see all her friends and rekindle many of her relationships. I imagine it is comparable to going home for summer after your first year at college. She told me that she frequently kept up many of her relationships back home over the phone but, there was no substitute for actually seeing and visiting the individuals in person. This is something I felt I could completely relate to. After hearing all of this I asked her if she had ever used Skype to talk to her friends back home. Surprisingly to me, she said she had never heard of it. I spent the last ten minutes of our conversation trying to describe to her what Skype is and how she could use it to communicate with her friends back home. In the end, I think I was able to get the message through to her and she seemed rather excited about it. However, I’m still not sure if she was able to figure out how to use it. I plan to ask her about it during our next conversation and hope it will help her reconnect with her friends back home.

Conversation #2

Today I met with my conversation partner for the second time. Surprisingly, it was actually much harder to communicate with her today than the first time we met two weeks ago. I assume this is because when we first met we were going over simple subjects such as introducing ourselves and talking about our lives. However in this second conversation, we talked about various topics that required the use of a more extensive vocabulary that my conversation partner found hard to grasp. This meant that we were spending much longer on each point of the conversation this time because I constantly found myself having to repeat sentences and trying to explain what a word or saying meant. However eventually, towards the end of the conversation, things began to flow more smoothly and the conversation progressed at a more natural pace.

My conversation partner informed me that she was not going to be around for a couple of weeks because she had to go back to Venezuela for a business trip. She told me that she was going back to sell her house and pick up her degree from a friend there. Also she told me that she was really looking forward to going back because she would get to see all of her friends back home. What I found surprising was that she was not interested in going back to the country itself, she was only interested in visiting her friends. She told me that she dislikes Venezuela because of the way the country is run and because of its government which she believes is corrupt and unhealthy for the Venezuelan people. This is why she loves living in the United States so much she says. This lead to a conversation about why she believes the United States is better than her home country.

When I asked her about the United States, she said there is so much more opportunity here, than her own country. She told me that back home 80%-90% of the population works blue-collar jobs and almost no one has a true white collar job, like the majority of workers in the United States. She also said that the school system seemed to be better and that she was happy to have her children going to school here. I asked about her children and she said that her older daughter was just entering high school. She was worried because she had no idea how the US college system worked and didn’t know how her daughter should apply for college and what she needed to do to get in. This made me realize how many unseen adjustments individuals have to make when moving to a new country. I certainly have no idea how I would apply for college in Venezuela or any other foreign country. In response to this dilemma, I told her I was not sure how individuals in the US on a visa were supposed to apply for institutions, such as universities or colleges. However, I instructed her that every high school has a college counselor who should know what steps are necessary for the application.

The difficulty in communication we encountered in this conversation makes me a little wary towards our future conversations. As the conversations progress they will invariably increase in complexity. This makes me nervous because it means that I will have to spend more time trying to make her understand what I am saying and spend less time actually speaking with and learning from her. 

Huck Finn Experienced?

Huck Finn Experienced?

1. Have you read the novel –Huck Finn- before?  If so where and why?

I read the book in my sophomore of high school for my English class. I really didn’t remember to much about the book so, reading it again refreshed my memory of the book and gave me an updated perspective on the novel.

2. If you have not read Huck Finn before, surely you know something about the novel and character from references and allusions in popular culture.  What do you know about either the novel and/or character?

3. What was your response to reading Huck Finn, and what do you remember from your reading?  Also, did you actually read the whole novel, or just parts of it?  Did you read Cliff Notes or Monarch Notes instead?

I got a new perspective reading the book for a second time. The first time I read it I didn’t focus to much on the aspect of racism in the novel. However when we talked about it in class, we focused almost entirely on the aspect of racism.

4. If you were assigned to read Huck Finn in a previous class, either here or in high school, how did your class as a whole react to the novel?  Why do you think your instructor assigned the novel?  How did he or she try to “teach” the novel?

When we read the novel in high school the class didn’t have any extraordinary reactions to the book. I think my instructor assigned the book mostly because it was the most banned book in US history and she wanted to focus on that aspect.

5. If you were required to read Huck Finn in a previous class, what sort of assignments were you required to complete, and what exactly did you do during the classes when

Huck Finn was being discussed.

I don’t really remember a lot about the class assignments for the reading. However, I know we were required to write an essay on the use of folklore in the novel, which I used as a framework for my blog post.

6. Huck Finn is still one of the most controversial and most banned books in America.  Why is it so controversial?

The aspect of racism in the book can be seen as both pro and anti racism. This means that the message behind the novel can be seen as negative or positive. Also the use of vulgar terminology makes it inappropriate for some readers.   

7. Is Huck Finn still relevant to you as college student today?  Should it continue to be taught in college classrooms?

I think the book is a vital component of America’s literary canon thus, it should be taught to give a perspective on other works of the time period.

8.  The general consensus among critics is that Huck Finn is a brilliant and powerful novel, but also a flawed and problematic novel.  What do you think might be flawed and/or problematic about the novel?

