Cristian Rojas
Ms.Chavira
English 1301
20 April 2015 Compare Contrast Essay

We have all been to many places in our lives and we generally remember the places we go fairly well. Taking in as much as possible and remember it to the best of our ability is what we strive to do when we go somewhere new. However, what if we were very young? Or perhaps it was so long ago our memory has faded? Many times when people visit a place they have not been to in a very long time they develop a completely different opinion of it. When I visited Corpus Christi a week ago it was very different than the last time I had been there. For spring break I went to south padre Texas and on the way back I made a stop in
Corpus to drop a friend off. I had not been to corpus in about five years. The image I had in my mind was that of a dirty washed up ocean town. I was expecting to see what seemed like a giant inland shipyard by the bay. Sand everywhere, droopy palm trees, seagull droppings, and of course a very humid climate. Not this time however. This time corpus was beautiful and modern. It was clean and everything was visually appealing to me. I was blown away by how much renovation had been done. Things were clean, there was no longer that washed up feel like before, it became very luxurious once I went into a certain area. I even liked it enough to consider it as a place to live sometime in the future. I had never seen it this way and really enjoyed the quick one hour that I was there for. In my previous trips to corpus I was always in the “lets hurry up and get out of here” mood. This time I was so relaxed and wanted to stay longer in fact. I have now developed a completely different outlook of Corpus Christi and feel completely at ease there now. When I first visited Corpus Christi many years ago it was filthy. I remember it being a very long drive from home that I did not like. We stayed at a hotel that was fairly new in town, however it was not kept properly. There was dried mud smeared on the floor from the mop, the doors were filthy with black residue from being touched so often, the sheets were stained and so on. Whenever we would leave the hotel in was almost comparable to mexico in a way.
The streets were dirty with trash everywhere. The amount of overgrowth of grass onto the sides of the roads was less than appealing and made it seem trashy as well. Buildings were faded, old and dirty looking on the outside. When we had driven by the water in corpus the beaches were some of the worst I had ever seen. You could not see four inches into the water, there was tons of seaweed and other marine plants as soon as you stepped foot into it. Not to mention the hundreds of jellyfish and all the washed up weeds that were scattered along the beach. This time I went back it was as if Corpus had been reborn. The same hotel that we stayed at was no longer there. Instead a much larger and very luxurious looking hotel had been built in its place. Not only that hotel but all the ones around were pristine looking. They glistened as the sun hit them, not one thing about those places was unattractive. The roads were much larger as well. They were smooth and even, not rough and bumpy like before. Not one piece of trash was on the ground anywhere and all the lawns and fields were immaculately kept and bright green. As we passed the mall it was as if an architect from Beverly hills had designed the new mall, it was gorgeous with many stores. Before it was a