Month: May 2016

Jacek Tartak

Impactó mi vida positivamente en términos de mi estado emocional y creativo. Me siento bien cómodo y me puedo expresar a mi manera sin ningún tipo de mal juicio de otra persona. Es una experiencia única de la cual quisiera que más personas pudieran ser parte.

 

Mi experiencia en ExAlt fue una muy positiva y de alto cambio a mi vida. Impactó mi vida positivamente en términos de mi estado emocional y creativo. Me siento bien cómodo y me puedo expresar a mi manera sin ningún tipo de mal juicio de otra persona. Es una experiencia única de la cual quisiera que más personas podrían ser parte. Siento que mi creación/actividad más impactante y productiva fue aquella de crear mi cosplay de Kyoko Sakura para el PRComicCon. Aprendí tantas cosas nuevas con esta experiencia. Primero empecé buscando videos en Youtube sobre la maquina de coser y sus partes y como se usa y busqué una lista de palabras claves de la costura y sus definiciones. Entonces, empecé a experimentar con la maquina de coser y trazar lineas con la maquina en papel. Poco a poco me fui adiestrando con la maquina hasta que empezamos a crear el disfraz en sí.

Empezamos creando el patrón del disfraz en un papel basado en el diseño que Sheyla había creado anteriormente. Cogimos mis medidas y trazamos en el papel el patrón basado en un jacket de hombre. Hicimos hasta la mitad de arriba para después la otra mitad de abajo hacerla como un traje. Cortamos todo esto en tela y nos pusimos a trabajar.

Durante el transcurso, hice muchos errores de los cuales pude aprender y tuve experiencias inigualables. Con cada paso que daba, me sentía más y más emocionado. Estaba dando gritos de felicidad por un bolsillito fácil que hice que no tenía que ver con el disfraz para practicar la costura, imagínate mi emoción al haber terminado mi disfraz completo.  Aún así, no hice el disfraz entero. La botas las ordené online con el dinero recaudado del negocio de limber que había administrado durante el año. También tenía en mente crear una lanza para el cosplay, pero no dió el tiempo para terminarlo. Sin embargo, me siento muy orgulloso del trabajo que hice y me siento super agradecido de toda la ayuda que obtuve para llegar a ese producto final. Gracias Sheyla por la gran enseñanza de costura y gracias Alex por el centro que nos has dado. Gracias ExAlt.

On Tuesday, we went to the UPR (University of Puerto Rico) to interview people and see how traditional schools affect their levels of happiness and satisfaction in their lives. We interviewed three people: two college students, and 1 teacher. It was interesting how you could see the difference in answers based on age gap and interest. But, there was 2 things they agreed on (without ever talking to each other because we interviewed them seperately). The funny thing is, those 2 things contradict each other, but somehow all 3 of the people said the same thing. They all said “Yes. Traditional school helped me in my levels of satisfaction in my life”. But they also said “No. The traditional education in Puerto Rico does not work properly and should be improved.” How can they all agree to contradict their own selves? It is quite peculiar. They all had gone through different walks of life and had diverse answers talking about their lives and their relationships with the adults as kids yet, they said the same thing. The same contradicting thing. I don’t know how to explain it but I think we should keep doing interviews to see if this is a recurring thought amongst people or if it was a total coincidence that we found those 3 exact people. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see

On wednesday, we had a sleepover. So, at 3pm, when our ExAlt day ended as it usually does at that time, I stayed for the sleepover because I already had my clothes and whatnot to sleep with. Everyone else left to  either stay at their house or prepare for the sleepover. So it was just Alex and I at ExAlt; I was playing Minecraft while he was watching Naruto. And I was like: “Alex let’s go do something that isn’t being absorbed by the matrix like a couple of couch potatoes” and he was like: “Like what? Do you have any ideas?” I said “I don’t know. Anything. We can go out or stay here and play something or whatever”. He got the idea that we should put the Sneaky Cards to work! So he took 5 cards. They were the “Play a board game with a stranger”, “Challenge a stranger to a duel and win”, “Take a selfie with a stranger”, “Lay down in a public place until someone checks on you”, and “Start the wave in a food court or cafeteria”. We were able to hand out the first 3 cards. For the first one, we were walking around the UPR and I asked a random person that walked by us if he would play a short game of Mancala with me (we brought a Mancala set with us for that card). We ended up playing 3 games and he beat me 2-1, which is kinda embarrassing because he hadn’t played Mancala ever in his life. But that’s okay. We got to know a bit about him. He told us his name was Alex and he studies History of Art. He absolutely LOVED Mancala. He asked to play the 2 extra times. He also asked us what we do and where we’re from and we explained to him about ExAlt. When we finished, we gave him the Sneaky Card, and we left. We then kept walking around the University and Alex wanted to go to a class and enter a course just because. So we looked around the classrooms to see if there were any classes, but there wasn’t. Most classrooms were empty except 1, which had 3 people inside. Alex then dared me to put the “Take a selfie with a stranger” Sneaky Card to the test. So I knocked on the door, went inside, and said “Excuse me. Would any of you be willing to take a selfie with me?” Their reactuons were PRICELESS! They were all like “No, what?” and one of them was really scared. Her eyes bulged and everything. They asked “are you gonna publish it on the internet?” and I said no. But they were still really skeptical about it. To ease them, I told them that it didn’t have to be from my phone, it could be from one of theirs. One of them agreed and she took the selfie with me using her phone. She also told me that she WOULD be posting it online. I handed her the card, explained it, and then left. We kept walking around and we saw a lady in a bench and Alex challenged her to Rock, Paper, Scissors and won. He then handed her the “duel” card. After a while, we went back to ExAlt and afterwards @danithemaker @naborinyah and @naio and her mom were there for the sleepover. But then Naio’s mom felt kinda sick and they had to go back home. So basically, it was just males who stayed at the sleepover. We had a lot of fun. We played some Monopoly (that Alex won), we ironically listened to death metal music, and stayed up till like 2-3am. The Monopoly was fun but Alex had to leave for a bit to answer a call and it took about 45 minutes so we got so tired waiting for him all that time that we almost didn’t keep playing it afterwards. But we finished it anyway. While we waited, we listened to death metal and Dragon Force. I showed Dani the hardest song on any Guitar Hero (Through the Fire and the Flames by DragonForce). We also talked a lot and goofed around and the whole day was really fun, in general.