My last blog: English language challenges

In this last blog of the year I am sure of saying that I have enjoyed very much studying English at University. Classes have been really interesting, there is always something new to learn about the language and the world around us. Blogs and listenings were challenging, especially the second one because of the accents of those who spoke in them.

At beginning of the year, when I found out that we were going to write in a blog, I thought that it would be tedious to do in classes. I had a real surprise when I started to write them, because instead of be bored while I wrote them, they became one of my favorite parts of the entire course. I even missed blogs when we didn’t write them.

Is not just that blogs are entertaining to do, but writing them is an incredible way to learn to be more fluent at it and improve your English by knowing other expressions to describe the same thing.

Even if my English has improved a lot to how it used to be at first. I believe that I must keep practicing my writing, but mostly I need to improve the way I express ideas and my pronunciation with other English speakers.

Knowing English is an important part of most people in earth I think. Not just to talk to another person who doesn’t speak in your own language, but to do most of thing in your day to day. Find information, listen to music and follow instructions are examples of how important is English in everyone’s life.

For what I mainly use English in my life is to find information that I could use in my University assignments, to read books that have not been publish in Spanish yet, to understand lyrics of the music I listen and to read translated mangas.

This is my last blog, so I have to say good bye. :D

South Korea

my video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5SWpgadqr4&feature=youtu.be

My future job

In a future maybe I will work before taking a major, this is because I believe that earn experience is an important issue to understand all the perspectives of work where I’m going to develop as a professional, following the path that I want for my career.

I would like to have a job that will be related to help people to maintain their lands, and for this I will have to build my career around Agroforestry. This is a strategy of soil use; that combines forest plantations, cattle and crops, to protect and improve degraded soils at the same time that there are benefits to the owners of the lands.

To choose a job I have some aspects that I consider before accepting an offer. One of them is where is located the place where I am going to work, because if the job it is located in an inaccessible place I really doubt that I will agree to work there.

The second aspect that I will have in mind is perhaps an important one, how much my salary will be. I believe this is an essential thing to take a job, because if I feel that the working hours are not consistent to the salary they offer I will reject it. Or maybe if I like what they are offering me in everything else, but the salary is low and I couldn’t make ends meet, I will say no to it. I don’t know if there is fine what am I saying but it is my opinion about it.

In the interviews, if I’ll be asked about my weaknesses I would have to say that I’m not very good working to other people, and my strengths are that I’m organized,  I can easily catch errors and find solutions for them.

What i spend money on?

I must say that my money is divided in five things:

1.  I spend most of my money in food. This money is not for my lunch at university, instead is for my cravings, I have ton of those. For example I really like to eat chinese food when I go out from classes. But this is a problem because is not just this kind of food, I have a plenty list of my favorite cakes, chocolates, ice-creams, cookies, French fries and hamburgers that I like to eat constantly.
2.  Other part of my money goes to money for photocopies and materials that I need during the year, like notebooks, pencils and cardboards.
3.  Books are my greatest pleasure in the world. Maybe somebody could though that this is not a good idea to spend my money on, but I truly don’t care about that very much. If books where cheaper in Chile than the price they are now, like Argentina, my house instead to be a place where people can live it would be transformed into a personal library.
4. One of my hobbies is having photo albums, but they are really expensive if I don’t reveal many photos at once.
5. Maybe the last part of my money goes when I have to buy gifts for my friends and family. Anniversaries, birthdays and Christmas are some of the moments when the money I've saved in the year leaves my pocket, leaving me bankrupt.

I buy all this things at malls and supermarkets, and I realize I don’t feel real guilt about buying things that are not really necessary for living.

A job i would like to have

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XuH_uSbYFE&feature=youtu.be

How green are you?

For telling the truth I’m not a very green person. In school, teachers never tried to teach us about conservation and recycling till we were grown up. I certainly believe that schools should teach students how to recycle and care about environment since they are children; because like that, kids will learn this as a habit for their entire lives.

The things I tried to do for the benefit of the Earth is not waste water while I’m brushing my teeth or when I’m taking a shower. I always turn the lights off after leaving a room; and try to repair or reuse objects in bad condition or which are considered trash. My family and I try to recycle the bottles and cartons we use at home. We don’t do the whole recycling process by ourselves, instead of that; a person passes by once a week and removes the objects we collect. Besides that we don’t help much more trying to reduce our carbon footprint.

The way I transport from one place to another is by subway and bus. Not just because cars produce higher levels of pollution than any other means of transport, for its massiveness, but the time traveling is less than by car. Also you can avoid the traffic that overwhelm people and is cheaper.

