Bicycles, Kayaks, and Showshoes: Reading and Writing about Travel 2018

      For my final essay I will write about my travel to Santa Barbara. It will be a story of the struggles my friend Lydia and I encountered throughout our trip. The first struggle will be how we had to walk all day on our first day because our room was not ready right away. The next struggle will be the seasickness we both experienced on our ride to Santa Cruz island. After each of these stories I will tell how we overcame them and the good things that came out of these struggles. Lydia and I will be the main focus of the essay, however, I will also include important people we encountered throughout the week. These people include our uber driver from the airport, the couple that helped us at the airbnb, and a tour guide on the island we visited.

For my final essay I plan to write about the trip my family took to the badlands. I want to write my story similarly to how "Ascension in the Moonlight". I want to give as many details as I can about this very special moment so people can get a good clear picture of what I saw and felt while there. I want to talk about the rain and rainbow I saw along with all the animals that came into sight right after the storm.

I think I am planning to write about a trip my family took to Yellowstone National Park. I am going to write it similarly to how Arriving in Turin was written, by comparing my expectations to the realities of the trip. I want to talk about how we hit a deer on the way there, how there were so many people in the park that it was hard to appreciate the scenery, the heat, etc. The characters will include me, my younger bother, my mom, and my dad. The theme may change by the time I am finished, but I want it to be something along the lines of "traveling is all what you make of it."

I think I am going to elaborate on the essay I wrote about my family going to Glacier National Park. The characters will be my mom, step dad, sisters and then a couple we met at one of our campsites that let us use their telescopes. Its going to be about all the troubles we had through out the trip, like the RV breaking, my sister and I getting sick and a thunderstorm that ruined our hike. I will add dialogue between my sisters and I, as well as the couple at our campsite.

For my final essay, I will build off of my "moment" essay and add in the other hikes that we completed on this trip before the angels landing trail and also mention some other details about my family, getting out to Arizona and Utah, and some foreshadowing of other trips that came after this one. I want to expand on these different hiking experiences because each one showed a different part of my families dynamic and by writing about all of the hikes I can create a better image of what my family is like. The characters in this will be my mom, my dad, my sister, and I. The theme will be the positives of going outside of your comfort zone and enjoying the nature that surrounds you.

For my final essay, I think I will write about my senior trip to Ireland last summer. The characters will just be myself and my mom, and the many people we met in our nearly two week adventure along the Irish coast and in Dublin. The theme will amount to how often one end can lead to a new beginning. For example, this was my mom and me's last big adventure just the two of us before I went to college, and her and my dad became empty nesters, but we grew closer than ever before.

I think for my final travel essay I am going to write about the time my family and I took a trip to see the Eclipse last summer. My mom, dad, and I were all in the car, chasing the weather to try to get to the clearest part in eclipse's path. It was really spontaneous and hectic. We had just gotten back from New York the day before and everyone was really tired. Once we made the decision to go though, we were all in. Hopefully, the story will convey a sense of living life in the moment and not stressing the details of an event in advance too much.

I intend to elaborate and build on my 'moment' essay. It's one of my stories that took place back in Korea and I want to use the setting and culture to my advantage to give the story a unique flavor. My goals for this essay include further emphasis on the moment, dialogue, and strong imagery. I want to solidify my plot, especially the rising action leading up to the fight scene - sweat, adrenaline, and all. The main characters would mainly be comprised of me and my opponent. The theme that I want to revolve around is that of the value of earning genuine respect rather than obtaining it through flaunting shallow symbols.

I will be writing about the college ministry retreat I went on this past weekend to Des Moines Iowa. It will be about all of the unplanned moments and all the travel and exploring fun of being on a trip. My characters will include the girls in my connection group. The theme will be that it's the unexpected moments that end up meaning the most.

For my final travel essay I would like to continue writing about the trip I took to New York City (it was mentioned in my bad trip essay). I want to share the good parts of the trip, the experiences I had and the places I saw. I loved that trip and loved New York and I would like to further explain that in my essay. Characters in the essay would include myself, my mom, and a few of my friends that came on the trip. We all bonded together over the trip and we still have inside jokes from it to this day. The theme would be about doing things that are unexpected and ending up loving it. The best parts of that trip weren't at the big tourist destinations that we visited, it was the small places that we found and the memories we made there. 

