last English essay

As I’m asked for my experience learning English at the university, I decided to answer from this period of time in my life, not only describing the learning system in the place where I’m studding, because that’s a little more boring…

Since I was a little girl I always heard that “a second language is important for your future”. But I didn’t really figured out until I grown up and found that a lot of the important men and women I wanted to read, wrote in English, French or German. Besides now I’m more conscious of the possibility of living in other country some period of time. There are a lot of opportunities waiting for someone who knows more than one language to take them.

When I was a little girl I learn English singing stuffs like “cooking, cooking, everybody’s cooking…” and doing the mimic at the same time, that way we learned some verbs. After, I started to listen at the songs I liked, the television series, and films more carefully. So I get more vocabulary and get use to heard and understand English. I do the same with French, but I have less formal education on that, so is more difficult. Besides there’s less people who knows it so I have few opportunities to practice it.

Now days I’m increasing my English knowledge, but I don’t think I’m doing very well. I speak sometimes with my younger brother, and we laugh a lot, because we try to say the everyday things in a not-everyday language. He’s great in English because of where he studies. But I think I need more practice and formal instruction.

Where I study we must take obligatory English lessons, so I’m supposedly having that formal part. On the classes we listening conversations, answer questions, write and speak. But we are not an example of participation and learning enthusiasm as a class group. Maybe, the best way learn another language is in littler groups, with a confidence relation and a closed structure of sit, so we can see our faces when we are talking. I know that our teacher makes a lot of efforts giving us extra material and cheering us up to participate in classes. But there is something on the class atmosphere and on the fact of that we don’t have a lot of time to practice at home that hinder the English learning. And I’m sorry of that.

The money in my life…

In my house my both parents have paid jobs; My mom is a school teacher, and my dad an engineer; she says she spend all her pay on the food we have at home, and the rest is up to my father.

My family never had some serious financial problems; my dad was unemployed once, and we were a little scared, but he’s an incredible organized man so we didn’t get to be really messed up.

I don’t know how it would be in the future… I mean, when I have to do it on my own. The most probably is that I wouldn’t have as much money as I have now in my parent’s house. The work I may have is probably going to be more like my mother’s… but more independent and unstable (she’s been on the same school since twenty years).

I don’t particularly enjoy picturing me as a very rich girl, at least not seriously… but if I had a lot of money I will probably invest it on some apartments for rent (more than one, because when you have lessees, one of them can have problems and ended messing up you) and then continue my life the way it is, but more relax and generously. I could travel a lot, and help other people; but I would help them with gifts, I would support an NGO or something like that.

my favorite film ever

My favorite movie is la fille sur le pont (the girl on the bridge). I can’t get tired of seeing it.

It’s a French movie, made on 1999. The director is Patrice Leconte, and the leading actors are Vanessa Paradis and Daniel Auteuil. In the movie they play Adèle, a girl who’s kind of force to start to believe in luck; and Gabor, a knife thrower.

I don’t want to give the impression of this as a typical romantic film, because it is not… there’s a lot of tension, pauses, looks at the eyes, and sometimes there is jealousy too. But they don’t really get too sentimental or affected…
All the scenes are in black and white, but you never feel you miss the color, the photograph is beautiful, and the soundtrack is great.

The film starts with a close up of Adele talking about her horrible luck. The conversation is more like an interrogation, there’s a female voice asking her about the story of her life, and you can see something like a jury behind her. The scene -that hasn’t had any relation to the rest of the film- takes 7.15 minutes

After that opening scene, you start to listen to the music and then you follow the flying camera going to a bridge in Paris. There’s Adèle, who’s planning to jump into the Seine River. But she’s not alone, Gabor comes and offers her to make a deal: she can become his diana. He tells her that if she wants to kill herself, she’ll not lose anything by trying.


Here’s a link of one of my favorites scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np1bn6P747o

a tour in Santiago city

If someone who doesn’t know Santiago came here to visit the city, I’d had some places to suggest.

Here’s my perfect tour…

First of all, go to the Pablo Neruda’s Santiago house, named “La Chascona” due to the nickname of the last poet’s wife, Matilde. Chascona, in Chilean Spanish, is a person who has a huge unbrushed hair.

