When the word tourist pops into my head I can't help but to think of the stereotypical idea of a man or woman with khaki shorts, socks with sandals, a floral print shirt, burnt nose, and a camera in hand. However, when I think of a traveler I imagine a citizen of the world, trekking through different cities without an agenda and not a care in the world because he or she is on a journey to find a new meaning out of life and experience new cultures, customs, and people. Although these two concepts are without a doubt correlated with one another, I believe that there are subtle differences that set them apart. For example, a tourist might want to stay within the boundaries of what is safe to explore, whereas a traveler might want to see absolutely everything and scatter away from the constraints of being on a tight schedule to go see typical tourist sights.
In the film adaptation of E.M. Forester's novel, A Room with a View (1985), the protagonist is a young English girl named Lucy Honeychurch that travels to Italy as a tourist. With her much older cousin and chaperone, Ms. Charlotte Bartlett, Lucy lives in an Italian pensione in Florence. They are surrounded mostly by other English people and engage in little to none interaction with authentic Italians. The English group does, on one occasion, take a trip to the countryside to see the view, where with exception of the drivers, they are amongst themselves. Lucy does try to take a tour of an old church, where she is accompanied by a rather larger group that resembles those huge tours that companies offer of distinct sites that might seem appealing to a foreigner on vacation. However, Ms. Eleanor Lavish's character, an English novelist, takes the time to get lost in the city streets and doesn't really mind it because she understands the beauty of being in an unknown city with no clear path to roam upon. Other than this, Lucy's trip to Italy can be mainly as a tour. However, she does take a journey of her own, but within herself. It is through Italy and falling in love with an unconventional man in an exotic place, that she understands more about herself and her stance in society. When she goes back to her home in England she takes all that she experienced in Italy and applies it in order to redefine her life.
Lucy started out as a tourist, and ended up as a traveler in the sense that she discovered and experienced things abroad that made her find new sense and meaning out of life. Although she was certainly confused about her time spent in Italy, when she arrives back home, she learns that she can be an independent women, very much capable of producing her own ideas and thoughts among a very strict Edwardian era in England. Of course, her falling in love with George Emerson, a very open-minded man himself, helped her acquire a refreshing perspective on a lot of aspects of her life.
Personally, I want to be mostly a traveler and a bit of a tourist. Of course I want to see the typical sights: the Eiffel Tower, Thames River, the Parthenon, and the Roman Coliseum, among many others. But, I also want to get lost in the mysteries and wonders of these cities without much care for an agenda that I must follow to a tee. I would very much like to take a year off and simply go wherever I may. The World is too big of a place to stick to routines and schedules. I believe everyone should at least go on a mini journey to find meaning to their lives and acquire different perspectives that would ultimately open their minds about the idea that the World is a much bigger place than the originally thought.
"Helping" is not the same as giving out the answer to your friend on a test. Helping is arranging study groups or mock tests that prepare the struggling student for an upcoming assignment or exam. I do, however, completely understand where a "helping" situation might have presented itself when Jim Cooper wrote about it. Learning a new language is a hard task, and more so when you're simply thrown into a classroom and expected to walk out a fluent speaker. It can easily become frustrating trying to understand this new and strange language, and so the concept of "helping" can enter the picture. The term "copying" is more exact, but Puerto Ricans tend to strongly differ, as Cooper narrated.
During the 1950's English was making its way to the Puerto Rican classroom and trying to hold its ground as a second language. For college level students, trying to learn this language proved to be a rather difficult task specially when it was so unfamiliar in many different ways. Since English was proving to make a long lasting appearance, the curriculum had to be formatted in order to accommodate it. Elementary students still had a fighting chance to learn it because their age made the learning quite easier. But, college and university level students had a much harder time trying to comprehend the language. And so, the ones that didn't understand stuck together and the ones that did helped in any way they could. If this meant "helping" them on tests and assignments, they were all for it. It was and probably still is a cultural thing to help out those in need no matter the cirmunstance. We, as Puerto Ricans, tend to give out a helping hand in any way possible to serve those that show they need the extra help.
I've grown up with "helping" in classes all my life, and although I do understand the true and sincere intentions behind it, it think that the concept has gone through alterations through time. In the present, helping means that one person knows the material by heart and the one being helped is simply too lazy to study. He or she is probably likely to not have studied for the test and now wants a good grade; the solution presents itself in the form of copying from the teacher's pet or the nerd that spent the week before studying. And this is the part where I strongly disagree. Maybe I was the geeky nerd who studied the week away and that's why I dislike people that try to copy off of my test. I did all the hard work for somebody, who doesn't care, to cheat off of my test? I don't think so. As you can see I wasn't the easiest one to copy off of, but I always held my ground. I'm not trying to justify that copying back then was fair and now it isn't. All I'm trying to explain is that circumstances have changed and now English comes in a more natural way to us, so cheating should not come along so often.
Every day can start out ordinary and somehow orchestrate itself into becoming a journey. Day-to-day activities that most people would think nothing of can represent a pivotal moment in a person's day. Since journeys are personal and unique to each person's surrounding or specific context, variability is bound to emerge about what each person considers to be or not to be an adventure. For me, waking up before sunlight is an experience by itself. I wake up before anyone else in my house is up and leave before they even notice I'm gone. The real chaos of my day begins with the impossible mission that has become driving and getting around in the city. The reason I wake up so early is mainly to avoid traffic. I only live fifteen minutes away from the university where I study, but I have to leave an hour or more in advance in order to arrive on time. I also have to take into consideration the time wasted searching for a parking spot once I finally arrive on campus.
