Last Blog: English Languages Challenges

Hello, finally this is the last blog and I am writing late because of the end of semester. In general, I hate this subject because I don’t do it well and I get easily frustrated because I can’t understand something or not respond correctly. When I went to school, this didn’t happen, I liked English and it was one of my best subjects, but everything changed when I got to University.

In fact, last year I took English 4 but I had to leave it because of the tension I experienced in each class (It really was a very bad experience to go to English :( ), but this semester the situation was different and the atmosphere in class was pleasant. Regarding the blogs, I didn’t like to do them because I felt that I needed more time than I had available and I was nervous to see how my classmates finished and for me writing was so complicated. I believe that what I should improve in my English is writing and speaking, because it is difficult for me to put sentences together easily and less when I have to start a conversation with another person (I don't know how I will do it in the oral test) I think that I need more practice, so I'm likely to take an intensive English course soon. 

This last one because I'm constantly reading texts in English for my career and if I plan to do a postgraduate course outside of Chile, I must handle myself well in English. 

Goodbye and good luck to all in the final tests :)

Post 9: Changes to My Study Programme

Hi everyone! Today I have to talk about my Study Programme and inmediately I think about my first years of University. The career of Anthopology at the University of Chile has a programme of five years, two of them form the "Basic Cycle" where we had subjects of the three mention: Social Anthropology, Physical Anthropology and Archaeology. In that period, I didn't like that the subjects were focused in the area of social Anthropology, while the subjects of Physical Anthropology, the mention that I like, were a few. When I started my third year and I chose the mention of Physical Anthropology, everything changed, but I also found problems here. 

The mention of Physical Anthropology is known as the hardest mention, with a heavy workload and severe tests and teachers. But I would say that I have no problem with that. If you want to have good grades, you just have to study daily, practice your skills with time in the laboratory and trying to be a methodical person. About the subjects in the mention, I can say that I don't like the fact that we don't have methodological subjects specific to the mention, so we have to study subjects with the archaeologists. I don't think that it's bad, because we need to learn to excavate, for example, but we don't learn how to excavate human remains. We can read about this, but is not the same experience as doing it on the work field.

Another problem that we have as a mention is the precarious infrastructure of the University. In the Faculty, there are only two laboratories, one of Genetic and the other of Osteology. In the last one, we have problems, because the amount of people is over the capacity of the laboratory, so the learning environment isn't the appropiate. The new building have two more laboratories for Physical Anthropology's studentes, but they aren't equiped yet! Also, we don't have gloves!!! and they are very necessary to us :c 

Besides, I would like to have access to new technology in the area of genetic or virtual anthropology, but the money of the University goes to other places.

Bye!

Post 8: Summer Holidays

Hi everyone... for this blog, I don't have much to tell you because I am not used to make plans in advance. Actually, all my summers are almost the same so I don't have to worry very much. Every year, I go to Licancheu, a rural place in the VI region where my grandparents live. There, I will spend time with my cousins because this house is the destination for my maternal family. This is one of the reasons why I like this time of the year, because I enjoy being with my cousins who I don't see during the rest of the year. We are probably going to go to the beach and the river that is near the house. We are going to play cards and see movies like we usually do and we are going to talk and laugh, which is interesting to see how everybody is changing with the passing years :'') (I'm one of the older cousins)… But not all is happiness, because I can't take my dog with me so I have to leave him in Santiago and I miss him very much :(

Sometimes, my dad says: "this holidays we are going somewhere else no matter what" but not always happens hahah. This vacation I would like to go with my family to some place in the south of Chile like Valdivia or further south like Puerto Natales and go through those nice landscapes. However, I spent part of my vacations here in Santiago, using the free time to sleep more, rest from the University, seeing my friends of school and seeing my boyfriend, who is boring and doesn´t like to go out. During this time, I also would like to do a driving course because I find it necessary…It is not the first time that I think about it, so I hope this time to get my driver’s license.

That's all, bye!

Post 7: Someone I'd like to meet

Hi, today I'm not very enthusiastic about think and write this blog (never, actually), so I' ll tell you about a person that I have seen a lot recently, but by my computer, of course. He is Evan Peters, an American actor, and for me, he is good at his job. 

He's 29 years old and he made his debut on 2002, when he'd 15 years old. He acted on the movie "Clipping Adam" and he got his first prize in the Phoenix Film festival for the category "Best stand-out action". Over the years, Evan played many minor roles and usually he was rejected of the castings that he attended, until he was classify for a protagonist role in the TVserie "American Horror Story" on 2011. For this TVserie, I know about him and I followed watching the serie because of him hehehe and because the serie's plot obviously.

