Me and Santiago’s Stories Compared

 

Santiago’s Story

 

I started out simple

As a shepherd, but then

A dream changed my course

And that’s where my story begins

 

I traveled to Tangier

Where I was robbed

So I worked at a crystal shop

For almost a year, which was so long

 

I earned much commision

And traveled in a caravan

Across the desert to an oasis

With an alchemist (an Englishman)

 

At the oasis

I met Fatima, whom I wanted for a wife

But traveled to Egypt, after much thought

With the Alchemist, a wise man who knew much of life

 

I then reached the pyramids

But a gang beat me up

Talked of dreams of treasure

So I went back to the Sycamore tree, and dug my treasure up!

Sierra’s Story

I started life in Texas

And then we moved here

Trinidad School’s small, and though I love it all

Texas is still always near

 

I’ll take a trip to France some day

In many years yet to come

I’ll be there for many hours, and see the Eiffel Tower

But for now I learn some French from my mom

 

Next I’ll move to South California

Near the ocean, and the Sun

I’ll become a vet, that’s my personal legend’s bet

And have a lot of fun

 

Then I’ll find a husband

Have two kids, a boy and girl

we’ll live together, forever and ever

with the years going by in a whirl

 

Lastly I’ll see the wonders of the world

Many monuments, mountains, and more

I’ll hang glide, and have a nice ride

And everything, I will adore

The Date Trees in the Desert

 

 

“Maybe God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees, he thought” (page 88). I think that when Santiago thought this, he meant that there are some things in life you don’t realize how important they are until something different happens and then it hits you how important it actually is, but you had never thought about it that way until then. This thought Santiago had made me think of when I read a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book once, where there was a part when Greg wrote a picture book about a man who thought polar bears were useless animals. Then, the man rode his car off of a bridge, and a polar bear saved his life. The man said that polar bears weren’t such useless animals after all. So that’s an okay example of one thing that I think Santiago’s thought meant.

 

Also, he might mean that even in the saddest times, there will always be something happy you know of to keep your spirits high. The desert would be the sadness, and the date trees would be the happy thing that optimists always know to think of. For example, I was really sad last year when I really hit my knee hard at school. I couldn’t play in the volleyball tournament because it hurt to move it, not even saying how much it would hurt if I had to slide on my knees to hit a ball flying my way! But, the pluses I thought about were, I hoped that we would do good in the game, and at least I wasn’t going to make my knee hurt a lot more by playing.

 

So the things I think Santiago’s thought meant are that there’s some things in life that don’t seem important at first, but important later on, and that in the saddest times there’s always something happy to think about.

Luck and Coincidences

   
     On Page 72, the Englishman said, “If I could, I’d write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence.  It’s with these words that the universal language is written.”

    I think that the roles luck and coincidence play in creating the universal language are that by coincidence, people could meet their future wife or husband, a life could be saved, someone could bump into a friend when they are at a faraway place, and more.  With you, Mr. Vack, I think that it was a coincidence of how you met Ms. Thao, not luck.
    Next, I think that luck’s role is winning something big or small, or something else good happening to you.  Another kind or luck could be you getting an injury, losing something, or something else.

    The roles that luck has played in my life are when I won a $50 gift card once, and also my biggest win, when I won a recliner chair from Vern’s in Eureka, less than a year ago.  Some other roles that luck has played  are when I was about eight or nine, and was running to my neighbor’s house.  I tripped and fell flat on my face, which hurt a lot!  Also, there was the time when I was playing on the monkey bars on Mother’s Day a few years ago, when I tried to do a trick on the high bar and fell on my back and somehow broke my wrist.  I think it was bad luck that my wrist broke,  but a coincidence that it happened on Mother’s Day.

    A big role that coincidence has played in my life was over the Summer, but  my family was planning on building a house on our property when my parents’ friend Stephen Leach, who’s a well worker, was working at an oceanfront  house for sale and thought of us so he told us about it.  Then we ended up buying the house, and now live in it!

Waiting Too Late to Follow a Dream

    In The Alchemist, the crystal merchant thinks that it’s “too late” to change because he’s been a shopkeeper for 30 years.  In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” we talked about how “way leads to way,” and often you can’t change roads in life.  I think that you can’t change roads because you think that you don’t have enough money to switch over, or maybe you’ve had the same job for 30 years like the crystal merchant and have already gotten used to the way things are and therefore don’t want anything to change.

     Next, I think that people probably get “stuck” with the decisions they make because, for example they want to go to medical school but think that they can’t afford it so they find a job that they don’t really like thinking that they can save up enough to go back to medical school in a couple of years.  Then 20 years later they find themselves still working on that same job, wasting so many years of their life when they could be working at a hospital, doing what they love.

     Lastly, I think that you can prevent this from happening and it’s not an inevitable part of growing up because you can get scholarships and/or loans from the bank to help pay for things and then after you start your job, you can pay back money from the loan.  You can also start saving your pennies when you are young and that does add up fast!  In short, I think you can get stuck, but there are ways to prevent it.

   

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