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.