El Fin

Describe the world you come from -- for example: your family, community, or school. -- and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

I come from a very small place, not very known by many. Honduras, a country of the size of the state of Tennessee is where i was born. In Honduras, my family extends from one corner of the country to the other corner. My family is composed of many people with different goals and different ways of seeing life.  I am one of the many who really like to succeed. A lot of people in my family extended family like to succeed but most of them do not like to do the necessary work to get that success.Me and my family; my mom,my dad,my brother and my sister like to work hard to get what we want. In my extended family, we are defined or seen as the most working people and the ones who put effort into everything.

One of my dreams as a member of this family, is to set an example to those in my family who are not as hard workers and help them succeed. I know that there are a lot of people in my family that have the potential of working hard, but they just do not have a reason to do it. I want to help them think about their future and what they need to do in order to succeed.

Another thing that i want to do in my family, my main family is to help my bother. My brother and i have not had a good relationship for years. I am older than him for two years, giving me the responsibility to be a leader. My dad always tells me how i need to be a leader for my brother. In the last years i have not behaved as a good leader. I think that leadership also refers to influence. I am one of my brother’s biggest influence. My aspiration is to be that leader for my brother one day. I do not want a brother i am ashamed of in the future. I want a brother i can be proud of. It is hard for me to have a nice relationship with my brother; we are constantly arguing and we do not often like to do things the same way. I am now, currently trying to work as a leader for him. Lead him into what i have been influenced to; success.

Seeing others help others withing my family has influenced me to act as a leader for others.

          I have always lived in a safe community. Around nice people, and nothing bad has really happened in my life that could have made big changes to it. At school, the environment is always the same even when i go to new places to learn. I think that the fact that learning is the same everywhere has helped my dreams and aspirations. I have learned that  you can achieve your dreams no matter where you are, and that the only thing you need is a brain that understands and a heart that wants to learn. 
          The lessons i learned from my family and in my community have made me a more thoughtful person about others. It has made me want to help others be successful. I think that i am the person i am because of the influence of important members of my family, and great leaders among ourselves such as my mom. She helped a lot of people including me and my siblings to think for others, ad not only for ourselves.

Second part: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution, blah blah blah..that is important to you. What about this makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

One of my biggest talents is art. I discovered when i was just a little kid that i had an artistic talent. I was obsessed with drawing and making stuff up with my own imagination. My mom told me that i did not learn how to be so artistic, but that i was born being an artist. When i was a kid, i would spend hours drawing alone. Making up new stuff every time. I became addicted and there was a point in my life when all i wanted to do was draw, so i stopped concentrating in school and focused on my art talent. Then i learned that i wanted to be more than an artist; i wanted to become an architect.

I started pursuing my dream of becoming an architect when i was a little bit older. In the last few years though, i have really worked hard to get to where i am right now to continue pursuing my dream of one day becoming an architect.

I am very proud of wanting to be an architect. It is a really competitive field. It makes me feel smart and better about my self. Having such a good talent can help me not only to become an architect but many other things. Art is historically important in this world, and it is currently and will always be an important human talent. This personal talent has made me proud of myself. It has helped my aspirations as a leader as well. Other people like my brother now see me as an influence. Whenever my brother needs help with something that needs art, he asks me and i help him. That is how i can be a leader with others.

It has also made me a better student. Since i need a lot of math in order to become an architect, i have put much more effort into my classes. 

This is how art makes me who i am. It helps me prepare and think about my future and is one of the major factors that helps my dream of becoming an architect. Art in general inspires me to create new things in my life. It makes me happy and it has shaped who i am right now. 

Final Final Book review: TGIHL

People like writing about things they feel comfortable talking about. Either if it is because they know a lot about what they are talking about, or they understand it really well or if it is some other reason, they write really good things. This is  why Gabriel Garcia Marquez decided to write The General in His Labyrinth.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Colombia. As a kid, Gabriel Garcia Marquez went through many struggles. He had to deal with death, and also moving a lot from place to place.  After he was born, his father became a pharmacist and in order to make money to support his family he had to move to Sucre, Bolivia to work as a pharmacist, but he took his wife with him to work in Sucre because it would have been really hard for him to make enough money to support his family without his wife's help. They left Marquez with his grandparents. Marquez grew up with his grandparents and knew them more than he knew his own parents. His grandfather was the one who started teaching Marquez how to read and to write, which eventually became Marquez's favorite thing to do. He told Marquez stories which made Marquez think deeply shaping his mind as a thinker and as a writer. Marquez's biggest struggle as a kid (when he was nine) was the death of his grandfather. That changed his whole life permanently and he ended up moving with his parents to Sucre,  Bolivia where his father owned a pharmacy after having lived nine years with his grandparents.  In Sucre, Bolivia he continued with his writing and eventually he realized he wanted to be a journalist.