For my final travel essay, I will likely focus on the recent trip my family took last summer to visit my mom's sister's family in San Francisco. The characters involved would include my family--myself, my younger sister, and my parents--along with my aunt's family--my two cousins (who are around the same age as me), my uncle, and my aunt. The last time we went to San Francisco, I was still in middle school and, as such, interacted much differently with my extended family than I did in our most recent visit. This is important as I want to explore my thoughts and feelings regarding how my relationship with my aunt, uncle and cousins have changed, what may have resulted in those changes, how I can tell things have changed, how I perceive these individuals relative to my family's last visit, etc. Inter-family relationships are always significantly complex so I want to write about a handful of specific events and interactions--and my personal reflections of them--that would ...

For my final travel essay I am going to write about a road trip I took with my mom to Colorado two years ago. I will try to illustrate the feeling I got when I first saw the mountains rise in the distance, the scary ride into the valley, climbing a small mountain, seeing the Maroon Bells for the first time, and the overall contentment I felt while being in such an nature-absorbed place. My characters will be me, my mom, and my cousin Danielle (whom we stayed with in Colorado). My theme will be that I realized being submerged in nature is truly a natural tranquilizer that combats the effects of a busy life.    

For my Final Essay I was thinking about writing of my experiences I'd had on my first cruise ship and my interactions with the staff on board the ship. I had gone on the ship expecting all the staff to be American, just as most of the passengers were, but they were all of different nationalities and ethnicities. I had met a Russian waiter in the buffet, a young man from the Philippines who loved to make everyone laugh at dinner (he too was a waiter), what I call the "ghost" cleaning staff who folded towels into different animals who I got to speak with every once in awhile, and a woman and other art auctioneers that were all from England. I hadn't expected the staff on the ship to be so lively, friendly, and diverse, nor had I expected them to such a great part of my traveling experience. They all had very interesting stories and personalities that they shared with me, and they taught me a lot about what it meant to travel, especially alone and far away from home.

For my final extended essay, I would like to further develop my cross-cultural encounter piece, “Hye-Won.” I will be continuing with the characters of myself, my childhood friend Hye-Won, and Hye-Won's mother, and with the theme that cultural differences do not have to stand in the way of friendship. Out of everything I have produced for this class, I was happiest with how the original draft of this piece turned out, and it has the most personal relevance to me. I feel that I received very useful feedback when this piece was reviewed by the class, and I would like to incorporate the advice I received into an improved and more developed version of the story. I would like to go deeper into my descriptions and provide more background information about my experience living overseas and the perceptions I had going into my friendship with Hye-Won.

 I really enjoyed that this story was originally written in Spanish and translated into English but you still kept it very authentic by keeping many Spanish sentences and phrases in it. That aspect makes the story more personal to you and what you have gone through.  Question: In your story you explain the fear if being an outcast, in todays society, are you still afraid of rejection or being labeled as an outcast?

Dolores de Pocha Response Question: how did you select these defining moments to be part of your essay? Did you start with a lot of writing and then narrow it down, or did you have an outline? What stood out to me about this piece is the vivid descriptions and introspective reflection. The characters and scenery were beautifully crafted. The reflection helped us see you develop as a character.

Question: What made you decide to isolate certain lines as their own paragraphs? I was really interested in the back and forth between your storytelling, inner thoughts, and references to the past. The piece covered a lot of topics and left me thinking.

My question - How many of your works do you write in Spanish originally and how many in English? If you usually write in one language over the other, why?  As for the essay, I really enjoyed reading it. Including Spanish phrases allowed us, as readers, to empathize with you easier. It put us in the mindset of a bilingual person, rather than you just describing what it is to be bilingual. It's kind of like Uncle Charles Principal, narrating in a way in which the character being described would think.

Question: how did you decide which phrases and sentences to keep in Spanish and which to translate to English? Comment: I really enjoyed the imagery and personification, it painted such a clear image in my mind of all the scenes described throughout the essay. I especially liked the description of the water as the kind you would only see in movies. I also like the use of indentation and short sentences to emphasize certain points about not belonging.

