:(

I have to improve in the listening and reading tests but my vocabulary still need practice, besides, with respect to my speaking skills, I feel I have  a lot of work to do. I don't know if I would manage a fluent speak for the final test :(

shoot you down

Georges Benjamin has the assumption that gun violence constitutes a dangerous and contagious illness that we have to stop with similar methods we use for any danger of this type. Concerning gun violence, the writer defends the idea that violence constitutes a generalized problem that affects to         tranquility of society permanently. Benjamin illustrates this idea with examples of slaughter or murders happened in the past year. In spite of the horror of the gun violence and its expansion, the writer comes back to his hypothesis, and says this problematic can be control. In this case, he relate about how the authority took charged of study of the Ebola for save all the people. Benjamin believes congress have to start with something basic and simple to imagine. These first steps are related with pre-emptive and regulating legal measures. Also the congress has to assign funds to research about the gun violence and for have useful information.  Neither Benjamin try to abolish the gun’s legality. As the descend of car accidents, the writer think we have to the same with the gun violence: make a secure place for the people, a place with guns but regulated.  The argument of this opinion article can summarize in the idea that gun violence can be prevent with an appropriate and serious science.  

… I chose this opinion article because I’m really interested in the problem of violence. Now I’m researching about this topic in one neighborhood of our city 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/04/gun-violence-epidemic-shooting-deaths-public-health-policy 

libro de poemas

I take very seriously my career, so is very demanding to read all the bibliography of all the subjects.  Nevertheless, I always try to keep reading literature.  To be honest in this period of the year I don’t have the time to read something on my own. So today I talk about a pending book that I did not manage to finish. This is a poetry book which I don’t remember very well, but is an anthology which the last poems of Bukowski. The most interesting anecdote about this anthology is that was the own Bukowski who decided what poems include in the anthology. I was really enjoying to read him. He is an excellent poet (he is better poet than novelist). These poems are characterized for relate to the death. In these poems we find a different Bukowski who leaving his sordid style away (giving it another connotation to be more specific), show to us the depth and the poverty of the life. The poems we find in this book are heartbreaking for the crudity with Bukowski wrote it.

I think his work as a poet merits a thorough reading, an analytical reading. Is not enough reading from the pure emotion or from the identification with the situations he relates.  It is important to establish a distance between the poems and the reader. 

sorry for the late. Now I feel better

I love Santiago. I think it is a creative city.  I really like to walk looking for new beautiful places with my boyfriend Pablo.  We always discover new Cafés, parks, bars and vegetarian restaurants.  Probably our favorite places to go are the libraries. We love spend our afternoons looking for books in many different libraries even if we don’t buy any book. There are different type of these shops. There are libraries that only sell new books: we don’t like these so much because they have  the best sellers published recently. On the other hand, there are libraries that sell new and old books where you can find some titles discontinued in the most of publisher house. One of my best libraries is one that is located in Santa Isabel very close to Barrio Italia. This place is amazing.  They have really good poetry, sociology and philosophy’s books that you can only find there. In the beginning this place worked just like a library, but now, they also have a little Vegan Café: the guys prepare exquisite cakes. I love it. My boyfriend and I go to this place all Saturdays and we spend all our day looking  for the best book while we talk about theory or literature. I love his company. The best part of the day is the last, when the night comes we share a brownie with tea. Then we go to our home for cooking something tasty.

sadness is rebellion

I think happiness is overvalue. All the people want to be laughing and smiling all the time. If people see you serious or pensive they think you have a bad day. There is the irrational idea that happiness is the right way to live or the most important life’s goal. I think the real happiness is related with the pleasure of accept and living the bad times intensely without putting things between you and the suffering.

I don’t know if there exists something or someone that makes me happy I’m not looking for it. But certainly there are short events or practices that make me feel really good. Probably the most effective would be the sport. I train everyday (with the exception of Sundays) in my gym. Although I prefer practice sports in Green areas, gym works to me. I love to exercise my body because when I’m doing it I feel really connect with me. When I train I’m alone with myself, there are not intermediary between my body and I. Also, I like the interactions with the other people that go to the gym. It’s very comfortable to me go to the gym because anybody is pretending to be you friends All the conversations is restrict to ask for you water bottle or for asking help with a machine you don’t know how to use. There are little social interactions that make feel more pleasure that the gym interactions.

clase fome

The easiest exercises were the Reading area. Is very easy to me understand English when I have to read it. I think I understand the logical of this language. Although the vocabulary area was a little more difficult. I have to improve my English vocabulary. The most difficult part was the listening exercises. I have to work this area with  a lot of practice.  

