Our trip to Puerto Rico provided for many informative events and a much needed relaxation from the hectic school work back here in State College. I was immediately looking forward to going to Puerto Rico because Spanish is the main language spoken there and I am a Spanish minor, so I ended up getting a decent amount of real practice using the language with some of the locals and just being immersed in the city of San Juan. The dialect used in Puerto Rico is a bit difficult to understand for me since I am not fluent, but I was able to have some short interchanges successfully. It was interesting to note the prevalence of English though because I heard from many Puerto Ricans that the majority of people also speak English, but there were several times when they didn’t understand English. This occurred outside of San Juan however, which is reasonable given that San Juan is their largest city and is more likely to have english speakers compared to the smaller areas of Luquillo and Fajardo. Along the same lines, one of the biggest eye opening events was while we were visiting the Capitol building and heard the choir sing the American national anthem. Hearing it made me think we were in any other state of the U.S., yet we weren’t. We were in a commonwealth. Especially since the debate of statehood, independence, and commonwealth is alive and well in Puerto Rico right now, I found myself even more confused about where Puerto Rico would go from here, or if they should even change their status at all.
What surprised me the most form this trip was the advanced fields of science and technology in Puerto Rico. We heard that about 90% of pharmaceutics from the U.S. comes from Puerto Rico. Furthermore, the Arecibo telescope is located there and we heard from one of our speakers that it is becoming a popular location for medical tourism. While there is all this advancement in these fields, there seems to be some sort of imbalance. Complaints about the proposed tax increase were echoed every day. The streets of the city of San Juan had some run down parts, while I’ve heard from locals that there are certain parts to definitely avoid. While it may seem like paradise in some areas, we shouldn’t forget that every rose has its thorn. I am hopeful that Puerto Rico and San Juan will grow and prosper, and I imagine that it will. What I would love to see, however, is the population of Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico to go back to being greater than Puerto Ricans living in the mainland United States. There appears to be a lot of good opportunities in these fields for jobs, and I think that to be Puerto Rican is such an unique experience that I would want to spend my time there if I were Puerto Rican. Perhaps that may just be my preference for warmer weather, but the sense of pride for their island is something I truly admired and they should be really be getting more positive recognition. This trip was so rewarding, I may even become a Puerto Rican resident myself one day.
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