About supporting eco-organizations, I have never done it. Maybe it's because I’m too lazy to help them as volunteer. I should try to do more to help this planet from global warming.

Guilty pleasures

I believe everyone have at least one guilty pleasure to be embarrassed, one of my guilty pleasures is related to food. I absolutely love eating sweet things like cakes, chocolates, ice cream and fruit with condensed milk. I know that is really bad for my health but still I do it. The second guilty pleasure I enjoy is watching series online and trying to see the end as soon as possible, therefore, I spend hours watching them. For example, about five weeks ago I started watching the new Doctor Who from the beginning, and now I finished watching the final episode last season in air. Maybe it doesn’t sound like a truly guilty pleasure, but after seven seasons of twenty episodes I really believe that is not a normal thing to do.  And for this reason the third pleasure I have is sleeping too much in the evenings or even while I’m in class but when is really late at night I’m awake. Now for this reason I have a really messy sleep schedule, and I kind of like doing it. My last guilty pleasure is to read romantic novels, and I’m not talking about Jane Austen kind of novels, I mean romantic novels where you can see cute guys on the covers. That’s all I think.

A career-related Newspaper Article

In this blog I choose an article named: “How we can make our oceans well again”. The article deals with a group of 65 scientists who met three years ago to create an index on how to evaluate the ocean while he maintains the existence of life.

This project started when Greg Stone, Conservation International's chief scientist for oceans and vice-chair of WEF agenda councils on oceans, was on an expedition at sea. He went down to a depth of 5500 meters to see the marine life that lived there, he expected to see a great variety of species, instead founds out that there was no animal life there.The cause of this is the excessive pollution. 

At that time there was no definite indicator of the ocean pollution. So, they decided to make an index that takes account of different facets of the ocean: food provision, carbon storage, clean waters, tourism and recreation, and natural products. So they expect to appeal to the competitiveness of human beings, by assigning points to each country according to how well they take care of the sea from 0 to 100.

To make a real change in the world people's mind, countries should mix marine conservation with sustainable use according to the needs and culture of the country.

The oceans are essential in human life, because they feed us, regulate our climate and produce oxygen, but it is not an inexhaustible resource. It is our responsibility to ensure the future of the earth and ours.

Mothers in Facebook

Mothers in facebook for me are not a real problem, because my mother doesn’t have an account to sign in

My aunts have facebook every day to post messages of love or things like it, and also they write about each feeling they have and every little thing that happened in their houses.  I don’t think that is a good idea, because they don’t have enough privacy and maybe not everyone wants to know about it or at least revealing too much information can also cause problems.

Mothers usually like to have a lot of pictures in their facebook walls and comment pictures where they children appeared, I think that is really sweet of them. Some of their daughters and sons doesn’t like it , and I must disagree with their opinion because is not something embarrassing or to be ashamed of, is just a way to express how much they love you.

My cousin hates that my aunt has a facebook account so she didn’t wanted to accept her as a friend, and because of that action my aunt thought Fernanda had something to hide from her. From my side of the story that was so funny to watch but maybe if my mother does the same I wouldn’t like it very much.

I believe that mothers can use freely facebook while not to watch over their children. Doing that could possibly describe that mother like over protective or controlling.

Unforgettable holidays

Today I’m going to talk about my unforgettable holidays. Perhaps the most recent and exciting one was when my family, my parent and my two older brothers, went to Eastern Island. The first days of January of this year my parents asked me if I want to go to Eastern Island; my reaction was an explosion of happiness and exciting uncontrollable, because for a long time I wanted to go there.

The trip was a days before the Tapati, pascuense traditional festival. When we arrived the rain was so strong that in an instant we get completely wet. But that didn’t stop us from walking around the town looking for a restaurant.

The hotel where we stayed was very lovely and quiet, but it wasn’t near the town, so we had to go in car there.

We did many activities; the first one was a tour around the island to see the moais and the beach. We had a lot of fun doing this because we met Andrea, an argentine tourist who had been in our country for a month traveling.

One of the things that I really loved was seeing the ballet Kari-Kari. They danced beautifully and also took us out to dance with them.

 

I really enjoyed this travel.

Social media

Social media is part of my life, maybe I’m not obsess as many other people are;I use Facebook, Gmail and Hotmail, the last two just for assignments. Facebook is the only one I often use.

I don’t really like social media, I strongly believe that this type of communication instead of unites people, just make them indifferent to each other; if you want to talk with someone you have to make an effort and meet them once in a while at least or at least call them.

I usually use facebook to talk with my classmates when we have to do homework.

For anything else I don’t really find it interesting enough, but is really helpful when you want to share photographs with your friends and family. For example when I was in Bariloche with my friends and classmates my camera “died” so I couldn’t use it. My friends took pictures for me and once we were in Santiago they uploaded to Facebook the best ones.