Question: During the time of your story, you express that you have a certain privilege or freedom being able to travel back and forth from Mexico to the U.S. (that many of your relatives didn't have) yet at the same time, your greatest fear was being rejected by your family in Mexico and being labeled an outcast. Have your feelings regarding the matter changed over the years? Theme: In addition to belonging, I found the theme to be that of returning kindness. You came to Mexico "asking questions" and felt inadequate that you had nothing to offer in return. To me, it was a very insightful thought that spoke volumes of your character.

I thought this essay was beautiful and had a lot of incredible imagery and themes hidden within the language. But the theme that stood out the most to me was the theme of love and acceptance of family, despite the distance and differences between one another. Even though those differences can be scary, family accepts you for who you are with unconditional love. Another thing I loved about the style of this was that there was no quotations to show dialogue, but that it could be clearly read as dialogue. I thought this helped the story flow better and gave a sense of internal thought to the words. I also liked figuring out some of the Spanish, even though I have never learned it before, and I thought the fact that not everything was translated made it more personal and traditional to Mexican culture. And that wasn't going to change because that language was an important part of it. The only question I have regarding the story was the sentence "The truth is I'm a broken symbo...

I was most struck by Aracely Mondragon's use of personification throughout her essay to intertwine the people of Mexico with its landscape, such as how her tia feeds the stream or she [the narrator] is from the mountain. It really helped me visualize how beautiful the villages she visited and the countryside she witnessed must be, and how much more beautiful the presence of her family made it seem. I would like to know about Mondragon's writing in general, and how she determined which details to include and which to be more ambiguous about?

Question: What made you decide to keep lots of singular phrases (such as titles or Spanish words) and small phrases in Spanish but not often keeping the entire sentence in Spanish? Comment: Overall I liked the personal experiences and thoughts that were included into the story and tied into the plot and dialogue. Such as background information on you personally and also inner fears or thoughts you had pertaining to what you were saying. Theme: I thought the theme of the piece was to reveal the struggles in finding where one belongs and the fear of rejected or prevented from joining this environment.

I feel like there were a lot of themes in this piece but one that stuck out to me was that it's not always easy to find where you fit in. A question I have is why did you choose not to translate the Spanish phrases you used?

How did you decide when to use Spanish? How often do you write about your own experiences?

Question: Do you want to go back and live in Mexico? If so, why? I enjoyed how you switched from the account of your trip to Mexico to your past experiences there, explaining your trips as a kid and your father's past there as well. It shows how connected you are to that place, geographically at least. You'll always have that history there and I liked how it showed through your writing.

Questions: - During this specific trip to Guerrero, did you travel with anyone? Your sister, father, etc? - What is the main reason you would wish to go back/live in Guerrero? Agriculture? Family? Beauty? Comments: My favorite lines in this piece were, "How I cross these borders is a privilege. This type of movement has to be a responsibility too" (Mondragon 13). I appreciated how you paid homage to the difficulties immigrants have in crossing the U.S.-Mexican border and realized your privilege should be used as an advantage to help.

What made you want to decide to share, to put into public view, a deeply personal and intimate account of your time returning to Mexico?  What was your process in regards to deciding which lines of the essay were to remain in Spanish? I thought it was really effective how you made clear separations between each activity or interaction with your family members during your visit, yet there was a distinct link connecting all of the events, whether it be reflecting on your feelings of not belonging, your pap á, etc. 

Angela Stansbery Professor Severino Travel Writing October 15, 2018 The Hidden Warmth The bitter chill of the wind blows my hair from my neck. It forces me to wrap my arms around myself as I shiver violently. I hate the cold and the fact that this is what surrounds me now makes me immediately regret this trip. What makes it worse is we are only a half an hour from our house in O’Fallon Missouri. We are carrying this painful burden when we could be in our own warm beds only a half an hour away. Nevertheless, my mother dragged my girl scout troop out into the elements for a weekend of camping, or as close to camping as a group of ten-year-old girls is willing to get. We’re staying in a cabin and have indoor bathrooms.   It’s a loose definition of camping. The first night draws over us. For a while we are warm, close to the big opening bonfire. Marshmallows are roasted, camp songs are sung and swaps are swapped. It is a great time but the fire that warms my sk...