English Language Challenges

I like very much this subject, because I like very much the English. But more than only love the language, I love to learn new abilities to communicate with people from other countries. I think that using a blog is a very good idea to learn better the language, because is a moment to think and develop our own ideas. And a very important point is that we constantly need English in ours careers, because we have to read, and after, if we want to participate of a congress or something like that, out of Chile, we we’ll need English to establish a serious conversation or a work together with others workmates. Although blogs are a good learning tool, I believe that I need to practice more vocabulary and pronunciation. Maybe it could be great for this subject use more listening in classes or other learning tools like watch a movie in English with English subtitles. I think that I’m able to have a conversation with an English speaking, but as I say recently, I need more vocabulary and perhaps, more everyday approach to the language. This summer I pretend to watch English movies without subtitles. Sometimes I use English in my everyday life, with a tourist par example, or with a friend family, and I think that I don’t have complications, just a few minutes to gain confidence and that’s all. I remember that when I was little, in school I wasn’t very good in English; I didn’t love the subject at ll. Maybe were teachers, maybe the teaching program,  I don’t know well, but the fact is that when miss Julia began her classes, everything changed, I started to interest in English and from a day to another I began to love English.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEistthUOUi-zJ_JGP9GpjRbVubhlDmmSeDsQekREsr9PbAcfxlS8LpIdqnjzIoJlpoGN25RRwkB3y2Y2422i_raw34HCgX2yHNBbrfKXkhHqrL2awZxCymUlQCakMoBp-LjabNj8qf73so/s1600/englishspeakingcountries.gif

Money

I think that in an ideal society, money shouldn't exist, in a true communist society, money is not necessary. But, today, is impossible to say that money isn't important, that can’t be real, because meanwhile we live in a capitalist society and in a monetary system, and we can’t live without money.  Chile is a neoliberal country that demands the existence of money in ours lives more that the most of countries, but that is another theme.

Every month, my mother gives me an amount of money. This money is for the public transport I use, for lunch, for what I spend in parties or meetings and for any spend extra that I need, like clothes, or any other. I think that it has been very useful for me the fact that I received the money that I will spend once a month, because I’d have learn how to manage my expenses and in certain point, hoe to organize my life better. I admit that I don’t need to carry abut home expensive because, I live with my grandmother and I don’t have to pay counts or a guesthouse.
I think that, in generally, I’m not very good in money managing yet, I’m not use to economize my purchases, and, as I say recently, to me,  sometimes is difficult to organize my expenses.

Honestly, I don’t know what I’ll do If I was millionaire, I have never think on that. Probably something for humanity, but don’t know what. In the opposite case, If I ever has to pawn any of my belongings, it could be a gold bracelet, because is practically the only thing with value I have.

How green am I?

I don’t think that I couldn’t say that I’m a green person, but at list, in my everyday life I try to consume as little as possible. Recently I have been learning friendly practices in my French course, because in the book that we use, there’s a unity that talks about “les decroissants” (in French), which means people that makes everything that is possible to consume the least possible, they recycle, reutilize, use the bicycle, never a car, recyclable nappies for the babies, they separate their waist to do not contaminate, and many others things. Is more a life style that an habit. So, recently that has been an open door to me to learn a little more of what to do. But, I think that in my family exist (overall in my mother’s family) a conscience of do not contaminate and hopefully, live only with the necessary. I think that I have incorporated in me some habits like dump the paper in the trash collector and not in the WC, do not dump waist in the streets or in a natural place and wait for a trash collector (maybe that could be considered as conscience with the workers that cleans, more than a green habit), I try to take a shower less than ten minutes, I turn off the water while I clean my teeth, and others things that I consider basic to life in a planet If we don’t want that the planet become extinct. There are some things that stress me, because I don’t know exactly what to do with that. Par example, since years I have a bag with a lot of batteries, because I don’t know where to put them, for another way, Makes me sick that other people simply don’t take importance to that and they but the batteries with the common trash, and I had heard that batteries decomposition takes at least thousands of years. That’s horrible! So, I will wait good information to do something with my batteries. Regarding to my way to move by the city, I use my legs and the public transport, the minority of times I use a car to go out with my boyfriend or something like that. I admit that I would like get my drive license quickly, because I think that is very utile in case of an emergency and to make a journey out of Santiago too.

I’ve never participated in any eco-organization, I don’t use to support them because I think that this types of organizations use to be impolitic. I think that and in many times the “green fight” distracts people of the real problem of society: the inequality. And sometimes green people in more occupied in animals that in persons, and I don’t think that this is ok.

