Personal Narrative: Chimbote

The sparks fly in the air, there are marshmallows in your hair, and you’re with your favorite people in the world. This is called the best place on earth, for me at least. I enjoy camping so very much, you meet new people, experience different things, make new memories, and have a blast. You also see new sights, smell some things, and always wake up to the birds singing and not the bustling streets of the city. Camping is my go to activity.

When I was little, I heard stories of Third World countries where people lived in complete poverty. I would hear of how they had dilapidated domiciles, contaminated water, deadly diseases, and shortages of food. I was always told how blessed I was to live in a country where I was free of these situations, but I always took this truth for granted. I would go along every day, not worrying about where I was going to sleep or what I was going to eat, when people all over the world were facing these situations as problems. It wasn't until I was sixteen that I realized how blessed I was, when I was given the opportunity to visit San Jose, Costa Rica.

Growing up in a Hispanic household my family’s culture has had a significant impact in my life from avoiding a different variety of salsas and thinking twice about my immature decisions. Yet their love for the beautiful game known as Fútbol or soccer has always held on to me and is inspiring how it brings together an entire world or in this case my fanatic family. With soccer in my blood, as many relatives love to think, I’ve grown to love the sport, but my love was limited by restrictions. With an un-financially stable high school placing soccer in the bottom of the list of funds, my love for the game only stretched to amateur pickup games and watching ninety minute games on FOX Deportes. With limitations affecting my passion I began to follow

As we age, we gain a greater ability to understand and acquire knowledge about the world around us. This is a natural process that transpires throughout life. Often associated with the coming of age, the loss of innocence is a single or set of events that prompts a sudden realization or new perspective; this is a theme occurs in many literary works. The loss of innocence is a prominent theme in the short story “A&P,” portrayed in the main character Sammy.

Santiago de los Caballeros, that’s where my family is from in the Dominican Republic. Everything about it warms my heart just as much as its vicious sun does penetrating your pores until you’re almost sure they aren’t there anymore. My father’s side of the family had just come down from the Capitol, which is known to be ignorant and high maintenance despite being from a third world country. The Dominican air smelled earthy and damp, yet you could feel its purity in the pit of your lungs.We decided to sit down at a food truck area and eat the signature post-club, pre-hangover, Dominican sandwich: The Chimmichurri. It is nowhere near as disgusting as it sounds, I promise. As we made ourselves comfortable in our plastic chairs beside The Monument, we had a complete view of the lights scattered like a den of fireflies illuminating the city. I was lost within the laughter you find yourself in after one too many Red Rock sodas when our Haitian server approached us. He kept reading the menu off to us and I fell in love

I arrived at practice with my shoes laced, hair pulled back, and the mindset that I was unstoppable. I could play against every member of my team and come out the victor on any given day. It was the first day of practice that week, and challenge matches were scheduled to begin. The team went through our daily shuffle of drills, conditioning, and running to prepare for what was lying ahead. While warming up with my friends, I felt great, talking about homecoming, boys, and a variety of irrelevant events. I felt ready. The odds were in my favor and nobody could stop me.

In 2025, I will be twenty-nine years old and hopefully married. I will be married to my significant other of ten years Earnest Palmer III, who is a dentist. I would have been recently graduating with a bachelor’s in Culinary Arts and trying to plan to open my own restaurant, BubbaD’s Eateries. Knowing my big headed husband of mine, I probably had a baby then and trying to have another baby. Hopefully, by then Earnest will get rid of the idea naming our son, King. We will be living in the suburbs near New York City but working in the city. Being a woman with great memory, I probably wrote a memoir about my crazy life and trying to sell it to a publisher. If none of the publishers wants to publish my memoir, I will probably sell it the Lifetime

I called it the Casita, which means small house in Spanish, yet I never lived there. It was my home forty-five minutes away from home. Brightly decorated with a vibrant yellow exterior, it caught the eye of most bystanders. A dream of entrepreneurship brought my immigrant parents to the United States. Like most families, we struggled for the first few years on American soil until we were able to buy a small lot of land where we built a Venezuelan restaurant, which my family nick-named the Casita. Maturing alongside the restaurant, I was constantly exposed to my culture and the commitment needed to keep the business alive. In turn, this exposure brought me to be a more appreciative and devoted person.