There is a painting of Matilde made by Diego Rivera -a famous Mexican painter- that represents the hidden love that Pablo and Matilde shared. She has two faces, and hidden in her hair the silhouette of the poet face
I chose this place because the house is beautiful and it has a lot of little details that talks you about many parts of Chile and the world, besides he is a very well-know Chilean poet, and is interesting go to see where he lived.

After that you can go take a walk at the Parque Forestal, a great park that is near to the house, a beautiful place to talk and enjoy the sunny days that we have in springtime. Walking in the park you’re going to found the Bellas Artes Museum, you can go visit it and see a permanent collection of Chilean paintings, pay attention on the Claudio Bravo an Roberto Matta’s paintings, my favorites ones.

When you finish the museum tour you can have lunch in one of the coffee places and restaurants on the sector. Later you can take the metro to the La Moneda station; there you can visit the government palace and the great museum under the building. After that you can walk to the Plaza de Armas and see the Cathedral of the city, is the historical part of the visit.

the mapuche hunger strike is 57 days on!

Today, September 7th, the mapuche hunger strike is 57 days on; and no one sees a possibility of an affective and good response. The problem is that in Chile the constitution and the laws makes resistance and differences looks like terrorism.

(Ok, I know, this is not the only country that makes that, is the job of all the national States, but it doesn’t make it better)

The government has serious troubles figuring out how to give any solution to the actual situation, because in the national political movements it’s all about making good coalitions, nothing about real people and real solutions. Piñera wants to look good, the UDI people denies the situation, who knows what can came out of here…

I’m not saying that the previous government had do a good job dealing with the ethnical differences, you know, all because we were living like 500 years ignoring the existence of the mapuche people.

That’s why I don’t really see anything remarkable, shocking or surprising of this piece of news… is not really new. I think that this is the kind of things that could appear a little more in the TV, things that makes people question the state of the things, not only receive what they want for us to think about.

Everyone is trying to save the image of the country, the big and important country that celebrates the bicentenary of independent life… but we are not really free, not if we don’t think for our self.

Which country would you like to go to? Why?

I would love to go to so many countries! See different s landscapes, natural beauties and different cultures too…


But one of my dreams is to live in France for a while. I’d been there before, in 2007, and it was a great experience. I went to Paris, Loire valley and Corse. I had a great time, and I decided that I have to go back sometime, and stay living in Paris. There are a lot of ideas that I had that time and I want to complete some day.


My perfect Paris day might be like this: wake up in a tiny little apartment with a round window with the view of the Eiffel tower, have breakfast with a nice orange tea and a baguette with cheese, then go outside, buy a lemon ice-cream and take a walk in the tuileries garden. I know I can do it here, but taking a walk in that city is just perfect.


When I live there, I’m probably going to go to the Orsay museum a lot; it was absolutely my favorite one.

But of course I don't want to stay only in Paris, I will travel around too. I’m sure going to make a trip in the Loire valley, it is called “Loira à vélo”, it’s a 800 km route, demarked to ride bikes and see all the castles of the region, it's gonna be great!

first post of the last English class!

Hi new English class!
I still don’t make any serious evaluation or revision of how my first term experiences were, even I had the intention. So this post is not going to be really elaborated.
If I had to tell the truth I’m not really focused on the studies. I go to the classes, I take notes, and I pass my subjects, but I’m not a high level student.

I was thinking about what matters to me, and maybe it is not the “relevant things” that you can learn talking about specific contents, it is more about the experiences and perspectives that your are constructing, and the abilities that you can develop when you listen and see carefully at different people…

In that perspective, if I do a really strict evaluation of myself, I’m not the best… but I’m working on it. There is a phrase that in English doesn’t sounds so pretty, but it has a lot of meaning, is “in a community we teach each other” or help each other, or we are masters to each other, and that implies giving and getting personal knowledge.

Most of the time I’m doing things to the church group where I work. And in that level I learned a lot on it the past term. I learned more about how guide a pray, and staffs like that. Not really relevant in the university context, but well, important enough to me.