I don’t like any other social media because I found them really unnecessary.

SPRING TERM

Hello again, I hope you are alright. Last semester was a bunch of new experiences in my life. The university was a completely different world; not just because I didn’t know anyone, but the responsibilities that brought me were unknown to me. The most difficult thing for me was study properly. My favorite signature was Botany.

I didn’t practice any kind of sport; instead I used my time reading some books that I love. But now I’m doing exercise twice a week, and I must tell you that I’m really tired; my whole body is sore after the class. Well I shouldn’t complain about it, after all is good for my health.

Changing the topic, I’m so happy because my family and I finally were able to buy a place near my aunt’s house, in Cumpeo. It has a beautiful view to the mountains and it’s so peaceful that sometimes I want to go there and rest for the weekend.

Blog topics

27 How Women Use Social Media.
29 If I Were a Television Producer.
34 What I Spend Money On.
40 Ten Guilty Pleasures.
47 When I Feel Frustrated.
54 When to Cut Back on Web Habits.
62 Facebook Applications I Love.
85 How I Went From Very Shy to Less Shy.
90 Newspapers and How I Would Change Them.
98 Just When I Think I Am Done.

My last blog - my experience with blogs

I truly enjoyed my experience with blogs, it was fun to write and design my own page of BlogSpot and also because it was a good way to express my thoughts and interests of several things, and besides help me to increase my knowledge about different subjects that not all days are mentioned, like actual education in schools from a video we saw in www.ted.com.  These are advantages for our development in the way how we express our ideas.  

Maybe the disadvantage of doing blogs in class hours was the waste of time that we used writing those blogs instead of doing something more inclusive like, for example, interact between classmates making that our pronunciation improves.

We should read books related to our career in English or to integrate English in other classes like our seminary where we have to write a summary related to the topic we were assigned to do. These are some ideas that I would like to do in English class or perhaps not at the university itself but to learn more for my future like student of Forestry

But in general I liked the idea of doing blogs to help us learn vocabulary and coherence by writing in English.

Coupling UK - Youtube

I choose a video from YouTube because is one of my favorite series. This is the third chapter, which I think is the best chapter of the first season, of Coupling UK.
The chapter starts with Jeff being nervous about an interview, and starts talking with Steve about all the wrongs things he could do in it, like panic or saying accidental words that he can’t stop thinking about. Then Jeff explains to Patrick and Jeff, what the giggle loop is. In other scene Jane tells Steve about the decease of her beloved aunt. At the end of the episode when everyone is gathering at the funeral, the priest asks for a minute of silence. The three friends almost laugh out loud, but is Jane the one who ends up hysterically laughing. 
In my opinion i believe it's a hilarious video because the situation that the chapter describes about laugh inappropriately really happened to me once I was in a baptism and a funeral.

It's something that comes from your inside and grows so easily, that is important to concentrate not do it. The real problem is when you concentrate even more; the situation became funnier and funnier, to that point when you can control the laugh.

English learning

Well, in my opinion studying English at the university is very useful, because it’s a very good way to remember things I learned before in school and add a lot of vocabulary related to my career.

 I would like to improve my way to express myself in English.
 For me it’s difficult to put a right order on my thoughts while I’m talking to someone else, also I forgot easily how to structure my sentences, so I would like to learn more about this.

In the university I felt that education was inclusive with every student, but maybe it was because we were just a few of us. LOL

I truly appreciate the possibility to study this language, because it will be very useful in my career.

Viking Women

Women were really important to establish a permanent population when Vikings had to immigrate to other lands. Usually the colonist Vikings live like farmers and traders, but when a husband wasn’t at home or they were dead, women has to take their places as traders.

In daily life women had to dress according to the class they belong. The slave class had to use “old-fashioned clothes”. Yeoman class dressed with more elaborate clothes like a blouse and cap. But only aristocratic women used linen in their wardrobe, showing like that linen was too expensive for others.

This was so important that when women died, they were buried with their best outfits and as a symbolism of their responsibilities for control over the food and clothing; they were also buried with keys. 

A remarkable Viking women was Aud the “deep-minded” because when her husband and son died she took charge of the family fortunes to organize a ship to travel along with their granddaughters to Orkney and Iceland; then she settled down in the last one and divided the land to her followers, and like that became one of the four most important settlers.

I like this information because I truly find Viking history fascinating. These people had a great organization to settle in places.

I think the Viking women history is highly recommended to anyone who wants to know more about this culture and the role of women in it because is really amazing what you can find in old civilizations.

