English Language Challenges

Well, it's our last post here and I'm very thankful about our work here in classes. I didn't have very high expectations, because I thought that it was an easy assignment, but here I realized that I didn't know a lot of things about grammatical rules and verbal tenses. At the beggining, I was closed to know more about the teacher, but in time, I realized that it was such a sweet person and I appreciate teachers like her (I think everyone does). Also, I realized that I was very afraid of talking in English, even when it was in front of a camera, so I'm thankful about that too. I really like to write, so I enjoyed the blog and also the creating process of the videos.

In a personal way, I've been close to this language since I was little because of my brother and sisters. They knew a lot about how to talk, how to write and I was close to them seeing how they did it. So I was kind of self-taught child in this topic. I began to listen to music in English, to read in English and I improved a lot. Then, I stopped for many reasons. Maybe I got bored of it, but now I discovered that I know more than I thought and I could challenge myself everyday to improve again.

I hope that more people could be into this language in order to get more opportunities to know more about work related things in other parts of the world. I think English classes are really important because today it's a requirement in many work places.

Summer Vacations

I love summer vacations. It's my favourite time of the year.
I think that my favourite part is to be able to do whatever I want without much compromise with University. I mean, you don't have to study if you don't want to and you don't have to be in classes with hot temperatures. I think it's a perfect time. Also, the moon appears very late, so it's possible to do many plans in the same day. On next summer vacations, I'll go to Quito, Ecuador. My parents were transfered for work to that city, so I'll be their company in this important step. They will go for work and I'll go for vacations and, obviously, to help them at their new house. I don't know much about Quito, but I would like to go to Quito Old Town, ride the Teleferiqo Cable Car, stand at the Middle of the World and maybe do some daytrip to the Amazon. 

I'm very lazy, so I really want to change that to be able and motivated for a long time there. I mean, it's not that I suffer because of that, but sometimes I think that I lose so many fun things because of my laziness. Also, I would like to be the best company for my parents because we're going to be separated for about 3 years until they return to Chile. However, I want to chill and relax until I come back for my regular classes and 4th year of University :)

I hope I can write some things about Quito when I come back. For now, there's only dreams and hopes about this trip. Thank you for reading!

Post 7: My favorite TV show

I loooove watching TV shows. Nowadays, Netflix is a big platform to watch different kind of shows. You can choose from horror to drama, and also comedy or sci-fi (these are my favourite ones). I borrowed the netflix account from my sister and that's how I've known my favourite shows: The Walking Dead, Atypical, Stranger Things, La Casa de Papel, and many others that I could tell. But I have to say that the one that stole my entire soul, body and mind (yes, that's how much of a fan I am) is the one and only Breaking Bad. 

I know a lot of you have watched this show and loved it and I know that some others hated it because of its rythm. But I have to tell you that it's worth the waiting and the patience.
Breaking Bad is a crime-drama show that let us know the story of a high school chemistry professor, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), who was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was a good person but was the kind that didn't like things out of his control. Also he was a little depressed and struggling with his family life. Suddenly in the story he saw with little sadness the future of his family after his death and started a certain kind of campaing to save money for his family's future  by selling a drug called meth. He looked for an old student, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) that he had and knew was involved in this matter and together started a business. That's in general the script of the series. It has five seasons. Did you know that all of the seasons were created with a specific color spectrum? Genius.

I'm not going to talk about specific details because I really want that ALL OF YOU CAN WATCH THIS SHOW! But I'm going to tell that my favourite part of the serie is (SPOILER ALERT!) when Walter White puts a bomb in a room where two other characters were (they were really bad persons) and one of them gets out of the room without a half of his face!!!! It's amazing. I mean, the makeup, how the moves of the camera are, the characters... Ahhhhhh, I really love the series.

I have to admit that I spent two years of my life with this show, because when I reached the third season I got a little bored, Ooops, I'm sorry world. That's why I say it's really worth the patience, because after the break that I had from the show, I really enjoyed everything that came after.

I think that it's a genious show. I mean, it has an emotional rollercoaster and you can't avoid being really into the characters lives or the development of the story. The actors are really good, the scenes are really good and I think it's the best show that I've seen in my life. To this day, I have not found a similar show.

I hope you can see it someday in your life. Thank you for reading! 

Post 6: Postgraduate studies

I'm not really sure about my plans after University.
I want to apply for a master's degree in Social Work (as you can imagine), here at Universidad de Chile, but I'm not very passionate about taking it. I mean, I want to learn more, but if doesn't work out, I'm not going to be mad. I think that I'm not THAT excited, because I don't know yet what topic I want to develop in my career and I want to work very quickly after I graduate. However I think today it's really important to get other studies besides pregrade.

Anyway when I found myself thinking about the time after Uni, taking a postgraduate course, I like to think that I would like to go to UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina) or UH (Universidad de La Habana, Cuba) and take a course about Public Politics or Latinamerican studies. I choose these Universities because I want to know those countries and I've heard that the education there is really good. Also, I think you can get some scholarship when you're from other country and I can't afford an education without it.

I don't think about taking a course here in Chile, because it's very expensive and it's difficult to get a scholarship. Even when you have to pay a room in other country, I've found that it's cheaper than studying here in our country. That sucks.

I've had a hard time thinking about this topic but it challenges me to think beyond present. So I like to share it with you. Thank you for reading!

