All about sharing

Hi class, today I'm gonna talk about blogging in this English class.

Well, to be honest, at the first time I thought It was really boring, because I rather having an oral class than writing things in the computer. I really think that the hour of the blogging is not the best, everyone is tired, and the room is like perfect to sleep, or whatever.

Then, we started to have really good subjects to talk about and when I started writing my posts I couldn't stop, I mean maybe that's why I have some really long posts jaja, but it is because I love to share my opinions and experiences with the people in general, and in this part of the class there are no limits to write, so I started enjoying the posting. Well It is always better if you know that at least two or three people are gonna read it.

Then I reralized that this is a very good way to learn, because we don't get to tell our stories in english everyday, it has been hard to make real points, with the perfect words or ways to say things. I have learned lots of new words with blogging, and we have had really interesting subjects so it is not boring, like the one of our favourite movie, or the "School kills creativity" speech, those are really interesting subjects to talk about, and make discussions.

I like to read the whole post when I have to make some comment in other blog, because that is the way to know how your classmates really think, and you can compare our ways to think, and even learn from them.

Well, I have learned a lot with the blogging part of this class, and I have to say that the thing that makes it so nice are the subjects. In the future, when we start working as Designers or Architects and we get to talk with people that speaks in english we are gonna talk about work, of course but also there are the every day situations when you have to discust about politics, weather, technologies, to talk about you, your experiences, and that is what we are really practicing for: The real world.

Well, I hope you enjoyed it too, and try to take every oportunity to learn english, talking with strangers, reading english books, chat with people, etc., for example I always try to talk with the typical lost people that do not understand spanish, those are really great moments to practice the language, and let's face it; we really have to beat the fear of speaking english in public.

That is all for now

Regards

:)

Valentina's blog

Hi class, today we have to talk about any classmate's blog. Well, I chose Valentina Morales blog. She has a very very good english, in he posts she really makes you understand what is in her mind, so I understand very good every idea. She has a very interesting post about why chileans are chileans. In that assignament I chose to talk about the game so I forgot about that part of the posting. I really liked what she said about feeling chilean because I liked what she said about feeling a colective happiness when we encourage our football team, and celebrate our chilean month.

Then there ir another post about Sir Ken Robinson's "School kills creativity", where she talks about very interesting points.. Or maybe I liked it because I think exactly the same, that this guy is right about what he says, and how important should be a real change in our society's education system.

Well, what I liked most in this blog is that Valentina show her passion for graphic design, I mean that post abour the skills you need and the other that is about Mucha, show how she loves her career, and that is very important in universities, I mean, we all know that you have to like your career to enjoy it and be a succesful professional in the future. I actually love my career, but I do not show it as much as Valentina does it, so congratulations Valentina, sometimes that is a very hard thing to show unconsciously. And of course, I is so much better when people notice it.

Well, that is all for now,

regards

THE game

Hi people!! today's assignament is to comment something about today's match.

Ok, last night I went to sleep at 10 o clock because I though I couldn't miss the match. I woke up at 7, so I could watch the game having breakfast with my boyfriend... and we all know that Chile won!!!

Chile has a very good DT, Marcelo Bielsa or Marcelo Piensa if you want jaja and I think that he is the best thing that has ever happened to our football team.

Today the match was against Honduras, which team is fool of 1.90 mts guys, big and very strong men, kind of scary to play with bigger people than you... Well the thing that I noticed most in this game is that Chilean players are too excited, or I do not know how to say it ,but they do not save energies for the end of the game or the second half of it... they start running and attacking very fast and trying very hard to score. But Honduras team was like very slow and the stood deffending their area and behind the lines, not very agressive. That's why we scored in the first half of the game. I was screaming a lot and I thought that I was gonna wake up muy neighboors jaja but obviously everybody was watching the match.

Chile had thousands of oportunities to score, but they are very hasty, sometimes there were some very stupid moves, or nervious moves, but they tried so much to score that the first half of the match was only in Honduras area, because our team was alway attacking.