Changing paradigms

Ken Robinson starts talking about the reform of the education on the planet and the reasons why this happens. First there’s an economic reason and second a cultural one where the kids must live with the globalization.

The kids can’t see the point of studying; because they don’t believe anymore that a degree can get you a job.

Our education was made for another age, the industrial revolution. In that time some people thought that poor children didn’t have the required capacity for academic, separating them between smart and non smart people.

This cause that some children started to be medicate for ADHD. But the result is kids getting distracted in class, shutting their senses off instead of waking them up.

Education doesn’t care about the variety of personalities from the students. The divergent thinking is the ability to see different answers to questions, and we must integrate it into our education.

My opinion

I agree with ken R. about change the education paradigms because everyone is different from other. Our ways to think, understand and express things are so varied that we can be in the same “box”. Education only teaches for people with a structured and abstract understanding of things.

My favourite picture

This is a picture that I really like because I spent a great time with my friends and learned a lot. This photograph was taken by one of my closest friends, Lisette Droguett.
It shows my group of work when I was at school, we had to talk about the differents types of fungi and the sites where we could found them. I like this picture because my presentation went really well, I had a 100 percent in Biology. It was taken at 12:00 pm on Saturday, November 25, 2011.
That day my friends and I were very nervous because we thought everything would go wrong. When people began to arrive, our voices were very low, but we were gaining confidence. At the end we were very relaxed about it, and very happy with the result. The things that we present that day were very helpful for my new career.

MY FAVORITE FILM

I can't truly say that I have a favorite film, I loved a lot of them, but I can say I have a favorite by every category of films.

My favorite romantic movie is Pride and Prejudice. I REALLY like this movie because it is based on a book with the same name that Ilove. This movie is about a young lady called Elizabeth and a rich man, Mr. Darcy, and the difficulties of falling in love with a person completely different from her. Their love develops slowly till they really get to know and respect each other.

The soundtrack of this film is just marvellous, the sound of every song resembles the period of the characters. Dario Marianelli made a great work composing the music, he was nominated as the best composer and original score in the Academy Awards. But the real strength of this movie was costumes. It was made by Jacqueline Durran, a designer that worked in movies like Atoment and Vera Drake. In the last one she won the BAFTA. The eigthteen’s century fashion was perfectly reflected on every piece of their clothing. Durran's costumes also helped emphasise social rank among the different characters, for example the sister of Charles Bingley, Carolain, wore finer clothes than the Bennett sisters.

My other favourite movie is Kill Bill, an action movie. This film is just great. It’s about a woman who was the best killer in the world, but she gets pregnant and tries to scape from Bill, the child's father. He and his friends caught her and and tried to kill her but instead she is in a coma for four years she wakes up looking for vengeance, looking for them one by one.

The fighting, music, and plot leave you speechless.

Technology

My favorite piece of technology is also my laptop. I can’t live without it, it's an addiction. But it’s not just because I can talk with my friends and family, it's also my source of entertainment and education, I usually download books and music from it and for most of my university works I use the internet and Microsoft Word. Part of my life is in my laptop; my pictures, videos, books, university homeworks and my beloved music. The first time I use a laptop, the only thing that I knew how to use at that time, were the games and Paint.

 But when I was younger my favorite piece of technology was  television. I loved every movie and television program in air, at the point of learn the Schedule of each channel. After school I spent my whole afternoon watching television. And sometimes I played  video games in my playstation, Nintendo 64 and Wii. 

Im trying to reduce the time that I use in these objects to concentrate more in my studies. I think so.

My experiences with concerts

Hi there, today I'm suppose to tell you my experiences with concerts; but I will have to tell you that I've never been in one. 

The first reason is because I don't like a band or singer in special that I really love. When I listen to music I usually look for a song in particular that I would like, then,  I look for other songs of the same artist. However I've never liked more that one or two songs of them.

The second reason is when the first reason doesn't show and I really like a band, this one doesn't come to Chile or  South America to give a show. This make me feel frustrated.

These are the reasons why I've never listened to a band or singer that I like; but still I hope that some day one of them will perform in Chile.

                         

My biography

Hello people, I can at last post my first blog. Today I'm going to tell you a little about myself. My name is María José Gatica Herrera, I was born in Santiago on October 27th ,1993. Since I was a child i loved ballet, I even practice for a while but it was a really hard exercise for a kid, so I quit it. In the same year i went to Nueva Era Siglo XXI, where I studied the elementary and secondary school. Now I'm at the university studying Forestry.

 I have two older brothers; David is twenty-three years old and Emmanuel is twenty. They're really good brothers because they always care about me. They also are in the university. 

I love to read novels by Jane Austen and watch movies where Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire appear.