7:00 a.m. classes are not fun; they make you drowsy, and try all you might, you will start to doze off with your eyes still completely open. Next worst thing after a 7:00 a.m. class? An 8:30 a.m. class right after. Sleepiness will surely tag along and try to persuade you to just close your eyes for a bit. I have to admit that I've caught myself going cross-eyed from trying to shoo off that nagging, sleepy feeling once or twice. Third worst thing? A three-hour, no break, no dozing-off class. Now, hunger will make an appearance and naturally I have to respond appropriately by snacking the class away. After this on-going ordeal I finally get to go home. But first, I have to get through the 2:30p.m. traffic jam because this is when most schools get out. Half an hour of slow moving cars later and I am finally home and too exhausted to even take my jeans off to take a proper nap. A long day demands a long nap; only to start the day again tomorrow.
I believe that an important part of traveling to a new place and experiencing a different culture is being able to look at said place and culture through the local's eyes, as well as taking into account the novelty of it all as a traveler. I tried to combine both by picturing myself being an exchange student in Puerto Rico. My little project started as soon as I left class. The campus was certainly different from the concrete jungle of wherever I pictured myself being from. Although the campus had some modern architecture, it was generally overwhelmed by nature. There was an air of serenity that no Ivy-league college could possibly offer. On my tour of the UPR I sat down to have lunch by the tower. As I ate a mouthful of a mix of mashed plantain and onions called mangú, I watched the people that passed me by. I couldn't help but wonder about their life-stories: Where were they from? Where were they going? What classes were they taking?, and so on. Each of their faces were so different from one another that it served me as a constant reminder that I was in the Caribbean: where mixed races and ethnicities could all enjoy the tropical shade.
After lunch, I took my car out, since I had to visit my mom at the hospital because she was bitten by a mosquito with Dengue. Since traffic tends to vary from place to place in a lot of way in different countries, as a tourist in Puerto Rico, I expected to drive down a few beaten down dirt roads. Instead, I found myself in a five-lane freeway fending off on-coming cars. For an island, Puerto Rican roads are more city-like than I could have ever imagined them to be. However, when I got to the hospital, I expected to find a modern structure. I was surprised to be surrounded yet again by tropical plants and trees, and the soothing sound of the tiny, yet melodious coquí when I peeked over the hospital window. Although the hospital wasn't a hut in the middle of the tropical rainforest, it kept its connection to nature. Through my journey as a tourist in my own country I learned to stop and take a moment to appreciate the little things my island had that a lot of places lack: diversity in every sense; from the people to the food, nature everywhere, and a mix of modern and old cultures and values.
I suppose most journeys start deep within a person's need for adventure. I believe that sometimes the day-to-day dullness can become too much to bear and one feels the urge to break free. I also like to believe that there lies a voyager somewhere inside all of us wanting to escape said monotony. If what I believe is true, my journey started out as most: feeling the need to run away to find myself. In my country, going away to the continental United States is a right of passage every other young adult goes through. As high school and my first two years in college flew by, I thought I was part of the ones that stayed behind on the island, and I was content with this. However, as the second semester of my sophomore year was starting I woke up one day wanting to know what else was out there for me. Was I going to wake up early each day to go to school, study, come back home, study some more, and sleep my college years away? Who was I kidding, monotony had struck and it got me good. Somewhere between graduating high school and enrolling in college I followed the general flow and ended up going to the college that was closest to my high school and where everybody else from my graduating class was going. Don't get me wrong, I love my university, but I couldn't help myself from thinking if I had made the right choice or if I even had choices.
I did not waste any more time pondering on the what-ifs in my life and immediately applied for colleges in the New England area. When I mention New England I really mean Massachusetts, and when I say Massachusetts I really only mean Boston. After giving it careful thought I narrowed my choices down to two: Boston University or Northeastern University. In the end BU won by a landslide. In the blink of an eye my sophomore year ended, Summer was over, and I found myself in a Boston supermarket buying cereal for my room. It all happened so fast that I didn't really have time to have it all sink in. I was moving away from my tiny island, the only place I've every truly been comfortable living in, and living on my own. I only knew my boyfriend, who was starting the semester at Lasell College in Newton, Massachusetts, about half an hour train ride outside of Boston. Other than that and my new room mates, I was pretty much alone. Still, I kept an open, yet anxious mind about BU and Boston itself. What really had me excited was the fact that I was about to start writing a completely new chapter in my life, where I would finally discover myself and know what I wanted to do with my life. Before doing the actual move, I had planned a long list of all the things I wanted to do, like: join a club, study a semester abroad in Spain, catch a Red-Sox game, explore the coast of New England, learn French, eat a big bowl of clam chowda' like a true Bostonian, go to museums, and live the life of a student in one of the states with the most exciting college life. After catching that Sox game and devouring the bowl of chowder, things weren't looking as good as they did all the way from Puerto Rico. Since I was there to study I pictured my classes being absolutely life-changing, and in a way I guess they were. After taking an eighty plus student-filled class, I learned to appreciate the warmth and individual attention I had received as a student back home. In Boston, I felt as if though I was just a student number filling a spot in a cold and impersonal room where no one knew who I was or where I came from. On top of cold people, the cold and harsh weather killed my otherwise joyous personality. Bottom line: I wanted out. I acted quickly and was out as soon as I took my last final in December. Some tell me that I didn't give it a good try or that a semester was too short of a time to make the decision of coming back, but I truly believe that the time I spent was enough for me to know that what I wanted to get out life was not located on 157 Bay State Road, Boston University.
