Travel Diaries: La Isla del encanto

Palm trees. Expensive cars. Slick new highways that cruise along the water. Tall, commercial hotel buildings looming over boardwalks and beaches. 

 

No, this isn't South Florida. This is Puerto Rico. 

 

Though the resemblance is uncanny, this is not Miami Beach, but perhaps a distant relative of the South Florida city.  This is the island of my ancestry, the island where my mother's family comes from. This is "la isla del encanto," or "the island of enchantment." This is the island of the oxymoron; of rainforests, Spanish language, homemade foods and a deep love for culture juxtaposed with commercialized roadways, non-Spanish speaking citizens, cruise ship shoppers, Burger Kings and a deep desire to be a part of the country that rules it.

 

This is Puerto Rico, the U.S.'s exotic stepdaughter. 

During the week I was in Puerto Rico as part of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, apart from the work I did as a part of the Student Projects there, I got to observe the island. I was truly looking forward to exploring the island and its culture, seeing as it is a part of my heritage and a place I haven't visited since I was younger.

 

Just as I had remembered and imagined, the isla is vibrant, full of culture, bright colors and some of my favorite dishes like tostones, bistec encebollado and mafongo. Outside of San Juan, towns like Piñones and Bayamón still hold on to their own Puerto Rican charm. Merengue, salsa and reggaeton can be heard blasting out of windows and cars all over the island.

 

But in San Juan and Viejo San Juan, the city's capital and the old downtown district, the charm is mixed with that same South Florida commercialism, a mix that mirrors the citizens of the island's mixed feelings about the territorial status of their island.

 

Puerto Rican natives fight the U.S.'s wars. They pay Social Security and welfare and abide by the U.S.'s rules. Yet they don't vote in the U.S.'s elections and are often viewed by U.S. residents as foreigners, although they are citizens. And this hypocrisy is apparent in many of the people.

 

While doing an interview for a story I was working on about the genre of reggaeton music, a source interrupted me mid sentence and completely changed the subject.

 

"Is Obama going to make us a state like he promised?" the source asked in English, although the conversation had previously been in Spanish. A grown man, his eyes twinkled with the hopefulness of a child asking their mother to go to the toy store.

 

His girlfriend shook her head before I could respond, switching the conversation back to Spanish.

 

"No necesitamos los Estados Unidos" -- "We don't need the United States," she said bitterly, spitting the words "Estados Unidos". She continued on in Spanish. "If we become a state, we will lose everything that's important to us, and we'll become like like all those other states with no idea of what culture really means."

 

This brief conversation represents the split feelings of the island, which come to a head in its capital city filled with both pride and doubt. The same confusion and painful divide undoubtedly shared by many of the U.S.'s territories stuck in the limbo between Independence and statehood.  

Death of a King

The death of the King of Pop has sent the world into a whirlwind of mourning, celebration, sadness and reflection.

But aside from all of this, there are many out there who are exploiting Michael Jackson's death, just as they did his life when he was alive. Only now that he is no longer alive, they can do it more freely.

The man has barely been dead for four days and there are already talks of DVDs being released of his final concert rehearsal, the auctioning of his personal belongings and the publishing rights of unreleased songs he had made for his children.

One can argue that this is the price to pay of a celebrity. That once you are a celebrity, especially one of Michael Jackson's stature, privacy and the right to live and die in peace is no longer an option. And one can argue, there's not really a rule or a timeline for when it is acceptable to move on from tragedy, to move past the shock and the grief and resume every day life.

But I beg to differ. I've always disagreed with this kind of exploitation. It just doesn't sit well with me that a movie was released before the tears had dried of those who still hadn't come to terms with the events of 9/11, or that a major motion picture was released of a slain rapper whose murderer is still unknown, and now, that there is talk of how to make the most profit from a dead man's musical genius who hasn't even been properly laid to rest yet. In my opinion, it's disgusting and tragic, and an unfortunate reflection of our society.

----
Regardless, Michael Jackson holds a special place in my heart. His music was the soundtrack to my childhood, albums played nonstop in long car rides with my family. Dangerous was the first cassette tape I owned on my Playschool Walkman. I know there are millions out there who share my sentiments, who share their own memories of Michael and his music and who are shaking their heads at his tragic downfall. But from my little place in the world, I just want to put it out into the universe and say Rest in Peace, MJ. You will never be forgotten.

1958-2009

"Do you remember, back in the spring, every morning the birds would sing...do you remember, those special times, they just go on and on in the back of my mind..." - Do You Remember the Time

Travel Diaries: Keeping Austin Weird

Travel Diaries, Chapter One: Keeping Austin...Weird.

This summer began after bidding Adieu to State College and heading home for a week before making the big move to New York City. But in between home and the NYC move, I had to go to training for my summer internship at the University of Texas at Austin. Austin was, without a doubt, one of the most interesting cities I have visited. The word interesting is used with caution, here, because interesting could be taken in many ways.

To clarify: Austin's slogan is Keep Austin Weird. Yes, they take great pride in keeping the city weird. From the tie-dyed t-shirts boasting the slogan to rainbow-colored hair, undiscernable yet oddly artistic wall murals and tattoo sleeves on not just the majority of the men but the women as well, I believe weird is the perfect adjective for this city.