                             Universidad de Buenos Aires 











 Universidad de La Habana

Post 5: My Future Job

I'm not sure about what kind of job I would like to have. But in effort to write something honest about this topic, I would like to imagine my future job as a Social Worker (Social Work is the career I'm studying) in projects about childhood.

I don't really care if it's in an office or outside in the streets because what really matters to me (about Social Work) is to be in direct contact with people and its needs. And you can do that, as a professional, at an office, writing papers about a real dispute that people told you about in a meeting or something, or you can do that talking with the neighbours around your workplace and making something about it. Both are fine to me in order to be useful for them. About the children, I think that they are persons with rights and opinion, and they know more about their own lives that we can write about. So it's really important to ask them about their needs, their worries and their problems and I think that my profession is all about facilitating ways to make this conversation a little easier in order to get solutions about a particular issue. Besides, children make everything possible. It's an easy age to talk about changes in the world. Unfortunately, in this country, childhood is hard and it's unfair in many ways. And we have to do something about it. Knowing, of course, that we are not changing the whole overall situation (to avoid frustrating thoughts) but we are doing something with all our privileged knowledge in order to make this world better. I imagine that this work would be hard and sometimes a little sad, but with lots of love from the people you'll meet. That's my hope and my dream for now. Maybe tomorrow I will be working in a syndicate or in a project about social organizations, but I don't really know.

Oh! And I almost forgot to tell you that I would love to take some major in work-related contents and also about childhood and social class.
Thank you for reading!

Post 4: A person I would like to meet

Just before I had to write about this topic I was talking with a friend about how much we want to meet some people that are dead now. We talked about how we would have liked to meet Aretha Franklin, Marthin Luther King, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburgo and many people that are not here anymore. So it was difficult to me to think about someone that I would like to meet today (so it can be possible to get in touch!), but when it came to my mind I clearly recognize the reasons that I have to know more about Silvio Rodriguez.

Silvio is from Cuba, he's a well known and left-leaning musician and songwriter. He writes about love, about the Cuban revolution, about memories and so many things. I really love his words.
He has released over than 20 albums!!!! The world knows him like a left-leaning poet and influential among Cuban revolutionary youth.
I've known Silvio for many years. I mean, not in real person but his music and his poetry. When I was younger I didn't really understand what he says and I didn't like very much the instrumental job that he exposes in his discography. However, when I came to University and I began to experience more things and to know more things about revolutionary processes in Latinamerica, his music turned out very meaningful to me. I admire his ability to write and play the guitar and also I admire his passion about the things that he sings. When I hear now about other musicians that became famous without (in my opinion) a real talent or a real reason to sing (besides love and blabla) I always think in Silvio Rodriguez and his song "Debo partirme en dos", that talks about how musicians has to be careful about their words in their songs and how they began to write about things that doesn't really matter or doesn't expose the reality that we need to know about. I went to one of his concerts about 2 weeks ago. It was my first time seeing him and I would definitely come back to his show.

This is one of a few persons that I would like to meet. I would like to talk about Chile, about Cuba and his experiences in life, in music and Guerrilla; also, talk about their motivations to write and play guitar. He's old so I hope that he can live many more years playing his songs and making people happy.

Post 3: My favorite movie

Everyday my mind can change its opinion about this topic, but for today, my favorite movie is a Chilean film: Machuca. This piece of art was created in 2004 by Andres Wood, a Chilean film director. It was protagonized by Ariel Mateluna, Matías Quer and Manuela Martelli. 

The movie shows the time-period of 1973 in Chile where the left-wing movement: Unidad Popular, was fighting the posibility to stay in government while the right-wing movement was ready for the military coup to steal the government of Allende, the president of UP. 

Ariel Mateluna is Pedro Machuca, the boy who gave the name to the movie. He's a poor Chilean boy with a single mom, who was sympathetic of the UP, and a drunk father that only cares about the money. He was a neighbor of Manuela Martelli's character: Silvana. Who is also a poor Chilean girl who lives off the sale of flags and cigarettes at the protests of the time. Both of them are sympathetic to the UP and they became friends with Matías Quer's character: Gonzalo Infante, an upper-middle class boy, when the school where he was studying (a private school) implements a social-integration project that allowed five poor boys to study in there. One of them was Pedro Machuca and there's when they became friends, in a particular kind of friendship.

The movie exposes socio-political arguments with a fun, deep and fictionary story but at the same time, the movie shows the real polarization of ideas at the time. I loved it because of the feelings that it made me feel and how the writers and producers interpretates the history. 

My favorite (and maybe least favorite part, too) is the final scene. If you haven't seen the movie, please skip this part!!! When the military groups take control of many places in Santiago, after the coup, Gonzalo Infante, who had fought with his friend Machuca, went to his house to fix things. When he arrived, he found all the violence characteristic of the military dictatorship and sees how they are attacking Machuca's Family and Silvana's Father. He obviously went into shock. There's when a soldier starts yelling at him asking why he's there, that he has to go to the trucks with the other detainees. Gonzalo freaks out and starts yelling back at the soldier: "Look at me! Look at me! Look at my clothes!" And that's when the soldier looks at him and lets him go. It's a very sad, clear and explanatory scene about the differences and violence of the time. 

Can you see now why I'm in love with the movie? It's such a good production. I wouldn't change ANYTHING about this film. Like I said before, it is a piece of art and everyone deserves to watch this. In schools, in universities and all over the world.