BLOGGING AT FACSO

This year I started studying at University of Chile. When the year started, they told me about an English course. It was obligatory and had 4 levels, each level last one semester.

I started at level 3 so in this year I should be finishing the course.

I can say that I thought it was a good idea to have this kind of courses because we could dominate English, which is necessary for any career.

But I was in a mistake. I still think it is necessary, but it hasn't help too much for reading text of Anthropology because it is not focused on each career.

However, if you ask me if I have learned English: I do. I just don’t think that I am totally prepared for being a bilingual anthropologist.

But it has not finished for me, because I pretend to keep studying English out of the course. If you are wondering how, I can say:  in part reading text in English and in part, speaking in English with people who know more than me.

Using blogs was funny, although I’m not very comfortable sharing all my hobbies and thoughts. But I’ve progressed in my way of communicating in English (at least I feel like that, I hope I really did).

I think that most of all, I need to improve my way of speaking in English because It is difficult for me to talk even in Spanish. I use to be confused about words and its meanings. But it is something that, like I said before, I’m going to keep learning.

2 0 1 4

It is common to make a recount when the year is finishing. Today we are just begging the month number eleven, but we are close to finish classes, so it is a good moment to make it.

This year has been very different from the rest of my life because it is my first year at the University and I had to move to another city and start knowing people again. There have been a lot of changes in my life, some of them have been good, and others weren’t good at all.

 So, this year I had to move to another house twice. I started January living in Talca, as always, but in February I was living in Rancagua; by April I was living in Santiago. It was difficult to learn living in other places but now I can look at the past and say: I’ve survived.

This situation has been a little bad because I don’t like too much living in a bedroom of other house, I feel like I interrupt their life and I can’t feel that room like ‘home’.

 But there is a good part too. In Santiago I’ve met nice people; in fact, I can say that this is the first time that I really like my friends. I used to meet people from my school, but I never really felt like I was in front of the funniest persons of the life. Now I do.

So I can say that this year I learned living under bad –not the worse- conditions at the same I made good friends.

However, there is still year and there are other things that rest to do, for example, I have like 500 pages for read before the year is over.

The Canterville Ghost

“The Canterville Ghost” is a short story written by Oscar Wilde. It is about the typical ghost who lives in a mansion and everybody is scare of him, so the mansion is frequently vacant.

Well, the story start changing when a family buys the big house, the ghost try hardly to scare them, but he can’t. The children more than scare, are laughing of the ghost; so as the father.

The ghost falls in a deeply depression. The woman, pained, helped to the ghost to find the peace in the dead.

I really like this story because it combines the typical horror story about ghosts and the comedy, but at the end it offer a strange way to became a happy person.

Besides, I have to say that I like Wilde’s writings in general, so this is just an example that I chose because it is a movie too and also a song.

The song that I really like too is sung by Sui Generis – an argentine duet- and talks about the moment that you realize you are being ignored by people. They ignore you because they are busy with their works and other kind of preoccupations.  

The relation of the story and the song is that in both, the main character is invisible for the rest of the people. Besides it coincides in the benefits of being a person who knows that is free because anyone is watching at him or her.

  Now please, read a part of the song (I traduce it, so I don’t hope it transmits all the meaning it has je je) :

“Nevertheless, I’m discarded,

And no one can remember me,

I’m walking thought the people

Just like the Canterville Ghost”

green people

A green person is someone who cares about the enviroment and the treatment that people have with it.

It is a practice about respect and equality with  nature, it is about knowing we need each other.

So it involves different practices which we can learn at home and school. For example, when my parents or teachers ttold me not to trash on the plants or when they made me take care of a bean, they were teaching me to be related with  nature.

Besides, at school we learn about the consequences of 'not been green' which can be the acid rain or greenhouse efect. The greenhouse efect can be good until it becames into global warming.

But it is hard to being green when there is easier to not being one, for example, recyclingis very easy, but I'm not very accustomed to do it, so I don't recycle too much.

Another way of being green is not using a car for transport, you can use a bike or you own legs, in my case, I prefer walking anyway I go.

I considere myself someone who cares about the enviroment but I haven't join to a organization to save the planet because I don't think it works that way. What I would like to do is to take advantage to the school by teaching more about the dependence that people have from earth, so we can take care naturally.

I think we have all forget this point. It is necesary to reduce our carbon footprint.

