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.