Britney's Blog

The history of the Caribbean dates back all the way to the first few voyages. After Christopher Columbus stepped foot on an island in the Caribbean in the year 1492, he created a chain of exploration and cross-Atlantic expansion. Specifically, European nations rushed to claim their share of islands (Contributer 2).  The history of Aruba dates back to 1,000 AD with the first few inhabitants, the Arawak tribe of the Caquetios Indians. These people fled to Aruba from Venezuela to escape brutality that they faced there by other Indian tribes. Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda arrived in Aruba in 1499, and he founded a colony on the island ("A Brief History of Aruba" 1). At this point, Aruba is in the hands of Spain. Aruba stayed under Spanish control for 137 years ("The Spanish" 3). Portrait of Alonso de Ojeda For more than 80 years, the Dutch and the Spanish conquistadors fought each other to gain control over the small island. The Dutch succeeded in winning the war and

 After doing some research, I've found that Aruba has been through a lot in terms of ownership by other countries.  Alonso de Ojeda, a Spanish explorer, first discovered the land and claimed it for the Spanish in 1499. He called it La Isla de Los Gigantes, which translates to the island of the giants. He called it this because it reflected the tall heights of the natives that lived there.  But Aruba is an island scarce of natural resources. The one true thing that was in abundance on the island were the different kinds of cacti. They have little rain which leads to scarce vegetation. . Because of this, Aruba became apart of the Useless Islands, or Islas Inutiles, which included Bonaire and Curacao.   Aruba was initially apart of the Netherlands Antilles, which consisted of five other islands. On January 1st, 1986, Aruba became its own entity within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Aruba has its own constitution, and the King of the Netherlands appoints the governor of Aruba who hold

 When I first dove into the assignment of finding the main idea of El Caribe Gris, I had no prior knowledge of it. I was really confused on whose point of view the passage was told by. It was also difficult for me to follow the historic timeline that was told because it was a lot to take in with a lot of words that I did not know.  How did I overcome these difficulties? The first thing I did was read the whole text in its entirety, even if I didn't understand it. Yes, reading a whole bunch of words that I did not make sense of. Then I did some research. I searched up El Caribe Gris into google and I found a website that gave me background information on the author/speaker Mr. Eduardo Lalo. https://calendar.utexas.edu/event/eduardo_lalo_the_grey_caribbean_el_caribe_gris#.X2DWbhBKjio  After, I read the text for a second time. But this time, I stopped after each paragraph to make notes on things I found important. After I had read and annotated most of the text, I read it for a third

 When I first read the syllabus and found out that blogging was apart of this course, I was both nervous and slightly excited. Nervous because blogging is something totally new to me and I kind of stressed myself out in thinking this was going to be the most difficult task ever. But excited because this was something new and I get to express myself without having to write thousands of boring essays. Blogging doesn't stress me out . I don't know why. The last English course that I took required me to write about 4-5 essays the whole semester and I HATED every minute I spent putting in work to them. Something about the word "essay" and "semester-long" and "minimum 1,500 words" when spoken by a professor gives me the heeby-jeebiez and makes me absolutely hate my existence. But knowing I have a blank canvas with prompts that are interesting makes me feel relieved and not stressed at all.  Like any other college student,  procrastination is my forte. I