He went to the University of Cartagena where his career as a journalist began. Marquez really liked to write about historic events and stories based in real experiences or events. One of the people he really wanted to write about was about Simon Bolivar. He read an unfinished book by his friend who was a writer Alvaro Mutis, which was about Simon Bolivar's last voyage. The story took place in Magdalena River, Colombia. Marquez felt really interested about the book and the story for two reasons: because he wanted to write about Simon Bolivar and because as a kid, he grew up living by the Magdalena River. He knew a lot about the setting so he asked permission to Mutis to take his idea and to write about Simon Bolivar and his last voyage in the Magdalena River, Colombia. That is how he ended up writing the book The General in His Labyrinth. He felt connected to the story because he knew about some of the characters and he knew the place. That made his book even better because he actually knew what exactly he was talking about.

  Had Bolivar not existed, Mr. Garcia Marquez would have had to invent him. Seldom has there been a more fitting match between author and subject. Mr. Garcia Marquez wades into his flamboyant, often improbable and ultimately tragic material with enormous gusto, heaping detail upon sensuous detail, alternating grace with horror, perfume with the stench of corruption, the elegant language of public ceremony with the vulgarity of private moments, the rationalistic clarity of Bolivar's thought with the malarial intensity of his emotions, but tracing always the main compulsion that drives his protagonist: the longing for an independent and unified South America. This, according to Bolivar himself, is the clue to all his contradictions. -The New York Times:Book Review

 It is like Gracia makes up his own stories. Stories that are real he can make them seem like he wrote them. That is how good his writing is.

Garcia did not only write about him because he knows a lot about him, but because Bolivar is a really important figure in the lives of many.

 Simon Bolivar was an important figure in South America that changed the way people thought about independence. Bolivar was born in Venezuela in 1783 and died in 1830. He was known as "El Liberador" in Spanish, which translates to, The Liberator. He was one man who really made it possible for Latin America to become independent. It was mostly in South America though. He liberated Most of South America from the Spanish Empire. Then he became president of several countries in South America. He was one great leader who is always remembered, but when we really think about him, we are not sure what things he had to do or go through to give so much for his people. Some people may wonder what his life was like, or what it was like to set people free. What was it like to be him and to do the things he did?

Well, Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about Simon Bolivar's life in his book The General in His Labyrinth. Simon Bolivar is the main character in this book. At the beginning of the book, in the first chapter, Simon Bolivar is introduced as an unhealthy man. He is 46 years old and he is preparing to go on a journey to Europe, but his sickness does not leave him alone making things hard for him. During his voyage, which takes weeks, to Europe, he is really sick. One of the reasons he wanted to leave The Americas was because in his own land, people he, himself liberated started to turn against him. Some wanted to kill him because they did not like him as a leader after the Spanish left. So that is why he wanted to leave.

They accused him of wanting to be president for life so he could appoint an European prince as his successor. They accused him of pretending to travel abroad when in reality he was going to the Venezuelan border and planned to return at the head of the insurgent troops in order to seize power, (p.13).

This shows what the people in Colombia thought the reason he wanted to leave. In reality, he did not want any of that that the people thought.  Bolivar was hated by people, but loved when was setting them free. People betrayed him. Him being sick just made it easier for people not to recognize him as a hero. His sickness and illness just made him seem weak. That is how people saw him.

I don't think many people now know what this Latin American hero went through. All the hate, and the negativity. They only see him as an idol and i am sure that no one thinks that part of his life was a struggle. That is the untold story that is left out. He is so important that a country was named after him; the nation of Bolivia. Now that i know more about him, and his life, i start to think about all the sacrifices he made, and that thanks to him the world is now different.

My peer review comentarios!

These are the comments i left for my tablemates' rough drafts:

Peter:
Try introducing your character first because you are just talking about Kristina and it is kind of confusing. You made a good progress when talking about Kristina throughout your essay, and i also think that you had a good ending. I like the way you integrated your quotes; you made them flow with your essay.

Ianna:
You kind of jump from one topic to another. You don't do it much, but it is noticeable. Like, Vanessa said, you seem to not have transitions between your ideas, and then when you jump into another thing it juts leaves the reader kind of confused. Could you connect this book to anything else? or is the only connection you see between the book and something else is your life?

Wendy:
You should write down the questions you are answering because it is not until the end of the answer of the question that you (the audience) realize what the actual question was. I think you did a good job though, it is lengthy compared to the other ones i have read tonight but that is fine. What was the point of having several different short stories?