CAMINOS ORGÁNICOS / ORGANIC PATHS

BENICARLÓ - IES Ramon Cid - IES La Salle

The sentence I wrote alongwith the photo is “Where I realize that I am close to a safe place, my home”. But it's not that I'm scared of the neighborhood or the tunnel in the photograph, which I cross just before arriving at my house. The reason I want to get home to be safe is my shyness.

I am shy and it bothers me to meet people, I feel like they are looking at me. That's why, depending on the time of the year, I modify my route to school to choose the less traveled, even if it is longer. Sometimes I even leave home earlier, so that I meet fewer people.

I wasn't like that when I was a child. I knew and greeted everyone. And he danced. My aunt was an instructor at a dance school and I went there since I was three years old to do break dance. I liked it, but I left it when I entered high school because she stopped working there. Now I don't like dancing in public because I'm embarrassed that people think I'm playing the fool. I also have a hard time speaking in public, at school there are many people I don't know and that makes me insecure.

However, that feeling doesn't always happen to me. When I play football I feel safe. I go out on the field and I don't feel that shyness, because I'm really me, just like when I'm at home or with my best friends.

Now I go to school on a skate and of course, I go on the road. But the organic path that I want to tell you is the one I have taken all these years, on foot.

I choose the narrowest and most deserted streets, that's something that protects me. I pass by the hardware store and the music school; I cross the street works, through one place or another depending on where they have placed the yellow fences. Then I get to an open field, which is a parking lot. Sometimes, when I cross it it is still night, it is dark, but it doesn't scare me because it is quiet. In Benicarló there are few dangerous places. Although in the bar near my house, next to the tunnel, there are fights sometimes. So I avoid the tunnel by taking a detour.

I cross the road and continue. It is dark, you can only see the light at the end of the path, but when I get here it is usually daytime. On the right I found what seemed to me like a “mini forest” and I was very curious. Now they have cut and cleared it and it is no longer as wide or as thick. Then I see, from afar, a house that looks abandoned. At the end of the road you can see the high school, but first I always look at a place where they keep birds. At first I thought they were bee hives, but they aren't. They are pigeon houses. And many days they are loose and fly around, I like that.

Then I cross and arrive to the school. I always try to arrive on time, I don't like to be late. I don't like going out late when I meet friends, either. I am quite independent and I set my own schedules

Four years ago my grandmother came from Venezuela. I showed her round the places where we live. It's dificult trying to start a relationship with your grandmother when you meet her at my age. She tries to integrate, especially in places where she meets Latin people and remains in contact with the customs of her country, such as Doña Felinda's bar, where she has made friends and she feels good.

Now I'm going to have lunch because I play a football match this afternoon.

Iván Colpas