Anyway, we can’t deny that any development needs to be accompanied by the conscience in nature. 

Article from the Guardian

Picture from: http://www.conservacionybiodiversidad.cl/2013/08/liberan-exitosamente-a-18-condores-rescatados-en-los-andes/

Fist of all, I went to http://santiagotimes.cl/ and I founded this article http://santiagotimes.cl/pesticide-poisoning-confirmed-as-cause-of-death-for-chilean-condors/, called "Pesticide poisoning confirmed as cause of death for Chilean condors". The Article was written on Monday from September twenty-third of 2013. Everything started when tourists saw dozens of condors crash-landing in the foothills of The Andes, on August. They started a rescue operation and they could recovery 22 of the condors, two of them dead. So, the SAG started and investigation, and after weeks of testing, they determined that the cause of death was that they died because of eating animal carcass that had been poisoned with the pesticide diplenylamine. According to Luis Mayol, the agriculture minister, "in Chile there are a large number of wild dogs wich live in packs in rural areas and wreak havoc among livestock", So the farmers put pesticide in animals carcasses. The thing is that us the Condor is an scavenger, they suffer the consequences. Eric Savard is a veterinarian saw how the rest of the group of condors get better, and he says that was common that the farmers puts poison meat during June, July and August, because in this moment winter drives pumas and poxes down from the mountain and they're poisoned :(
Of the 20 surviving condors, 19 were released. And the local government of Los Andes is now awaiting the confirmation from the PDI that the Condors were not poisoned intentionally.
I think that the study of these cases, could be important to our career because is possible to see the relationship between Humans and native animals, and how the state mediate in this situation. I believe that is an interesting study area the development of  the relationship between human and animal through time.

My Favorite Band or Singer

My favourite band in this moment is Los prisioneros. In spite of that I already talk about this band last semester, I would like to mention them again, because they are so good and contingent that they deserve all my appreciation. I know more about them that months ago, first of all, they formed the band in the community of San Miguel in Santiago de Chile in the year 1979. The band was initially formed by Jorge González, Claudio Narea and Miguel Tapia. As you can see, the group was born in a dictatorship, and because of their lyrics which talked against the dictatorship, they where vetoed until the "democracy" arrived. Los Prisioneros talked about the society and culture that the dictatorship and repression formed, as they said: "La cultura de la basura" (Culture of trash). They protested against Pinochet, but also against arrivisme, light music that says anything, and fake conceptions about love. They play Rock music; they started developing a simple sound punk with touches of reggae and new wave, and later the synth pop. They recognize to have many music influences, they used to heard The Beatles, Kiss, Queen, The Bee Gees, The Clash, The Stranglers,  The Cars, Adam and the Ants, Devo, The Police, between others. Today, they are separated. 

I don’t know very much about “musical sounds” and who’s a great musician or who’s not, I think that the important thing is that this music touches your mind and heart and has a message to bring. And that’s why I love Los Prisioneros, because since the first time I heard them, at 7 years old I think, I never stopped to discovered new things in their music. As a kid I just loved the sound, because I didn’t understand the lyrics, but when I started to grow up I discovered more reasons to love them. Jorge González is a big one, I don’t have more words!!!

I present to you the song “Independencia Cultural”, I love this song because make us think about Chilean society and his music is amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qob3dcu4wXM

My Ideal Job

I can’t say what is really my Ideal Job, actually I have asked myself that since I have memory, and I still can´t resolved. But there’re some things that I have clear, and is that I want to contribute as much as I can in this society. Obviously someday I would like to have a family, so I want to do something that brings me resources and makes me live without fear. But more than anything I would like that all people have the same social rights and the same conditions to work, in those conditions I would like to work.

I know which are my main qualities and skills, so that clarify more my future job. I can be a good student, so I could develop myself in an investigation job. I'm good writing too (in Spanish still), and someday perhaps I want to teach in university.

Another important aspect to choose a job, and is a reason for what I decided to study anthropology, is that I would like to know many countries and travel through the world, that would be amazing.

But meanwhile, I'm still a soul in crisis who is trying to council my ideas with the request of this capitalist society.

