Project Space Reflection

Aguirre 1

Erick Aguirre

Professor Lawson

English 113B

28 March 2013

Project Space Reflection

I am a diverse person and don’t like to focus on one thing because I want to try new things and have knowledge of them too. I didn’t want to just go to place of my ethnicity, in which I am Mexican, because I wanted to challenge myself to go to a foreign place and try their food. Thus making it different for myself and being able to write about something that I don’t already know. I was surprise my Orochon about how it looked because I expected it be a big restaurant with a huge inside place to be seated, but it is one of the smaller restaurants and they earn hundreds of customers a day. Shin-Sen-Gummi on the other hand felt more authentic with because it had a less crowded in environment and I had to take my shoes off when being seated. None the less the ramen was great and Orochon is a great place to try ramen for people who have never tried it before. I did not have any connection to Orochon or Shin-Sen-Gummi (Hakata) because it was my first time and it was in Little Tokyo, which I have never been to either, thus making the whole experience foreign to me. Not only was going there all different to me, but I went with a mindset of having to be observant and had to take in the individual spices when eating versus going to a restaurant just to eat. Also this way I could write about a lot on my new experience and could tell it to people who have never been there.

 Project Space was a lot different because we had to go out and do first hand research rather than researching articles on a library database and other well trusted websites. Not only did we have to go to a particular area but we had to go with a fixed mindset of what was pointing to a person when being at the restaurant, the people, and the food. My writing definitely has improved in sentence structure and the use of more complex vocabulary. I also extended my vocabulary that way I could expand my ideas and make sentences flow better. I did not procrastinate because I like to my essays early that way I could edit/revise and make it to its true potential. The easiest part of the essay was talking about the fieldwork because I had a lot to say and had an easy flow when writing the fieldwork the first time. The hardest part was adding quotes to the fieldwork and making all of it sound connected.