Pierre Francastel

Today I’m going to talk about Pierre Francastel. Pierre Francastel was the first art theorist considered as an art sociologist for historians, and considered as an art historian for the sociologists. He belonged to the first generation of art theorists, when the art began to be understood like a study object freed it from the area of aesthetics studies.

Before to get into university, my interests about art developed. In my high school my art teacher was the Roberto Matta’s niece, she taught me all I know about painters, art movements, technique and styles. When I got into university I tried to conjugate my art interests with sociology. At the beginning it was a difficult challenge because the first year of this career is terrible and the courses are very general.

The last year, in the epistemology course, I had the opportunity for made and free topic essay and I decided to wrote about the “strangeness epistemological” typical of art or art work like a study objet for sociology. In this context I got to know him. Hi was an incredible difficult way to write (well, as a good French theorist, he must to have a complex style to write haha) so I had to get used to his language by an exhaustive reading of all his translated texts.

I admired him for his revolutionary contribution about the “Plastic Imagination” that shows to us the need to understand  the  intrinsic value of the art work expressed in the denial of dichotomy between the form and the content.

Vive la Fete

I think the best present I had received was the ticket to Vive La Fete concert (a French duet).  Vive la Fete is one of my favorites electronic bands. My friend Luis Emilio, a big fan too, gave it to me the best surprise when he invited me to his house to drank wine and ate pasta.  I remember the Friday when we met we watched a lot of documentaries about the first albums of Babasónicos (an Argentinian pop band). We wasted all our night watching documentaries and drinking wine and when we got drunk, Luis Emilio put on a Vive la Fete’s vinyl record and raised the volume. At the moment we turned off the lights and started to dance. Four songs later he told me “you have to practice you moves, in for months from now we will be dancing in Blondie with Vive la Fete live”. I was completely shocked.

I really liked this present because the last year we had an important argument which caused a big distance, hostility and a deep sadness. We did not talk near seven months and when I made contact with him to correct the situation, about six months ago, our friendship never went back to normal.  We don’t spend time together and we don’t talk very much as the good times we had the last year.  The concert is tonight and I think maybe it will be the opportunity to update about our life after and before the concert. Also, I hope to enjoy with he and our favorite music like the old times.

nada más nefasto que un institutano

Today I’m going to talk about public education and the students who attend those “excellence schools”. For begin I’d like to relate about the Ranking problem caused for the decision of raising the percentage of the mark’s ranking. They said that this measure was unfair and harmful for the students that really had been preparing the PSU in a demanding and exhausting process. They appealed to the argument of all the rest of the students of other non-excellences schools were not had the merit for receive this assistance because they were not the bests like them. Horrible way to think. Also I’d like to remember all the impediments that the announce of the End of the selection in all the public schools, provoked in various sectors of the school community, especially in the community of this establishments.   The argument for defend a discriminatory practice like that was the same: this measure would take away of the good students the opportunity for study in a good school (and a good university) for give it to the bad students (the non-smart). This way to think in my opinion is very discriminatory and individualistic. The students of this type of establishments are characterizing for to be the worst reactionary sector in the student movement. They only take interest for the things that affect to them personally.

I’m glad of the end of selection in all the public schools: having schools for smart and non-smart people it’s over, that is a triumph of the social movement. I think this was the first step for someday finish with the separation between schools for poor and rich people.

free topic

In this opportunity I would like to write about my friends. To be honest I never have been good to meet people.  I don’t like the first period when you have to talk about things you don’t really interesting. I don’t feel comfortable pretending that the life of the other person is the most exciting and important thing I ever listen. Usually I don’t get involve with the problems of people I don’t know.  Neither I feel interest about the hobbies or the other’s opinion. I normally think nobody has anything important to say. So I consider me an indifferent and lonely person who doesn’t need making friends to live quietly.

The friends I have now are not the same I had when I was a high school student. I think friends are not forever, the friendship ends when a stage of life ends.  When I got into university I did not speak with many people.  Generally I was coming back to home just when the classes got done. When I met Gabriela and Andres (my friends) we were not getting involved like good friends at the moment. On the contrary, we began like good classmates. Recently, about one year and a half since we met us, we began to hang out and to worry about us.