The novel does not flow smoothly throughout. While brilliant, it seems to be, somewhat, randomly thrown together. This makes it a novel that is hard to judge from the standpoint of a literary critic.

Folklore in Huck Finn

After answering the question about the bad luck omens on the first Huckleberry Finn quiz, I realized that much of the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is based on Folklore and superstition. Many of the critical events and turning points in the novel are foreshadowed by omens and superstitions involved in the folklore of the time.

The time period before Huck meets his father is foreshadowed by multiple signs and omens. The first sign that foreshadows a coming evil is Huck’s killing of a spider in the candle. During the 1800s when Mark Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn, common folklore held that spiders were somewhat immortal so seeing one die was considered a terrible sign. The next superstition that leads Huck to the conclusion that his father is coming is the body found in the river. When the body is first discovered the townspeople agree that it is the body of pap, Huck’s father. However, Huck dispels this claim by stating. “I knowed mighty well a drowned man don’t float on is back, but on his face. So I knowed then, that this warn’t pap, but a woman dressed up in a man’s clothes. So I was uncomfortable again.” Huck again uses folklore to foreshadow his father’s arrival because the body could not be pap because only a woman could drown facing up. The bad omens continue when Huck overturns a salt shaker and is unable to reverse the bad luck because Miss Watson stops him from throwing salt over his shoulder. From this point on Huck realizes that his knowledge of folklore and bad omens is insufficient so he decides to consult someone who is well versed in folklore, Jim.

When Huck discovers a boot print with a cross on the heel, he decides to consult the slave Jim, a master of folklore. Using a hairball, which supposedly contains a spirit, Jim deciphers that Huck’s father is still alive. True to Jim’s prediction later that night Huck returns to his room to find his father waiting for him.

From the discovery of his father, the trend of evil omens and folklore turns and we see the first good omen, the rising of the river. Huck proclaims that the rising river has always brought him good luck. True to the trend of good and bad omens in the book the rising river brings Huck two essential things a canoe and some timber logs. Both turn out to be vital for Huck’s escape plan, the canoe as transport and the logs as a distraction for pap. Also later, the good luck of the rising river continues to hold and a log raft, which furthers the escape plan, is discovered. The good luck of the rising river foreshadows Huck’s escape from his father.

Unfortunately after Huck’s short run of good luck, bad omens quickly follow. On Jackson’s island Huck finds and handles a snakeskin, which according to Jim is one of the worst omens. True to the bad omen the snakeskin leads to Jim being bitten by a rattle snake and becoming ill. Luckily, however, being well versed in folklore Jim knows what to do to combat the snake bite and is able to cure himself. The bad luck continues until the ending of the first part of the novel.

After finding the snake skin, both the raft and the canoe, which were vital for Jim and Huck’s escape, disappear. The bad luck continues when their raft is smashed by a steamboat and they are forced to swim ashore. Huck even highlights these catastrophes as the work of the snake skin by stating “We both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake-skin; so what was the use to talk about it?” Clearly Mark Twain wanted to emphasize that the snakeskin had some influence on the events proceeding its discovery.

Clearly much of the first part of Huckleberry Finn is driven by the notion of good and bad omens. This should not be surprising due to the climate of the time period and Mark Twain’s well known infatuation with superstitions and folklore.

                

Conversation #1

Today I met with my conversation partner for the first time. She said she has been living in the United States for almost a year now, coming here from Venezuela. I asked her why she had moved, from her home country of Venezuela, and she said that her husband had been recruited for a job here in the United States and that had forced their entire family to move. The fact that her entire family had to move countries because her husband had found a better job in America surprised me.

I have never thought of moving and living anywhere outside the US. I am comfortable here. Everything is familiar to me, I know the way things work, and most importantly all of my relationships are here. I realized that moving to a different country, while exciting, must be a daunting task for any person. The closest thing I can compare it to is going away to college for the first time. Then again, even at a new college everyone knows your language. I asked her how her transition into American culture was and she gave me some surprising answers.

The first question I asked her, after we had talked about her background and mine, was how was the transition to English coming from a mostly Spanish speaking country. She promptly responded, “What transition? I only speaks English in the classroom.” I was surprised by this response and pried more into the subject. Apparently since she has lived in the US, everywhere she regularly goes restaurants, grocery stores, school, she can communicate by exclusively speaking Spanish. This struck me as strange because I do essentially the same things as her in the same region as her and, I have never had to use Spanish to communicate. This made me realize how segregated, even today, the communities of the area are. Was it just a language barrier that divided us?

I asked her how the Spanish speakers she interacted with on a daily basis go around without English. She said that almost everyone was able to get by without speaking any English because the community she lived in was mostly Hispanic. She also said almost no one was even trying to learn English. This seemed strange to me. Why would you move to a different country and not try to learn the language and interact with its citizens. She said that there was actually a big divide in the Hispanic community that she lived in. People that came to the US from countries in south and central America, panama, Guatemala, Venezuela, etc. actively tried to learn and engage in English upon arrival to the US. However, most people from Mexico feel they can get by without English and do not try to learn it. I had no idea that there was such a divide in the Hispanic community here in Fort Worth.