Spending even a few minutes with my family, it would become clear that my parents are nowhere near considering me anywhere near an adult. The name “chiquitica” haunts me even though I am 5 foot 7 and anytime my dad or brothers see me, I get a “playful” noogie. As for the name Chiquitica, it is not because my dad loves the song from ABBA or the Chiquita banana, although he does really like both. Up until my family moved from Venezuela, everyone who knew me or of me called Chiquitica, which translates to very little one. My guess is I must have been a very small baby, or I’ve always been tall and people called me that ironically. Even though I moved into a different country, I couldn’t seem to shake off my nickname. Sure, it may be a little degrading, but it can’t be compared to how I was treated before I bought my own car. Oh boy was it worse.

My dragster ended up taking a different shape and look than what I pictured because of my poor time management skills. My car had a race time of 1.409, which was not the best or the worst. I had a design that I thought would help accelerate the car by being very aerodynamic and low to the track. I wanted the back of my car to be rounded and lower in the back that gradually came into small bump towards the front that led into a point. My dragster ended up thicker, higher, and less rounded in the back. The middle gradually descended into a small hill that led into a point in the front. Once I completed sanding and painting my dragster, it weighed 74 grams when it needed to be 70 grams or below. I had to sand off at least 4 grams after I already

After watching the video, ‘Out in the Rural’ I was surprised to find the living conditions of the people in Bolivar County in Mississippi. The video opened my eyes because I knew back in the 1960s, times were different but I did not believe they were that different. For example, the people of Bolivar County had no access to health care. In order to change that, a community health center was created. By creating the community health center, the people of Bolivar County were able to receive patient care and expecting mothers were also taught how to properly bathe their infants. Sanitation was another issue in Bolivar County because the living conditions did not have proper sewage. By fixing this issue, the people were able to have proper sewage

There is someone I wish was still around from before that is my dad. He passed away in the first week of summer the summer before 6th grade. I lived with my mom until I was 7 then he went and got visitations so he seen me every Wednesday and every other weekend in the summers I was at his house 1 week and my mom's 1 week. Sometimes when he was close to my house or my grandmas he would bring me "care packages" they were mainly toys the one I remember was he was at Walmart and in the middle of the night he brought me Legos the Legos were batman ones. One Christmas he brought my a huge monster truck it was remote control it was about 2 feet tall I had it for a couple years I really liked to do donuts with it in the snow. He had a girl fried and

In that moment I realized the world isn’t all friendship and giggles. I never expected to see or hear someone so cruel before in my life, I thought it only ever happened in the telenovelas my mom and watched after she picked me up from elementary school. I could see Skylar, the new student in my kindergarten class, talking with an upperclassman behind the tall metal slide. I barely heard the introductions, but I could clearly hear when the upperclassman laughed. He laughed at the name that the boy was given. I didn’t expect what came out of my mouth, and they certainly didn’t either.

“So, uh, you’re not going to believe this.” These are the words I hear upon answering my phone. My friend continues, “I just dropped off my wife at work, and well, one tire is facing straight and the other one is not.” I get dizzy and my face lights up red as I hear the description of my car. My friend continues to stammer as he tries to explain what happened, but I don’t listen to any of it. I know that I’m getting the bill no matter what happened. “Well, have it towed to a shop.” I say, most likely interrupting his continued jabbering. “Call me when it’s there and I’ll take care of it.” This was not the first, or last, time that I had to make sure an unplanned event could be taken care of out of my pocket. In most people's lives there will

Racing at night going One-hundred and forty miles an hour on US-27 holding the lead, Shift six gear, speed topped out at two-hundred miles per hour passing by cars smoothly. I chanted I am immortal, I am a god! while I pushed my sports bike to its limit. Suddenly a black car approaches. WHAM! I get Rammed from behind and lose control of my bike slamming into a Semi-truck up ahead. Lights out. When I peeked my eyes, I saw 4 humans around me. Thump after thumb I believe I was in an ambulance rushing down the turnpike. I looked around and the first words that came to my head are “Rick this is just a dream”. This is the story of how I escaped from an illegal laboratory that clones and modifies humans.