My experience

In this semester I learned a lot of things and it's make me very sad to think that this experience it's about to end. I'm very happy to have cursed this subject, I met new classmates and they are very funny, they write a lot of amezing things in their post at thei blogs, like Clau's blog (Patriotic pig).

I don't really like English at all, I trully bealive that it is an stupid and primitive language without any verb conjugation and a lot of auxiliar words. Anyway I understand that handle this language is a usefull tool for the devolpment of my discipline, specially in the reading of cientific papers of evolution and archaeology, even social anthropology. It would be very helpful if this fourth English class could work in the translation of papers like those mentioned areas.

The use of the Blog as an English learning method is a good initial tool to start to get used with the writing excercise and the video recording in the other hand is helpfull to practice the english speaking and pronunciation.

In this career and in my life I don´t have many oportunities to test my English but I would like to improve at a decent level in which I could be able to understand series and movies without any subtitle on them, specially sitcom series like "two and a half men", "the big bang theory" or "how I met your mother", beacause they have many jokes and funny situations that are even more hilarious in the original language.

Sadly I think that I still need to improve my English in a lot of aspects, including vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and listening. But I think I have already reach a good stage in the English language that will let me improve in all the areas.

New discovery in Stonehenge

New studies about a recent dig in Stonehenge have concluded new information about bluestones and their importance in the old civilizations of United Kingdom.

Charred wood and little stones chips have been found in the first excavation in Stonehenge, this place is one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments. Professors Tim Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright think these bluestones were used by the human in the past for to cure, because these people belief this stone had healing powers.

Using this stones the investigators believe they can learn more about the prehistory of England and Stonehenge specifically.

The charcoal fragments have been dated between 7000 years BC and the medieval times, but this place has been visited always. The stone were brought 150 miles from south Wales. This information is very important, because it means that these people made a big effort for to have the bluestones in Stonehenge. So, the investigator’s theory is the human did this effort because they believed these stones had healing powers.  

The bluestones are broken, because it’s have been repeatedly moved and rearranged, so the archaeological register is altered.

This new theory is very important for the news studies in archaeology in Britain, and explains the presence of bluestones in the most important archaeological site in U. K.

I have chosen this new, because I like this topic, since I was a child I have read about this theme so now I am happy for to study archaeology. And I think Stonehenge is a place that needs to be more investigated because I think still it have a lot of information for us.     

This is the new's link : http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/23/archaeology.heritage?INTCMP=SRCH

Into the wild

My favourite movie is an american movie, it's called "Into the wild". I like this movie because it shows that is possible to live out of the society and survive living alone. The movie addresses the life of Christopher McCandless, also known as "Alexander Supertramp".

I saw this film in the home of one friend, his name is Ian and we are friend since 2009, but we saw together this movie in 2011. We saw Indo the wild for to find inspiration, thinking in our travel for sudamerica.

In this movie acts  Emile Hirsch, William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Stewart y Catherine Keener. But the protagonist are just Emile Hirsch and Kristen Stewart. The acting of Stewart is very good, I think it's her best movie (Other films are really shit).

The movie is the drama genre , and it's about how Alexander Supertramp left his comfortable and successful life for to be happy, and live doing what he believe that was the correct life. Later of get the universitary tittle he goes to Alaska and he lives in conection with nature. He hunted his food, and he had to kill for to can eat. He must live in an abandoned bus the "magic bus"

I enjoyed it because when I saw this movie I wanted to travel, I wanted go to Argentina, Uruguay etc, so this movie was like a motivation for to do it. I liked watch how he left his life for live alone and happy, far away of city, society, capitalism and all. 

An interesting thing about this movie is that the music band was composed and performed by Eddie Vedder ( Pearl Jam vocalist) and the music is really good, even I think it was  awarded, but I don't rememder what award was.

Juan Gómez Millas

Hi, today I’ll talk to you about the greatest Chilean of all times; Juan Gómez Millas.

Mr. Juanito was a very important academic for Chilean education. He was born in July of 1900, in the city of Santiago and died in 1987, if you know subtract you know he died 87 years old. He was a Masonic man.

Juanito was a great pedagogue and a good teacher; also he was minister of education under the government of Carlos Ibáñez Del Campo and Eduardo Frei Montalva.  But the most important job of Gómez Millas was to have been rector of Universidad de Chile between 1953 – 1963.

JGM was a very relevant man for history of education in Chile, overcoat for university level.  His contribution is very important, he established Editorial Universitaria at his period like rector of U. Chile.

