My Day As A Tourist

      "Last weekend I went to the Oktoberfest in Casa Bavaria, a German beer fest celebrated every year in Morovis. We went in a bus with a group of forty something persons, all of them from 17 to 21 years old, from San Juan to Morovis. At 10:00 am almost every person in the bus was drinking alcohol, dancing reggae and making jokes about each other. The first 30 minutes the road was an expressway with some holes on it, but despite that, the bus driver was driving pretty fast, so we were like in a roller coaster. The last 40 minutes were the hard ones, the road was so narrow with many holes in it, with a lot of curves and all the cars drivers, including our bus driver, were driving at the same speed or faster than in the expressway; so it seemed like if it was an earthquake inside the bus.

      When we finally reached Casa Bavaria, it was full of people with very striking and creative shirts and most of them had a cup of alcohol in their hands. After being a few minutes listening to the good German music, we went to get some drinks, so we decided to get a Bavarito, a very peculiar and good drink from there. The place was located in a beautiful rural environment, full of big and leafy trees, with many birds flying above it and with the sun heating above us. The people were very nice, it looked like almost everybody knew each other and, if not, they met there. Even if they didn’t know each other, they danced together, drunk together and had a lot of fun together, as if they were old friends. Something I noticed was that there were a lot of teenagers drinking alcohol and puking uncontrolled, but the most impressing thing was that they were without any supervision. When it was time for leaving, the all forty something of us came back together to the bus and quickly many of us fell asleep. The return trip was pretty similar to the first one, except for there was less noise, because most of the people were sleeping. Despite the minor inconveniences I mentioned before, the experience was wonderful, we had a lot of fun, we visited an amazing place and we met awesome people."

Reflection:

      As part of my English class, I had the opportunity of “being” a tourist for a day in some place of Puerto Rico. I chose to spend my day as a tourist in Casa Bavaria, in Morovis, Puerto Rico and I have to say it was a hard thing to do. However, doing this activity I could notice many things about Puerto Rico and its culture I had not noticed before. The first thing that came to my mind is the status of our roads and how Puerto Rican drivers lead on it. During the trip, I saw many big holes in the roads, but the interesting thing is how most of the drivers do not care about it and they lead to high speeds over them. Another thing that worried me was the amount of teenagers getting drunk and puking on the highway, and how many people were seeing what was happening and still they did not do anything about it. Nevertheless, I have to say that Puerto Rican people are one of the funniest and friendliest persons in the world. We make a party for any reason, we always make new friends and we treat them as family, as if we would have meet them since ever. The things I had noticed before, but I had never appreciated are the beautiful landscapes we have in Puerto Rico. I am from Morovis, so I have seen these landscapes since I have memory, but when I was doing this activity I could notice all the amazing things we have here such as the abundant foliage, variety of animals, incredible view and the nature’s smell. I think being a tourist Puerto Rico can be hard, but at the same time it is one of the best and more enriching experiences a person can have.

A Room with a View

After watching the movie “A room with a view”, I have to say that it is an excellent movie, with a great casting, beautiful landscapes and an amazing plot. “A room with a view” is a movie, based on the same name E.M. Forster's novel, which relates the romantic story of Lucy Honeychurch and George Emerson. The interesting thing of this movie is how the experiences, the way of thinking of the characters and the decisions that they make, influence their position as traveler and/or tourist, and vice versa.

At the beginning of the movie, my first thought about Lucy and George was that they were a tourist and a traveler, respectively. To me, a tourist is a person who travels to some place to have fun, to visit famous places and enjoys his/her stay in that place, without any interest in knowing place history or culture. I first perceived Lucy as a tourist, because of two things: she said “I am tourist” and she didn’t demonstrate interest for learning something about Florence, the place she visited. On the other hand, I think a traveler is a person who, more than visiting a place in order to have fun, wants to know the place, its history, culture, language and people, and wants to feel part of the place he/she is visiting. I consider George as a traveler, because during his stay at the pension in Florence he tried to be part of the place and interacted with the people. I found interesting when George changes room with Lucy and Charlotte, and he goes back to flip the painting because the part of it that was facing to the front was a drawing he had made. That made me think George wanted to feel as if he was home, to feel part of the place he was staying in.

However, at the end of the movie, Lucy and George went back as a couple to the pension in Florence, so we can notice how, after all, this place had a real meaning to Lucy. I think all the experiences Lucy had through the movie, such as meeting George, traveling to Florence and being engaged with Cecil, changed her way of seeing life and transformed her from tourist to traveler. 

        Here is the "A Room with a View" trailer with few of the most interesting parts of the movie.