Wei Lin’s Blog

San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the most popular cities in the world. The world-famous is known for its many attractions, such as Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, the beaches and Fisherman’s Wharf. Other reasons are the wooden houses, a great diversity of immigrants coming all over the world and the tall buildings, which give the city an aspect of a great urban metropolis. San Francis is a very unique city.

The wooden houses are very common in this city. Most of the people live in wooden houses because they are warmer than concretes. Furthermore, the material that is used to make wooden houses is excellent for areas, which sometimes suffer earthquakes, because wood is a lot more flexible material compared to concrete. The wooden house can be seen all over the town. Maybe that kind of house will predominate in the future.

Many immigrants come to San Francisco to have a better life. They try to find the opportunities in this city that they could not have in their homeland. Most of the immigrants come from China, Philippines, Mexico and Central America. San Francisco is a city with many kinds of races.

The city has also many tall buildings giving an appearance of a big city. Most of the buildings belong to big companies and hotel for the tourists. Some buildings are very old, but others have a futuristic look.

San Francisco is a different city compared to other popular cities. The city is located in a good place, which make a lot of tourist coming from everywhere. The large diversity of immigrants makes the city suitable place for everybody to live, because they can talk in their own language with some people, they can eat the same things that they ate in their countries. That makes immigrants come from all over the world. I’m proud of living in such a good place like San Francisco

My Graduation Trip

One of the best times that I ever had was my graduation trip. I can remember those days very well, my classmates and I had a great time together in that place, which we spent five days. The place was amazing, a huge resort surrounding by many trees. The main attraction was the swimming pools that were natural hot. I will never forget that place and the memories that I had over there.

On the first day, I woke up six o’clock and I left my house as soon as I was prepared. We were supposed to go to the school to get the bus, which took us to the airport. Everything went well in the ride to the airport, but nobody could hide the excitement of the trip. the flight to the resort was only one hour long. We arrived there about two p.m., first of all my two best friends and I went to our bedroom to put our bags away, after that we explore the place a little bit and enjoyed the rest of the day swimming and hanging out.

On the following days, we spent our time wisely. We had done almost everything that could be done in that resort. We rent some bikes and we went to a great place with many trees, we also got some mangos from the trees. Another cool thing that we done were the paint ball, that was very fun but the game ended very fast, because we didn’t buy a lot of balls. Furthermore, we took a lot of pictures of resort, so we can remember the good memories, which that place had left us.

On the last day, our school won a competition that we had been participating, everybody was happy and upset too, because on the following day we were leaving the place. Although it was raining I enjoyed a lot in the hot park with my best friend.

I missed that resort very much; I spent a really great time with my friends. That place made me relax like I never did before. I hope someday I could go there again, but it won’t be that fun because my friend would not be there.

The Catcher in the Rye

The book The Catcher in the Rye was written by J. D. Salinger. The story is about Holden, a 17 year-old teenager who is facing some problems in his life. His problems start to showing up after he learned that he would be kicked out of school for flunking nearby all of his classes. He tries to act as if everything is fine, but the truth was that he lost his path in life.

One of his big problems was he tried to escape the reality, thinking that was the best way to solve his problems. Holden thought if he could avoid the reality, everything would be perfect to him.

            Along the story, Holden showed several problems. One of them was the escapism, which is, running away from the real world to live in some kind of Utopia in his imagination, where he could be in control. When Holden tries to escape the reality, he imagines some situations that he could never done in the real world. For example, when Holden was going back to the hotel he imagined a situation at Pencey that he found out who stole his gloves, and he would be tough enough to go down in this guy’s room to get back his gloves. In the other hand, Holden said he could not do such thing, because he considered himself as a yellow guy. This fact explains that the only way he can solve his problems, is using his imagination.

            Holden doesn’t face his escapism like many others would do, by drinking, but after his friend Luce left him alone, he started to drink until he got drunk, Holden was probably trying to forget his problems for a while. Actually, Holden doesn’t seem to know that he often escape from the reality; he faces it as if it was very common to him. For example, when Holden meets Phoebe in his house he tells her about his dream, in which he wants to become a guy who would catch the children close to falling off on a cliff his imaginary field of rye. He also says that this idea would be crazy, but it is the only thing that he’d like to be. His escapism made him have this idea to move out West, to start his whole again, because he was unsatisfied with his life in New York.

            Specialists describe escapism as tendency to spend ones time away from the reality at the point of trying to escape from it. They also say that escapism is when somebody is not happy or satisfied with ones life. Many things can influence the escapism, some of them are accepted and some are not such as alcohol abuse, like in Holden’s case for example. The best way to solve this problem is by having friends who you can interact as the same time as are you enjoying it.

            In Holden’s case the escapism developed mainly because of his beliefs and actions. In his imagination, he lacks attitude and confidence, which is two important key to avoid this problem. The others situations reflects his dissatisfaction with the life he is having. I wouldn’t say that Holden would be able to get over his escapism, because as the specialists say the friendship is an important key to help escapists, but he can only trust in his little sister Phoebe. To him the rest of the people are all phonies in his opinion. I wonder what would make Holden trust these people who he calls phonies.

Alcatraz 

The island of Alcatraz, also known as “the Rock”, was a federal prison built as an attempt to stop the crimes, such as the selling of alcohol, by holding the most dangerous criminals during the 1930s to 1960s. Nowadays, after Alcatraz had been shut down, it is a very famous tourist attraction which attracts a lot of tourists from everywhere to see this historical place. 

The name Alcatraz was given after the Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala who first named it La Isla de los Alcatraces, which means Island of the pelicans. Before the island became a prison, it was used as a U.S. army fortress because of its privileged and strategic location. 

This maximum security prison worked very well because it had an efficient system to manage all those prisoners. The main advantage of the Rock was its location, far away from the coast; and also the cold water made almost impossible any attempt to escape by swimming. Furthermore, the Alcatraz administrators picked the best and toughest guards in the country, each of these guards watched over three prisoners, which was different from the other common prisons, where they usually guard at least ten inmates. 

Alcatraz started to gain a good reputation by giving all inmates discipline with a harsh routine. The prisoners were divided in three different categories according with the crimes they had committed, which gave some prisoners some privileges that others could not have, such as having access to the library or receiving letters from their relatives. Those who did not obey the rules had to deal with the consequences which most of the times they had to go to a solitary lock-down. 

Although the prison was working for a long time, no one could escape from it, except a couple of prisoners whom they considered missing. The Alcatraz Prison was closed because of the high cost to maintain the facility, which had started to deteriorate. Also other prisons were believed to have the same capacity to do the same job as that of Alcatraz for less cost. 

The Alcatraz Prison was certainly a symbol of security and justice during that period. That federal prison which held the toughest criminals in the country showed how was possible to face all of them without any big problems. Even though the prison was shut down the Alcatraz Island still and always is going to be an icon representing security. 

My name is Wei Lin and I am 17 years old. I like to play videogames and computer games, I love to use the internet to chat with my friends and download anime. When I’m not at the computer i like to watch TV or sleep.

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