He studied at Sn. Ignacio School in Santiago and later he studied history in Instituto pedagógico and he graduated in 1923. Two year later he was contracted as teacher in the same place that he studied. In 1947 he was elected as dean of Facultad de educación y letras. Then in 1952 Carlos Ibáñez Del Campo called Juanito for to be minister of education, and Juanito accepted this challenge, but he worked here just one year, because in 1953 he was elected as rector of U. Chile. During his period as rector the university began an expansion process, opening campus out of Santiago, like Valparaíso, in this way the university was national and not only for the capital of Chile.

He was rector until 1963; later he was designated minister of education again, this time for Frei Montalva. He was minister until 1968, during his period there were a lot of reforms.      

He died in 1987 in Maitencillo, near to Valparaíso.

I would like ask to Mr. Juanito what would he think about Chilean education.

And I want tell you that our campus Juan Gómez Millas is in his honor.

Cien años de soledad

The best present I have received is probably a book, this book is “Cien años de soledad”, written by my favorite writer the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez. This was the present that my mother gave it to me for to incentivize to read every days. I love this book and I value too much this present, because I read for first time “realismo mágico” and it’s one of my favorites literary topics. I don’t remember how old I was in this time, but I guess 13 or 14 years.

In this book we can see a big part of Latin-American history, the typical war between liberals and conservatives and the construction of national states. The story of book is the life; the daily life of one family in Macondo, this family is “Los Buendía”. And as the name of book says, this story last one hundred years. The first Buendía is José Arcadio who was married with Úrsula Iguarán, they were cousins. They had two sons, José Arcadio, Aureliano (Coronel) and two daughters Amaranta and Rebeca (she is adopted). Then there are a lot of Buendías in Macondo, even Aureliano had seventeen sons. One characteristic of this family is that all Buendías was named with the names of the two firsts generations.

A notable character is Melquíades, a gypsy that visited Macondo a lot of times. He is my favorite character with Coronel Aureliano Buendía. I like them because they are very amazing, there aren’t characters like they in others books.

Now I have the book in my room, and I would like to read it again.      

There is a cumbia of Cien años de soledad: 

About language and his power.

Mark Pagel is a biologist, an evolutionary biologist, and he has worked about the language, but from a biology perspective, like Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, both are much admired in scientist world

Mark Pagel suggests that language is an expression of our genes, it means language is an ability acquired and it was selected because allowed a better adaptation to survive in the world. In this way the language has a big power, even Pagel call it ‘Magic’.  Using the word we open new worlds, new perspectives and new knowledge. The language is our communication and it is one of the bases of our culture, and culture is one of the things that make us different of other animal species. The language is a very important social technology for Pagel and it’s one of his approaches.

“We can learn from other using the language, by copying or imitating” Says Pagel, and he is totally right, even we can to debate it´s a very useful option to make new knowledge and not repeat mistakes. The language is a very important ‘tool’ for to build human’s culture, and human’s society. Without language we can’t to design technology and a lot of other things.

The human development is linked to the development or language, and philosophy too. A more developed language allows a more developed philosophy and a more developed society.

If we think in language like an evolutionary tool we can see why we are as we are. We can understand our history and to imagine the future.

Other function of language is to make us different between the human groups and cultures, for example we have the same language that Spanish people, but our language has different elements, different word and it’s a reflex the identities of both cultures. The language builds the culture, and at the same time culture builds the language, it’s a symbiotic relation.

I think that Pagel is right in his theory, and I think this theme must be studied and debated for to get a better knowledge about human development.

 But I would like to say that the language doesn’t create reality, I believe that reality exists and language can plays whit it, but not create it. 

I want you watch the video, so you have it here:

My little holidays of September.

In Chile we celebrate the “national holiday” of different ways. I and my family don’t like the typical celebrations and we hate the chauvinism prevailing in this days, we don’t like the “Parada Militar”, that is a old tradition of national army here. The national holidays happened the last week.

As we don’t like the ambient in Chile and overcoat in Santiago (the capital city) we usually travel in this week, so we have gone to visit parents in Córdoba in past years for example, obvious we take advantaged the holidays of  this week.

These year we went to Cherquenco, because a friend of our family has a beautiful plot of land,  and there is a big house. Cherquenco is in the Cordillera de los Andes, near to Vilcún and is near too to the Volcán Llaima. All this places are in “La Araucanía”, it’s a very, very beautiful region of Chile.

In this holidays we didn’t the traditional things like go to “fondas” or to raise kite, mainly we stayed in the house and eating a lot of food like “empanadas de pino”, “choripanes” and “Mote con huesillo”, but we didn’t it with chauvinist feelings.

The most cool thing was when began to snow, and we went to the park “Los Paraguas” for to see the “araucarias” snowfall.

This years the national holidays were a very good experience for me, I enjoyed that and I hope to repeat it.