FIELD WORK

Hello everybody, today I'm mean to talk about the field work I’ve realized during my career. 

But first, I'm going to explain a little what a field work is for an anthropologist. 

A field work is when you go where you are going to work, because anthropologist study different cultures and you cannot do that by sitting on a chair. You must go and live the experience of that culture to understand the group.

And here goes a little of history of Anthropology: there was a time in which people wrote a lot of books about exotic groups. They made different theories of them, etc. But there was a problem, they never even visit them! They didn’t know these groups until Malinowski – a famous anthropologist- inaugurated the field work.

In my experience, field work is the most exciting part of the job. I haven’t had too much yet, but I have made short field works in Santiago.

The best part of it is the moment you are there and you see a different world, and people living in it. That is fantastic.

But of course, there are always good things and bad things. I could say that there is something I don’t like too much and is the officiousness; I feel it is like invading people’s life.

 Maybe that’s the biggest difficult that I see.

For example, I remember once I had to observe people in the fair and they looked me back very angry or wondering about my behavior. That’s normal; I was in the fair and wasn’t buying or having lunch. I was walking and looking people. That’s rare.  

My future job

Hello everybody, today I'm supposed to talk about my future job - as you can see in the title-. But I have a small problem with that, because I don't know if I really want to work.

It may seems funny or typical, anybody wants to wake up at six o clock for do the exactly same thing every single day. Besides I don't like what a job represents, not it status, not its way of paying, not anything.

But anyway, we are living this life and I guess I'll have to work some day, so if I must choose, I would say that I prefer working outdoors. Closed places makes me mad. I like more living different experiences, and I think, working outdoor may offer more options of experiences.

Also, I would like to travel, to know other places seems perfect for the experiences I was talking about. Besides, it is perfectly related with being an Anthropologist (who I hope to became). By travelling, you can know other cultures and live other ways to live. It is basically what I would like to do (just not as a job).

I would like to learn what other people know, different people, who I'm not going to meet if I don't travel a lot.

So I want to learn forever, I hope that the fact of need a job for living doesn't mean I have to stop that. 

Cultural Shock

Since an anthropologist point of view, a cultural shock could be a person who leaves his or her reality and normal life to get into other one. Or people who meet other different people; this would be a shock for both groups and could finish in other cultural group different from the previous.

I could say that I suffered a kind of cultural shock because I was born in Talca, then I lived in Antofagasta and Rancagua. Now I am living in Santiago. In every city I have seen different persons.
 It is true that in every places are people of all kind, but it is also true than there is a seal of culture on each city.

It is hard to suffer a cultural shock because you are not pretty sure of how you are supposed to act in a specific situation.

For example, the transport is different in every place. In Talca I can take busses until 10 o’clock, after that you must take a different kind of transportation (a more expensive one), in Rancagua any one is very expensive and there are few busses. In Santiago, there are busses at any hour.

You could think, then, Santiago is better, ¡but it has strange circuits! I’m trying to get used into their rounds, but it is very hard. Maybe it is because Santiago is so much bigger than Talca or Rancagua. 

Anyway, I am pretty sure I will leave this place to suffer another cultural shock again.

My favourite school subject

Best Holiday Ever

I remember my favourite holiday as it was  yesterday. I was 12 (on 2006) and I lived in Antofagasta, I wanted to see my grandmother because she lived in Talca (very very far).  The problem was, I was the only who wanted to travel, my mother hates travelling, my sister prefer the computer, my brother was a baby and my dad had to work. I insist repetitively but I didn't have any hope, until one day my mother said we were travelling to Talca in a week. I almost cried.

We were all on my grandmother's house during a couple months. She was fantastic and cocked really delicious. That summer I learned about her more than any other summer. I was with her the whole day, every day.

With the family we were to different places around Talca ( Curanipe, Curepto, Licantén, Copihue and so on) to visit other families who lived there.

It was a magical summer and I wish I could repeat it.

By the way, if you don't know the places I talked about, you should search them, and maybe visit them, they are amazing.

ANTHROPOLOGY

I am in my first year of Anthropology and a lot of people have asked me about my motivation or why I decided studying this. I’m not very sure about the reasons.

In first place, I knew that I have to study because my parents has a horror to people who are not studying  , so I had to decide a career and an University to study in.

I started looking different careers and I discovered that I liked a lot of thing but anything to study so deeply, then I look for Anthropology which were not in any University of Talca (where I lived), then I look for University of Chile because people said it was great.