Second Semester 2013

My experience using blogs in the English Class

I think that it was difficult for me to create the habit of writing before the deadline, because to me it's difficult to write without an inspiration, and sometimes inspiration was delaying in coming. So, for futures students I would recommend that they should finish the post in class, because then is very difficult to continue with the idea, almost for me.  I think that it's very innovative to write a blog in class,  is necessary to test new types of education; but I think that I would like more to speech more in English, primarily to learn a better accent (I must confessed that I love English accent, I hate the farmer-American accent). I'm not sure that the exercise of writing a blog helped me significantly to improve my English, but it gave me the desire of write a personal blog, in this one I would like to write about politics mainly. I would not change anything essential to the way the blog is written, certainly, topics of the post could be more varied. I remember that once that I was writing a post, I felt like in school I used to be more creative, and write maybe was easier to me, and then I realized that school and high school mostly makes students become flatter. I saw a study months ago i think that talked about that, how cognitive ability decreases. Well, I think that I can post about that someday. Now, the only way to face it, is to thinking, to question and writing.

My favourite subject

My favourite subject this semester was "anthropology 1". I liked this subject because was the only course that allowed me a real approach to the anthropological discipline. In classes teacher spoke about major authors of anthropology, So I realised that almost all anthropology theories come from sociology. The subject gave me a lot of knowledge and at the same time many doubts. But most importantly aspect that more I rescue is that it made me think and develop argumentative skills. So, the subject bring me the things that I expected when I decided to study this career: to anderstand The Human.
In the subject we made a route through main currents of the anthrology history, since  first evolutionists, cultural relativists, structuralist, postmodernists, Between others. Classes were very didactic, I think, because teachers tried to include students in the discussion. Different classes were dicted by different teachers, depending on their specialty. First, was the profesor Gissi, then Was Marcelo Gonzalez, and then it supposed to be profesor Quiroz, but after time that faculty was in a stop because of Mobilizations ( I’m trying to not involve polic themes here, but I think all aspects of life to some extent are political, so is inevitable).

Up to the moment, I consider myself as an historical materialist :)

Miguel Enríquez, el MIR, la revolución armada, el amor revolucionario...

La sociedad de la Igualdad

Francisco Bilbao

Do you recognize the sovereignty of the reason as authority of authorities?
Do you recognize the sovereignty of the people as base of all politics? 
Do you recognize the love and universal brotherhood as moral life?.

"La Sociedad de la Igualdad" (The society of the Equality) was a political Chilean organization founded by the intellectuals Francisco Bilbao y Santiago Arcos in 1850, during the conservative Republic initiated in 1831.

The Society of Equality raised the need of a revolutionary transformation of the society that would give beginning to a nation of free and equal men. They  attempted to mobilize artisans and the popular sectors. This Society was influenced by the ideals of the French revolution and the Utopian Socialism.

The utopian socialism was born in europe in the lates 1700 and earlies 1800. It emerges with the industrial revolution as a response to the miseries that the insdustry and urbanitation brought. The best known utopian (intellectuals from the bourgeoisie) were Saint Simon, Fourier and Owen, none of them proposed to emancipate a class but the whole humanity.

The historian Julio Godio says that the fact was that the utopic socialism in latinamerica acted a lot of times as a substitute of a consistent bourgeois liberal ideology and, under the wrapper of a generically socialist ideology, a democratic strategy was formulated. In spite of this, the Utopian socialism would have sowed in latinoamerica the seed of this new socialist ideology, which hereinafter would be defined by the "anarcosindicalismo" and the Marxist socialism.

"My favourite piece of technology"

I'm going to talk about my computer, because, actually I'm not sure of loving technology, but my notebook is almost the only piece of technology I use. Sometimes I miss an Mp3 or something to hear music, but -although it sounds a bit stupid- when I was at school someone stole my mp3, and after that I never became to buy another mp3.
I have this computer since 3 and a little more years ago. I needed it because before having it I used to share the house computer with my younger brothers, and in "hight school" I started to need more and more the computer to do my  homework, been conecting with people, boyfriend and that kind of stuff.

When I talk about the computer, basically I mean the internet. I don't like that now everything depends on online communication, university homework, university official information, conversations, etc. Sometimes I think that the nineties had many good things.

We agree that the computer has many good things, such as the spread of information and unofficial news, social networks, which allows to unite people in a world so fragmented, but there're certain myths about internet that I think should be taken down, par exemple, the fact that internet facilitates easy access to information, sometimes internet information  becomes lush and confused, and for trying to achieve everything, you learn just a little.

If I didn't have my computer, everything would be a bit chaotic, more than it already is with the computer, because, as I said recently, everything turns around technology, and emails and computers ...

Dogs created by the evilness...

Today I'm able to talk about anything. So, It isn't that I'm a dog fan, but I've been thinking about this topic after having been with a 'Brazilian Fila' (or a Brazilian Mastiff), an enormous dog, in a birthday of a friend.

