Monday, October 28, 2013

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.

5 comments:

  1. I enjoyed the detail of your day as a tourist, Kerwin. I think that if I had to ride on that bus, I would have suffered!!! Also seeing the teens drinking without any adults around to make sure they were safe would have worried me. I enjoyed your reflection and the beautiful rainbow photograph. Was that taken on the day as a tourist or is it from a collection of photographs? It's beautiful.

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  2. Wow Kerwin, that must have been an awesome experience, specially been along with so many people been tipsy on those narrow roads and going fast... for me it would have been a very fun trip. About the people seen the younger kids drinking alcohol and doing nothing, that is a problem on our society in which many people criticize but don't do a thing. I think that if a real tourist would experience a day like that, he would first be in shock about the roads and then die when he or she sees so much alcohol... hahaha

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  3. By reading this I suppose that you had a lot of fun that day. It sounds a lot like an adventure to me. I believe that if a young tourist comes to experience something like that in Puerto Rico he would be surprised but will enjoy it and will never forget about it. But in the other hand an adult tourist would probably be very scared during the trip and surely wouldn't like it at all.. Like Antonio said, he or she would probably be shocked by the excess of alcohol.

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  4. I imagine how crazy it can be! I enjoyed how you said you learned new things and admired the beautiful scenery of your home town you didn't know. I think that is amazing and everyone should it. I imagine not all of us know everything about our hometown and should act like a tourist one day to be able to do this. Unfortunately, the drinking problem in PR is like a plague. Activities such as these have changed their original purpose and now have a negative one. I just hope not all activities in PR turn out to have such negative connotations because that takes gives importance to other things that don't value PR.

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  5. I had the opportunity to share with you this experience and I know that it was so much fun. I think that maybe it was not a good place for a tourist to think many good things about us Puerto Ricans haha! The roads in Puerto Rico are so not in good conditions, specially in the rural areas of the island. After all, like everything and everybody in this world, Puerto Rico is a mixture of good and bad things that we must be able to embrace.

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