Anthropology had a lot of beards about things I am interested in such as culture, archeologist and education. I checked my decision coming to the Summer School of Anthropology and I thought I liked it.

I am studying this career now but I would like to study in courses in other careers too, so I can learn more during this year.

The next problem will be the job, not because the feel of the career, but my interested in it.

Visiting my country

If I have to visit another country I would like to visit one in Latin America. However, the place I really want to visit is located in Chile.

 I'm talking about Chiloe, the city of magic. Every legend or story I have listened in the south came from that place. Trauco, Tue- Tue, Caleuche and legendary superstitions are just stories where I live. I would like to know what people think about it in Chiloe.

I’ve listened stories from people that have gone before, they say that you can feel the magic in the air. In fact, there was a friend of a friend that got pregnant in Chiloe, she attributed it to Trauco. There was magical and  a bad excuse in my opinion. But it worked, because it happened in Chiloe.

I would like to knock around, meet people, and remain for a while in Chiloe. I wouldn’t stay to live there because the idea is to visit another places of Chile, and when I know it all, I could maybe visit another country.

My experience using blogs in the English class

In general I don't really like write posts, mostly because I suck using the computer and I don't understand how to use blogs, but I've tried to do it and have fun while I'm writing. However, I have to recognize that I've learned a few things of redaction but I would like, in the future, that We could talk about topics more relational with Anthropology, because I feel that I'm learning what teachers wanted to teach me in school (every year of school) and in the way they were trying to teach.
I just want to say that I appreciate what they were trying to teach me here, but if We compare it whit learning Spanish, I would still be in third grade.
I hope, in the future I can use English like a tool -if I use it, I sincerely prefer learning a less homogenizing language- and I can't be learning verbs all my life if I want to do that.
So for the future, I would like to internalize on English, that We speak in english, learning new topics more relationed with the career, and eventually, learn more verbs and concepts. That will be unavoidable.
Based on the above said, I would like to write, not about but in the same way, that papers and studies for learning their structures and concepts more used, I think that could be very productive.

ZOMBIES

We all have listen about zombies, so in few words we could say that a zombies are persons that are not live anymore, but they are not dead neither. Zombies eat other humans (that is the main reason that explain why they are so terrifying) and can not walk over the sunshine.

The first time I heard about them was the first time I watched a movie about zombies, so I guess it was when I first watched "Dracula".

We can say that they are terrifying which is a bad thing, but they have good things too, for example, they join humans for a common cause.

I think zombies could eventually exist considering all the weird things that human are making happen, and I think that is the same reason that explain why some people believe in them even now. But I can not confirm it because I do not know anyone who has join to a zombie cult.

Zombies has never scared me, in fact, It excites me, the idea of a war against zombies, and that is the opinion that I have heard the most, nobody has told me that they are afraid of them.

There is a person that remind me a zombie who is my brother, because He spent so many time at the computer that He can't see the sunshine or walk like a normal person yet. He is like a zombie who feeds of the computer.

MÓNICA ARANCIBIA

Before begining this post I want to say that my file consist in living -not in a hippie way- but in a model than reflects my way of living like my principal interest. 

Taking this position, the expert I admire for her way of living is my mother, Mónica Arancibia. She is not just an expert for her age but due She has learned a lot of means for making life more pleasurable.

Mónica was born on March 26th of 1970, She was married but now She is single (or free, like She prefers to say) and She has 3 childrens.

She studied accountancy beacuase my grandfather asked her to, but She never work in that, instead Mónica decided to take care of her family. A lot of years later, this beautiful woman studied for learn about nursing, but not for a degree, so She left this studies. Also is important to me to emphasize in the knowledge that my mother acquierd from my grandmother because they are the most influential of our lifes.

For example, my mother taught me than we can save what we have in plenty to bartering later. She also performed a great job with the teaching of her childrens, demonstrating how education is more than a structure.

I really love this woman, because She has learned how to self-sustaining, fact that I considere a hackagainst the system.

You can see her, in the middle of the photo.

I LOVE CORTAZAR

I have read a lot of books in my life, I don't know how many, I just know that I began loving them because my mother read me and took me to books fairs. When I was a child I loved so much a special book -which name I've forgotten- that I memorized a complete section of it. It said something like :

" -¡Help, help!

-Mom, did you listen it?