I asked her whether most people who moved here were successful in learning English, if they actively attempted to do so. She told me, while some people were willing, there was really no place in the community where they are forced to use English so, it is easy just to revert back to Spanish instead. That is why she started the program at TCU. She has been taking English classes for many years but, hasn’t had enough hands on practice in English to really develop a tongue for it. However, the TCU program, which emphasizes using conversation partner, forces her to engage in active, conversational English which she claims helps her language development immensely.

Magazine Article 2/13

Thinking about what article, from the 1930s, I wanted to write about was fairly simple. I wanted to write about something influential, something that affects us even today nearly a century after. While flipping through magazines, various ads for products that I didn’t even know existed provided mild entertainment but, soon I came across an article that I knew would be ideal to write about. The article encompassed the theme of a coming of age story on, not only an individual but, a cultural scale. I chose an article from 1928 depicting the last decade of life in America under prohibition.

                During the time this article was written, the prohibition era was coming to an end. The opening line of the article reads “National prohibition, with a total cost for enforcement of more than 170,000,000 to the federal treasury alone, will round the eighth year of existence tomorrow.” Clearly the writer, while trying to be unbiased, is failing and letting some of his true emotions show. This emotion seemed to come from a common thread of unrest during prohibition. The rest of the article goes into the other unseen costs of the prohibition era.

                The writer systematically goes through the other costs of prohibition, the cost for the department of justice, the cost for the federal court, the cost of the loss of revenue. Going through all these he seems to maintain an air ambiguity but, he doesn’t need to use any emotion. The numbers speak for themselves. Figures of exponentially increasing federal court costs and hundreds of millions in potential alcohol tax revenue lost, tell the story of what the climate was like in prohibition America. Then at the end of the article the writer highlights his last and most emotionally driven argument, the loss of life.

                The final section of the article depicts the toll of human lives, lost due to prohibition. The writer explains how 126 civilians have lost their lives due to the violence caused by a decade of prohibition. He then goes on to emphasize how, along with the civilians, forty-seven “officers of the law” lost their lives in prohibition. Also stated were the arrests made by prohibition officers during the era, 64,986 in just seven years of prohibition.

                Clearly this article was meant to make one point, prohibition was a mistake. The writer of the article tries to depict all of the detrimental aspects of prohibition in attempt to move his readers to action. The prohibition was essentially a coming of age story for us as a nation. We tried to limit a major freedom we’d had since our nation’s founding and we failed. We came out of prohibition losing hundreds of millions in federal dollars during some of the most financially unstable times in our nation’s history. But most importantly, we learned from our mistakes and gave up on prohibition, instead of mindlessly enforcing it like so many other nations of the time.

Reading Reflection: Candide 1/31

When reflecting on the last chapters of Voltaire’s Candide, it is obviously apparent that the last few chapters of the novel reflect, in parallel, upon the first chapter in the novel. The many parallels between the first and last chapters of the novel seem to reflect the concept of binary opposition as well.

At the outset of the novel all of the characters residing in Thunder-ten-tronckh seem to buy into Pangloss’ optimistic outlook on nature. They lived in the “best of all possible worlds” in the “most beautiful of all castles”. However by the end of the novel, the characters of the story are all miserable, even though they had found peace on their little farm. “Nothing was left but his little farm; his wife, growing uglier every day…” In this passage on pg. 72 Voltaire recites the struggles and misery of all the members of Candide’s group despite their new found peace. The binary opposition between happiness and optimism at the outset of the novel and misery and pessimism at the conclusion is only one example of the parallelism between the first and last chapters.

In both the first and final chapter, Voltaire lists the central characters names and descriptions, highlighting the change their travels have wrought upon them. Cunegonde is described as “fresh, plump, and desirable” in the first chapter but, in the final chapter she is depicted as “eyes blood shot, her breasts fallen, her cheeks seamed, and her arms scaly and red.” Similarly Pangloss goes from being “the greatest philosopher in the province and consequently the entire world” to “being in despair at being unable to shine in a university.” The characters of Paquette and Candide are also described as having fallen from their former glory at the conclusion of the novel.

Apart from these two major indications of a parallelism between the beginning and ending of the novel, Voltaire also inserted multiple smaller points of ironic parallel between the beginning and end of the novel. At the outset, Paquette is shown enjoying a “lesson” with Dr. Pangloss. However by the end, Paquette had “plied her trade everywhere but made no money.” Clearly while sex had once been enjoyable to Paquette, she now detests it because it brings her no joy or money. Another smaller parallel is that of marriage. In the first chapter, Candide’s mother refused to marry his father because of a lack of nobility. In contradiction, Candide marries Cunegonde at the end even though her brother forbids it and he “had no real wish to marry her.” 

Voltaire uses these binary oppositions and parallels in Candide to enforce the a presence of Irony in the novel. This sense of irony, in turn, helps him solidify the novel Candide as primarily a work of satire meant to commentate on the world around him.