Gabriela and Andres make me feel comfortable. They are really good friends and good people. I’m glad to have found them.  Sometimes good friends make life better :) 

comparto mi auto y soy bacán

It’s not something new that Chilean education is in crisis. The introduction of “Neoliberal” system caused a change in the way we understand education.  It began to teach new contents that reflect until now the ideology which transformed our schools and universities. The Neoliberal system, among other things, is characterized by an unthinking way to relate with the nature, principally extracting all the natural resources.  In this context, education and also the families repeat the paradigm and everyone tend to teach and learn that destroy of the Earth is something normal. I think the problem here is different markets it has took the environmental problem and it has commercialized it for sell his products more expensive.  A clear example of that is all the “sustainable development “malls that teach to us the recycling culture just for have diverse customers and sell more.  In this way I am very pessimistic and maybe a bitter person because I think the only point to be a “green person” is be fashionable. I think the people that practice this illusory way to protect the environment are looking for social recognition.

With respect to my way to protect the environment, I’m glad to say that I normally recycle and use my bike like a means of transport My family and I have the habit to separate our organic of the inorganic trash. Also we separate the paper and the cardboard to the things make with glass and plastic and we take it to a “Green Point” all weeks. That’s all I do. I don’t support any eco-organization for the same reasons I gave above. I think this organizations are filled with unpleasant people who try to do “something good” with them environment to feel they are good people and live having a peace mind.

I think is important Chile begins to understand the environmental problem more seriously. I mean, the environmental ministry and all the environmental politics are a joke. Chile must to take part of this problem and have to begin to thinking in steps and laws in this topic

mi pololo pablo

I don’t like to celebrate Fiestas Patrias. I think is the worst holiday we have. I’m not sure about when I began to hate it but I suppose it was the first time I went to a Fonda. I hated to see drunken people dancing cumbia and talking so loud. And I hate the patriotism and the popular tradition to dancing Cueca and the expectation to the September 19 “Las Glorias del Ejército”.

 Although this year I had a different experience. My boyfriend is from Chillán and I took him to visit his family. When we arrived to the city the mother of my boyfriend took us to the mountain and we stayed in a fabulous cabin with a beautiful view to a river. His grandparent, uncle and aunt were waiting for us in the cabin with five “Corderos al palo” and a lot of potatoes and salad. And as I a vegetarian they cooked for me an exquisite cake made with vegetables and toast quinoa.

All the week we stayed there we ate a lot. Besides, all the mornings we went out to explore the surroundings and all the afternoon we played “Carioca” and “Poker” or we sang Chilean music while Pablo played the guitar and his uncle play the “Cajón Peruano”. I really enjoyed the past Fiestas Patrias because I have the opportunity to spend time with my boyfriend’s family that I really appreciate. And for the other hand, because my boyfriend and I count stayed far away to the city and to the all of problems, and calls, and responsibilities that make the life hard, excepting the English four activities’ that I made with a big smile.

de matar pacos y quemar la ciudad

The 11th September of 193 was a dark episode in the history of our country. Preserve the memory is an obligation to Chileans, especially for the young people to avoid the possibility of a new dictatorship. I was born in a democracy whose legal and ideological foundation was created in a dictatorial context. For this reason this date have to be a chance for remember all the fallen but also to thinking about the reason because how many people had persecuted and murdered. On the other hand we have the emotional plan. This date cause in me shame and rage. The continuous abuses of power that characterized this dictatorial episode, all the murders and tortures committed for the armed forces, the police and DINA, makes me feel like sad for the miserable condition that society can reach. In this context, I think we have the obligation to complaining about the human rights violated long ago. This complaining, on the other hand, have to involve in my opinion a critical position about the role of the state with respect to make justice to the family’s and to the memory of all the victims of this regime. In this area I think we have a lot of work to do. In this 25 years of democracy reaching the justice and the changes of the principal legacy of the dictatorship have been just, in the best of cases, good intentions. To finish this post, I’d like to say I do not agree with acts of violence to the police forces. In my opinion they are workers and is not justified try to kill them throwing them bombs, they are not the essence of the problem.  I do not agree with this way of expressing the legitimate discontent with the unfair and monstrous system, especially in the context of a government that has been trying, with many mistakes and limits, to revert the principal points that dictatorship destroyed.  

In this opportunity I will tell you about the country I’d like to visit. The last month my mother visited Turkey with her friends of the college. She took a lot of beautiful photos and learnt a lot about the Turkish culture. When she came back she was very excited to tell to my sister and me all her experience. She told to us that in this country exists the custom of “haggling” that means you can’t accept the price of anything you like to buy, to the contrary, you have to try to reduce the cost of the object you want. Also, I fell in love of the Turkish architecture that I can saw in my mother’s photos. After that I got curiosity for this country. Also I’m big fan of Turkish series; I’m in love to Onur and Kerim the protagonists of “Las mil y una noches” and “Fatmagul” the most popular Turkish series in our country. So probably if I have the opportunity to visit this place, I will try to find them.