- Don't invent thing and eat your soup"

I used to feel glade She didn't obey her mother, because that scream of help was because the girl was closed to eat some of the persons that lived in her soup. It was a strange story, but I really liked it.

Nowadays my favorite writer is Julio Cortázar, I'm intrigued by his way to write and his topics. I guess that I keep in the way of the oddity, because the books that I like the most are about persons becoming insects (that one is written by Franz Kafka) or people that die putting a sweater on him.

In special I like the short stories than show big improbable words, for example, "A yellow flower"  by my mentioned favorite writer is about a man who discover than we are immortal,  the bad part is that He knows it because He is not immortal anymore. The difference with other writers is that Cortázar says that the immortality is about other persons who lives the same that we live but according to their time.

The most special thing in the Cortázar's stories are the environments and the big possibility for the personage to die.

ANIMAL LOVER HERE!

When I was a little kid I was afraid of any kind of animal, absolutely all of them scared me, but I began to feel better the day that I saw a little cat mistreated on the street, my family saw him too and we decided to adopt him, we called him Lili Campanita Princesa. Since that day, and since that cat I can't see an animal without loving them. Now I live with a dog and three cats, but I don't like the concept of pet, because I think that it denotes inferiority, and they are my equals, in other words they are my brothers and sisters.

So I define myself as an animal lover and I totally disagree with the use of animals in medical research, I know that because of that we have all these medicine and creams and other "necessary" things but I can't stop thinking: If these things are made to help humans, they must be tested on humans. What crime has an animal committed to be used for human benefice? I also think that there is not a single test  on animals that will not  hurt them, because just the fact of having them enclosed in a kind of laboratory is outrageous and makes me feel very mad. And of course I absolutely disagree with the practice of using animals for making coats or clothes in general because of the simply reason that if that would be right It would be right too to kill somebody and use his or her skin to cover mine.

I have never been bitten by any animal, when my animal brothers and sisters do it is because they are playing but they are considerate with my human weakness and they bit me gently.

If I could be another animal I would choose to be a cat, because they can be both lazy and rude during there life time. 

My favorite piece of technology

I don't really like technology as we understand it, when we talk, for example, about touch technology or that kind of things, but I have to choice something, It has to be my computer because It accedes to so many information and gives me the opportunity of talk with people that I don't see every day. But the bad thing is that since I have the computer I am very dependent of it. I can't take a rest in home without open my computer for listen music.
I think that my computer could be really god for me the day that I learn to live without it, I'm working on it but it is hard when every single thing in these days happens in that "place".
I hope you have a favorite piece of technology that makes you happy, no dependent.

EXPECTATIONS FOR A NEW SEMESTER

This is my first term of Anthropology at the University, and I'm taking six subjects: History - which is my favorite one -, Anthropology I, Biology, Archaeology I, Philosophy and English -the reason of this blog -. Also, I'm a member of some extracurricular activities like the line of inquiry of Anthropology of the education; I assist to some seminaries and workshops.
I have said that History is my favorite subject, so I want to talk about it. This is not a general History but Latino American History, and more specific, It is about the independence of Latino America as one big country, It teaches us things of the past to understand the present.
I hope for this term that I can pass all the subjects for continue studying what I like, at the same time I want to contribute something to the Education throw the line of inquiry, and my last desire is to have a great time at University. 

My Life in a Few Words

Hi everyone, my name is Javiera, I was born in Talca, Chile, on December nineteen of 1995. So today I'm 18 years old and I'm studying at "Universidad de Chile" (University of Chile), but before I studied at Los libertadores de Chile and Santa Teresita as the elementary school, and I went to María Auxiliadora High School, where I met my best friend.

My family is from Talca -just as I am-, I am the second oldest of three kids that dind't grow up in just one city, we used to move a lot because we are a kind of nomadic family, that is why I've lived in Talca, Rancagua, Antofagasta, and today I'm living in Santiago, by myself, although I prefer my mother's companionship.

I can say about me that I really like drawing and painting, but more than that I love making some metal figures, I also enjoy reading and sharing some laughs with my friends and family. Now I am studying what I want to: Anthropology, so I can say that I'm having the time of my life.

I would like to tell  a few more things about me like that I love music but I'm really bad at it, I try playing the cuatro venezolano, but I never do that in public, the same happens with the things that I write, but maybe some day, when I fulfill my purpose of traveling around Latin-america I will be able to dare to share these things that make me tick.