Prelude to the Travel Diaries

Summer thus far has consisted of traveling, traveling and more traveling. Between moving from college, going to Texas for my internship training, moving to New York for my internship and attending the National Association of Hispanic Journalism Conference in Puerto Rico, I'm all over. Although I'm not a huge fan of airports or planes, I do realize that I love to travel. This may be due to the fact that in the last 4-5 years for reasons that vary between journalism trips, sites as a part of my summer jobs with LeadAmerica, sorority conferences, family vacations, football games and others, I have been on the move quite a bit. Time spent in State College, D.C., San Diego, Atlanta, Miami, St. Maarten, Tampa, St. Croix, New Jersey, Orlando, Virginia, New York, Chicago, Mexico City, Harrisburg, Philly, Austin, Puerto Rico and my hometown of Ellicott City/Baltimore have given me a bit of a traveler's eye for observation and the ability to decide what I do and don't like about a city or place. And it is this that inspired me to begin a travel diary of some of my travels, commenting on the cities or countries to which I have already been or that I will visit in the future. Let the adventure begin....

Persistence: The Answer to Can'ts and Nevers

Persistence.

I don't know where it comes from, what exactly it is that drives me, where the fire in my belly derives. Maybe it's learning from the success of my doctor father or the inheritance of my mother's strength and stubbornness; maybe it's the astrology of being a Leo, a fire sign and one of the four fixed signs, or maybe I was simply born with big dreams and a big heart.

Whatever it is, in the last few years a yearning to succeed has pushed me to not accept "you can't" or "you'll never" as possibilities.

"You'll never stand out at a school as big as Penn State."

"You can't overcome the mistakes you've made." 

"You've always been quiet and shy...you'll never make it as a journalist!"

These are the doubts of people in my life that made persistence an everyday part of my vocabulary until I achieved the ultimate goal last Saturday: graduating with a college degree. 

Although I am now one of only 29% of Americans with a college degree, for a long time, the prospect of graduating from college didn't seem like that big of an accomplishment to me. I was raised in a household where going to college was expected. But all cockiness aside, after seeing how many of my peers will move on to fifth years and deferments and how many will never move on at all, I've come to be incredibly proud of not only my graduation, but all that I have achieved. 

Now, in the days between the end of the beginning of my life and the beginning of the rest of my life, I have been hit with more of those can'ts and nevers:

"You can't live in New York City as a recent graduate on a journalism salary."

"In this economy, you'll never find a job."

"You can't do what you really want to do coming out of college...sometimes you have to settle for other things and work your way up."

So now, with my MacBook, passion, persistence and writer's heart in tow, it's time to prove them wrong...once again.  

Life As A Make-Believe Foreign Correspondent

As part of an International Reporting course at Penn State, I recently had one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The point of the class was to give students a taste of life as a foreign correspondent. Before arriving in Mexico, we had to choose a topic to report on in-depth. After researching Mexico City, I found that an interesting trend has been happening in Mexico City and Latin America over the years; historically, Catholicism has been virtually the only religion, but Evangelical Protestantism is steadily becoming more popular. This was the topic I chose for my in-depth story. We were also assigned to find a feature story to cover off he ground while we were in Mexico, and I ended up covering Mattel's 50th Anniversary Celebration for Barbie in Mexico City, which featured outfits designed for Barbie by famous Mexican designers.

Here are my experiences as a reporter in the city that truly instilled in me an even deeper passion for journalism and storytelling.

Day 1: Saturday

After a night of traveling in a van from State College to Newark Airport with no sleep and an almost 6-hour flight, my 16 classmates and I finally arrived to Mexico City, better known as D.F. – El Distrito Federal. As soon as we arrived, my exhaustion and weariness wore off as I was in awe of everything I saw. Driving through the city, it looked like nothing I had seen before – an urban city with overgrown palm trees and little purple flowers I would later learn are called Jacaranda flowers. The closer we got to the hotel, the more I felt like a little kid on their way to Disney World.

The Maria Cristina Hotel is a Spanish, colonial style hotel that somehow manifested a feeling of being at home. We began our evening with a reception with another group of communications students that were staying at the hotel from the University of North Carolina.

The Maria Cristina Hotel, where we stayed while in Mexico City

That night, we all went out to a club called Touché in the city. I was expecting Mexican nightlife to be a lot different from American nightlife, so I was surprised when we arrived to the club and they were playing a lot of American music – everything from Kanye West to Christina Aguilera. To my dismay, that changed after about an hour when they started playing Techno music for the rest of the night. Regardless, we had a great time dancing coupled with a few drinks called "Palomas," and finished our night by stopping at a taco stand by our hotel and eating one of the most delicious tacos I’ve ever had.

In With the New

As is evident in the amount of time between my last post (on August 29th) and this post (on December 31st), Fall 2008 was an incredibly busy time for me.

On the eve of the new year, I can't help but reflect on 2008. One of the biggest skills I learned to master this year was time management. Somehow I managed being the president of my sorority chapter, being managing editor of my school's life and style magazine for women, editor-in-chief of a newsletter, and an intern for Rivals.com. I also worked, was a member of various clubs on campus, and of course stayed focused academically, ending the semester with a 3.72 GPA. And still managed to maintain a social and personal life. So I think it's safe to say I've got the whole time management thing down.

But mastering this level of high-stress time management also comes with mastering balance, which I think I struggled with more so than the actual management of time. Balancing between each aspect of my life and allotting the right amount of time and attention to each and prioritizing got difficult at times. I often had complaints from family members that I didn't call them enough or from friends that I didn't have time for them. But at the end of the day, I knew that I was making the right decisions and doing what was best for me. And I believe it paid off.

Earlier this month I found out I was selected as a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Intern. Anybody who is in the realm of communications knows that this is the most competitive and most prestigious internship in copy editing there is. I was placed at the San Francisco Chronicle, so after a two-week training session at the University of Texas in May, after graduation I will be heading out to San Francisco. A move to the West Coast is daunting yet exciting, but the fact that not only was I chosen but I was placed at a large, award-winning newspaper gives me an describable sense of self-pride, and I can't help but be hopeful that this internship will open a lot of doors for me.