My experience learning English at the University

This is my last English blog, I had course the four levels, two years finally and maybe its sound bad, but I think that I didn’t have a good experience learning English at the university, although I’m not sure if I have very good reasons. I say that principally because I think that the English here it would be different than the English that I learned at school, but the method that teacher use was very similar. I feel that I lost a year because the first two levels I didn’t learned anything new, I just “learned” some thinks in the last levels (three and four), principally because I have to talk more, so I relaxed a little, now I feel more confident.

So, I can see bad and good reasons to evaluate my experience:
I think that English here would be different than English at the school, but I sow that the system was the same, though I had three different teachers, all of them teach similar, only one speak every time in English, and impulse you to speak in English to. Have English at the university was more a problem that a help. The classes took me a lot of time, I had to take the course besides the obligatory courses, and I felt that I was lost my time, as I said, especially the first year.

The good thing, as I say, was that in level three I had to speak in English a lot, so I gain more confidence, and now I feel less shame if I have to talk with an Anglo speaker. In general I understand the most of thing that I listen and read. My problems with English are at the moment to talk and write, I get nervous when I talk and I make mistakes when I write, unfortunately, this two years didn’t help me with this problems.

As a reflection, I think that learn English is very important, but you need a real motivation. Have excellent teachers doesn’t help if you don’t have motivation to learn. Personally, I hate study English here, now I study psychology, for now I can live with the English that I know, probably in the future I will need to learn more English, maybe to study abroad.

My Faculty

If you ask me about the situation in my faculty, the first thing that I say you is that in the University we have big differences between faculties. My faculty is one of these that have little resources and poor facilities.

In my faculty the facilities are not good enough, we have a little library and we have few books too. Moreover, we use the same places to lunch and to study… Yes our casino is a study room at the same time. Something that is better now is our computers room, now we have a real lab. For the other hand, we are many students for the class rooms that we have.

Of the things that I mentioned, all need improvement, less the computer lab. Of course, these improvements may vary in cost. It wills easier begin for the cheapest things.

My first steps maybe would be the cheapest; they don’t need structural reforms, so I’d star for find a new study room, and then buy some books, and at the end built more class rooms or a new library.

This situations, and thing that need improvements, require economical support, so a way to resolve it is that the central house give us more money. Or we can do some event to raise money too.

These improvements are necessary because they can improve our learning conditions, and help us to be better students, and better professionals. On the other hand, these improvements maybe have another impact: maybe if we have better working conditions and more resources, perhaps we do fewer strikes, I don’t know really...

Anyway, the next steps are asked for more resources, but without an increase in our fees. But this is an unlikely situation. But I hope to!

Friends!!!

If you ask me about my best friend, my closest friend, I can’t tell you only one person, because in my life I have two girls, two women actually, who have been in my life since we were babies. They are my best friends, Camy and Pashy (you can see them in the picture). They are very different each other. Camy is quiet, even shy, she doesn’t talk so much, but she always know what happen to me, I don’t need talk with her. On the other hand, Pashy is talkative, she doesn’t know everything about me, but I can talk with her about everything, she gives excellent advice. I don’t remembered exactly when I meet them…. I know Camy sine we were babies, we were in the photos with only a few months. And I meet Pashy in kinder garden. I love these girls so much. We are one, we know everything about each other, we spend important moments together.

I don’t make friends easily, I’m sometime suspicious, and I can’t openly my heart easily. But when I meet a person who I like, I put everything on the relationship, I do this with Camy and Pashy, for example, and I’ll do it all my life with them. I think I’m a good friend, at least for my best friends. I care about their problems, we are there in good and bad moments, and we love each other.

Of course I have had bad experiences with some people, but I think that we never be best friend at all, maybe we don’t put enough energy on the relationship. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.

Pashy and Camy are my childhood friends, for the moment we live in different cities, but we keep in touch despite the distance.

see you!!

Eat yourself happy? Mediterranean diet link to less depression

This new talk about one research who said that people that eat a Mediterranean diet have fewer possibilities to get depresses. They based on some evidences: the Mediterranean counties have lower rates of depression and suicide than other countries. So, they followed to ten thousand of Spanish graduates and studied their eating habits.

A Mediterranean diet consist in eat plenty of olive oil, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and fish, more than met. Drink red wine too, just a bit.

Although they found that people who eat a Mediterranean diet have less depression, they don’t control other factor that might influences too. For example, if the people do exercise, the area where the people live in. These are two factors that help to get less depression too. So we don’t know wath is the relation between the diet and depression, yet.