In the slavery brazil, the Brazillian Mastiff was used to return fugitives unharmed to their slave masters. The Fila Brasileiro is a descendant of the 15th-century English mastiff, bloodhound, bulldog and rafeiros. They were taught to chase down jaguars, cattle, and other animals, as well as runaway slaves. In what I read, these dogs would grab the slave or animals by the neck and hold them until the farmer arrived, this instinct can be observed among puppies when they're playing.

Owing to its size, temperament and potential for aggresion, the Brazilian Mastiff has been banned in many countries. 

Brazilian Fila

A brazilian "quilombo", where fugitives slaves used to scape.

Stalin

Stalin's Dog

When I was researching this topic, I came across another specimen: 'Stalin's dog' or Black Russian Terrier. This breed of dog, was developed to serve as guard and police dog.

These dogs are known as "Stalin dogs" because, Stalin had ordered that Russian terriers were bred to monitor the detainees of the camps of Siberia.
The 'RBT' was developed by Soviet Geneticists at the end of second World War as a service dog used to guard military installations and borders.

Scary, don't you think?

Margaret Mead

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has".

Margaret Mead was born in 1901 and died in 1978. She was an american cultural anthropologist who became known in 1925 for her fieldwork at Polinesia. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929, where she was disciple of Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict.

Mead focused on child-rearing and personality in Samoa,  New Guinea, and Bali resulting in such  ethnographies as Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928 and Growing Up in New Guinea in 1930.  In Bali she pioneered the use of photography for anthropological research, taking over 30,000 photographs of the Balinese. She continued to write on topics which focused on women's roles, childrearing, and other issues which clarify gender roles in primitive cultures and aspects of American society.

In spite of the critics that she received later because of her work on Samoa and New Guinea, which accused her of having polluted their research with their own prejudices and experiences; I think that she is very important because throughout her life, Margaret Mead was very committed with activist feminism and human rights.

Los Prisioneros

Today, I want to speak about this famous band, because I think that their music contributed to my view of life.

This is a chilian rock band, from the 80's, known for their social criticism. The lyrics talk about issues as social inequality, lack of oportunities, human feelings. It was originally formed by Jorge gonzález, Claudio Narea, and Miguel Tapia. I'm not sure, but actually, they are separated.

Their lyrics borned in a dictatorship, but I think that the problems they claim are the same today. Their struggle can not be further updated.

I like a lot of their songs, but lately, I've heard a lot one song, "amiga mía". This song is not about social struggle, but, for some reason, it touches very deep in me.

Here is a cover of the song, I think it's a very good version: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTK_V1_jYDw

And here the original: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMbchcsWycE

My autobiography

My name is Estela Carrasco, and I don't have a nickname, everybody calls me Estela, sometimes my friends calls me "flaca". I was born in Providencia. I'm nineteen years old and I live in Santiago, but I used to live in Talagante with my mom, step father and brothers. Now I live with my grandmother since I started university. I miss them a lot, and most of all, I miss my brothers a lot. I'm the older of us three, Santiago has thirteen and Germán eleven, they are very clever guys. Sometimes I really miss my cat too, Tiger, he's not precisely and independent cat...

My father lives in Paris, he's Psychoanalyst and works there. Nevertherless, we meet frequently, because I often travel to Paris and other times my father comes to visit me in Chile. I also live with my aunt Carolina, her husband Jose and their daughter Rebeca, my one year old beautiful cousin. They used to live in Australia, and now they are provisionally with us.
I decided to call this Blog "My aunt's kitties and me" because my aunt Ale brought three cats from the street: Sofía came first, fourteen years ago, she's very smart, but she's a kind of evil, so my grandmother doesn't like her very much. Then, years after, "Teki" arrived, she's my favourite, because is fat and lovely, and when I study she's always with me. Finally, "Bama" arrived to this house, she doesn`t like very much people, but she's grateful. Alejandra no longer lives in this house, but kitties (or better say: fat cats) do. So my aunt's kitties have become an important part of my everyday life, and they help me to not miss tiger.
I must talk about my studies, well, I can say that all my school life was in the same School, from kinder to "cuarto medio", after that I did a year of bachillerato, in this university too. Now I'm on first year of anthropology.
I have a boyfriend, his name is Ricardo, we love each other very much. He's kind and handsome, and he helps me to study, because sometimes i'm a little messy.
I love to see movies,  and go to cinema. I like theater too, so I have participated in many courses. For these days I'm going to a flamenco course.