I will not say that I admire him but I like him very much <3 , because he seems to be a nice and charismatic person and he can play roles so eccentric and he does it very well. He is very memorable when he plays these different roles without doing the same things over and over again, which really shows how talented he is.

About his accomplishments, I already mentioned one of the two prizes that he had won. This year, he won on Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, in the category of "Best secondary actor". But I think he could win more awards if he continues to improve his performances.

Well, I hope I can meet him someday, even if I can only see him :p

My future job

Hi everyone! In this opportunity I have to talk about my future job and I would say that I have already experienced it. I'm currently in my fourth year of the career Physical Anthropology and in the last days, I have to work for my thesis so I have to extract DNA from saliva samples. This is a genetic study and its aim is to know the origin of the north populations of Chile.

Since I started the mention of Physical Anthropology, I liked the area of genetics, so I imagined myself working in a laboratory, with white apron and gloves. This is an indoor job, where everything has to be clean for avoid the contamination of the samples. I’m very thorough and a few days ago, someone who works with me, told me that I was an OCD person(Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), so I think that I’m qualified for this job hahaha.

But Genetics are not the only subject that I like, I’m interesting in the Bioarchaeology too, so If I have the chance to work in an archaeology site with humans remains, I would travel for the country and maybe out of Chile and I would like that.

Thinking in the future, I would like to take a master degree in Biomedical Sciences and try to connect the genetics with the pathologies and the cultural factors. Well, I hope I can graduate first hehehe.

Election day

Hi! Today I have to talk about the election day. As we should know, the next October, 23th is the municipal election, when we should go to vote for the next municipal mayor and the councillors of our district. In my case, I'm not going to vote because I'm registered in Quinta Normal but I'm from Lo Prado. I don't know why it happened and I didn't remember it until a few days ago when I checked if I had been chosen for "vocal de mesa" .This situation is very sad because I wanted to vote in my first municipal election and especially because my cousin is one of the counciller candidates for Lo Prado, so he has one less vote.
 

I think that the electoral campaigns are very impersonal and even useless. The only things that we can see in the streets are posters and pamphlets with the smiling face of someone and a cliché phrase. On the other hand, we could see a lot of people go over the streets, knocking on the doors, saying the same speech and giving many little gifts. In that occasions we never got to see the candidates so there isn't a dialogue with them and the community. At least for now, this has been my experience with the electoral campaigns. For this reason, I think that a person who run for a politic position should have qualities like empathy, social conscience, willpower to do the best for the people but I don't think that is the reality that we live in. 

I have never considered becoming a politician because of my personality and I don't like the pressure of being a leader constantly. 

My favourite TV Show

Well, well, I don't think that this topic will be very difficult to me. I declare myself a adiccted to TV series, and I usually watch them in my computer, when I have free time and when I haven't too hehehe. After a lot of time thinking, I choosed "Avatar: The last airbender" as my favourite TV series. In this case, I started see this serie on TV, when it was transmited by Mega about five or six years ago. 

Avatar -not the movie of blue creatures- is an animated serie of three seasons with  twenty episodes each aproximately. It  was about a world which was divided in four nations: The water tribe, the fire nation, the earth's kingdom and the air nomads. The opening narrate the whole story in a clear way. One hundred years ago, the four nations lived in armony, where there was people that can controle a element (water, earth, fire or air) and people who can't. The Avatar was the master who can control all the elements and she or he had the mission of maintain the peace on the world. -But everything changed when the fire nation attacked- because the fire lord, Ozai, wanted to create a new age for the fire nation where they rule the whole world, so it produced a war between nations, where the air nomads were exterminated, the water tribes and earth's kingdom were let to the end because they had army to protect their limits. 

The character that can overcome this situation is the Avatar, Aang, the only surviving member of the air nomads, a child of 12 years but actually he is 112 years old. He was brought up by monks, so he is very kind and sweet and only used the violence when he has to. He meet to Katara and Soka, the first is a watebender and she play the role of mum in the group. Soka is the brother of Katara and he is a natural strategist. In the season two, they meet Toph, a blind earthbender who is strongest of the group. At final of the show, Zuko join to the group, a firebender who wants to overthrow his own father. 

About my favourite episode, I don't have an only one. But now I can only think in the last episode where we could see a great battle between the Phoenix King and the Avatar. It was very impressive for me and I repeat this scene many times. 

I love this serie because it has great music, the characters are very mature for their age and the control of the elements has always been very interesting for me. I used to watch episodes of this serie two times for semester at least when I need to cheer up myself.