Anyway, the appeal is to have a healthy life: do exercise, eat healthy food, are both important to not get depression, and other condition like stress or cardiac problems.

If you want to read this article, I write a link to http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/besttreatments/2009/oct/06/eat-yourself-happy-mediterranean-diet-link-to-less-depression enjoy it!!

Pets: my experience

My family have had six pets since I can remember, always dogs. But only one have been mine, whit she (it was a female) I had good and bad experiences, and I want to talk something about it. Unfortunately she doesn’t be with me anymore, she died six year ago.

My uncle gave her to me for Christmas, when I was six, she live ten years, so I grow up whit her. She was a cocker spaniel, brown head with some white spot in the leg and head. Her name was “Nala” like the girlfriend of the “Lion King”, this movie was my favourite when I was a child, so I choose this name for her, when she was a puppy she was like a little lion too.

I liked her so much because she was really kindly and when I was sad she just sit next to me and put her nose in my hand, and smell me. She played a lot whit me, and sometimes mi mom allowed her to stay in the house with us. I had to cleaned her and feed. She comes with us to everywhere.

My life is different without her. She died when I was sixteen; I knew that she was really old and very ill, but I felt very sad. I never could have a pet again, I have dogs in my house, but I don’t considerer mines, my father take care of them. I don’t involve and, I don’t know if it is a good or a bad thing. I hope to can have a pet again, but for now, I prefer to don’t have one.

I don’t know if is necessary to have a pet. Maybe when you are an only child (this is not my case). But you run the risk of involved too much, like me and feel terrible if something happen to your pet.

In some case, have a pet is an important way to learn some responsibilities, like feed they, or cleaning them. Some parents use this way to teach to the kids to take care of their pets and themselves.

Sometimes the family doesn’t take care about their pets, and sometimes they abandoned them. Something like happened in Chaiten. I feel really sad when this situation happen. Fortunately some families want to adopted abandoned animals and give them a better home.

I don’t know if I can adopt an abandoned animal, but this is because I prefer to not have one yet. Maybe I going to have a pet again when I have my own place, and this will the moment to thinking about it.

Santiago: a lot of things to do!!

I feel like a tourist answering this question. I`m not from Santiago, I live here because the university, so I don’t know all the interesting places to go or things to do here. The places that I know are supposed to be “typical places”. So I think that a foreigner tourist should to visit them.

Some of these places are the Central Market, the Lastarria neighborhood, the San Cristobal hill, Plaza de Armas, La Moneda palace, etc. These are typical places where you can admire the view; you can see nice architecture and eat good Chilean food. These places are typical; you must take some photos, or buy a postal.

Besides the typical places you have a lot of nice places to go and things to do. If you want to spend a nice time you can go to some museums, like Bellas Artes Gallery and walk for the Forestal Park, take a coffee and enjoy the sunset. For me the sunset is really nice because I stop to hear the noise, is the quieter time of the day, only five minutes and the noise beginning again.

If you want to have fun you can go to some typical neighborhoods where you find restaurants, bars and discotheques, like Lastarria, Brazil, Bellavista, or Providencia.

If you ask me, in my top five activities I suggest some of typical places and some fun thing, sometimes the typical places are not very funnies and you need to do some activities to relaxing. So my top five is this: go to Santa Lucia or San Cristobal hill, lunch in Central Market, go in the afternoon to some gallery, I prefer Bellas Artes, then walk for the Forestal Park and end the day with some friend and take some drink in Lastarria neighborhood.

Transantiago: my experience

I never knew the old system. I came to live here in Santiago in 2007, the same year that Transantiago started, so some times my opinion on it was not so bad. Actually I never had a bad experience because from my house here in Santiago to the University I have the subway really close and I only take bus in Grecia Avenue, and never had much problems in this avenue.

However, besides of this bus line, people I know had a lot of problems, especially when started Transantiago, the firsts months of 2007. Even my routine was changed, at the beginning I took a little more than an hour to arrive to the University, and I had only one way: the subway and one bus line. Now the same tour takes me 45 minutes an I have 3 different bus lines. Maybe in my case it is a little difference, but to other people the system is really better now.

I hope that the Transantiago System to continue improving. There are a lot of things to do yet. Maybe we have more buses, more buses lines, more control to the people who doesn't pay. But it doesn't enough. Some sides of Santiago needs more than these solution. And we can see other kind of problems, like the poor condition of the Intermodal La Cisterna. Some times the problem is not the system, but those who implement it.

Other point important for me is that we still have old buses polluting the environment. The new buses isn't do this, so here we have one thing to do to make the Transantiago better, and our life too!