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"September" to "Septiembre"

Jessica Watkins's picture

    I did not think I would like reading either of these blogs, to be honest, because in my mind they represented exactly what a blog shouldn't be: a mundane account of someone's day, boring after boring detail (do I really care what they ate for dinner or how far they drove outside of town?). But these blogs were different because they brought me, the reader, to another world. It was exactly those "mundane details" that brought life to the blogs and made them special because they were little clips of a life that I will probably never experience, snapshots of a place where only my mind and eyes can travel.  Had it been any other case, the blogs might have been terribly boring.  If Anne wasn't trying to navigate a land where old ladies carry heavy suitcases on top of their heads--if she had been navigating a US grocery store, for instance--the blog would have failed miserably. Unless it was one hell of a grocery store.

 

My point is that this is the optimal use of blogs in spreading information to the masses.  What better a thing to spread than  thoughts, ideas and pictures from another land where many may not ever go?  It was the content of the blogs that made them so interesting.  Hannah's online journal was successful because it was not just an account of daily happenings, but an account of something exotic through which readers can almost live vicariously.  It would have been even more exciting if she had posted a few videos on her blog (possibly the ones she made for her TV journalism class?) but it was great nonetheless.  Readers, like me, were attracted to it because it held something out of the ordinary in the palm of its hand. All I had to do was click a button to reach out and touch it.

Comments

rachelr's picture

The world vs. your world

 I agree with this assessment of the quality, approach, and purpose of both these blogs. While I did not go into reading them thinking that I wouldn't like them (because I knew they were about travel and experiences rather than a shopping list) I was surprised by how they both captured my attention and interest. They had two distinct writing styles but neither was overly formal, flowery, or complicated. But this did not detract from their appeal at all. I agree again that hearing about daily events through an outsider to the culture they are reporting on is far more engaging that it would have been if Hannah or Anne were blogging about their life in Bryn Mawr. The fact that these were all new sights, new tastes, new smells, and new experiences for them translated through their words and allow us to share in their wonder of these new discoveries. 

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