Well, poor Honduras they did good work too, but they were too pasive, I think that you could see more emotion in our team because they put more energy in the playing.

I like Chupete Suazo, so I am very sure that if he had played we would have scored a lot more, he es my favourite player jaja.

Well, I think we all know that the referee was incredibly bad at football, I was very mad because he charged wrong things, there were lot of faults that he even saw but did not do anything and it was the same thing with both teams.. I can't believe that in the WORLD CUP they put such an aweful referee...

Well but I really enjoyed it, I am sure that you did too.. And I am hoping we win the nex match against Switzerland, it is very hard because they beat out Spain today, and Chile was hoping that they result even, so we can get a very good chance to win...

Well good luck Chile, I love my country :)

Regards

Big Island

Hi everyone, today we have to talk about a picture we love... So I really love this one. I took it in the central beach of Ilha Grande in Brazil full of those boats. It was a beautiful island, near to Rio de Janeiro where I went bagpacking with my boyfriend last summer. This island was huge, like the size of Valparaíso maybe.. but it was only jungle... the town was very tiny but it was very cheap, beautiful, the people was very nice with us, it had a great night life wich was the best thing of it, we never stop having fun in this place. We went to beach parties, did some trekking, surfing, boat tour, snorkelling, scuba diving, etc. And everything very very cheap.

We started in Iquique, my hometown and went to the north of Argentina few days, then we went to Iguazú, Florianópolis, Sao Paulo, Paraty, Angra dos Reis, Ilha Grande and Rio de Janeiro. This trip was the best one ever, we were camping everywhere, we survived with very little money like one whole month. We went to really amazing places like the jungle, lots of beaches and beautiful towns. we met the gratest people. We met this english couple who we made very good friends with, and kept travelling togheter with us. They were travelling for one whole year in Southamerica!!!, they had sold apartaments, cars, they had quit jobs and families to travel all over the world. Now they are in Australia living the good life...

My life dream is to travel all over the world, and to meet this couple and do this trip with my boyfriend made me think that I can really make that dream come true, we worked like just a month and with the money we earned we travelled for a month in the sout of Brazil. So it was my very first big trip without my parents, and for me, the first of the many more. I am planning to go everywhere so here I am saving some money for next summer...

The best place ever!! you sould try going there with friends, because is very cheap and nice.. I fell in love with Ilha Grande.

Well I think that's all for now..
Regards :)

Does the education system kill creativity?

Today the assignament is to write our opinion about this idea, and about Mr. Ken Robinson speech "School kills creativity". Ok.. I absolutely agree with him. He says that school kills creativity because the areas that the actual system develops are just the ones that people used to think that were the only ones.

People used to think that maths, languages, sciences were the areas that were gonna save you of being poor or unsuccessful. And if you think it right, it is very stupid to think like that, but the system hasn't changed, I think that schools should guide children to their best qualities, for example the Cats coreographer that Ken Robinson metioned, she was very bad at school but she shined at dancing.

How can we see this idea in our regular lifes? For example... there are lots of careers in lots of institutes and universities. There is a huge art area, and music, and sports, ok, but what is the PSU test about? Maths, languages, history and sciences. Of course this subjects are very usefull but not for every career. For example I study Industrial Design and it needs maths and physics skills, to know about structures and parameters. But there are lots of more skills that you need to have before you start the career, like visual perception, color knowledge, hands skills (to be good at doing things with your own hands), a little about computing, etc. What about that?? What if I had the best score in the country at this test and then when I decide to study something like arts or design I go bad in everything? How could I know that before I paid the whole year?

There should be more options of tests, of subjects, of schools approaches. I used to paint, to draw, to do artistic things in school. But I was very good at other things so that is why I am here, but what if I wasn't?

I think that because of this problems the society doesn't progress like it should. Maybe a mediocre engineer could be a fantastic siger, or maybe a very bad artist could be a great tennist.

This ideas should be more heard in the world, because if they don't get to reality, they get lost in time.

Now that we are just starting our professional lifes, and we have the chance yo make a change. Let's do it, let's make our good ideas part of the real world.

Some thing about technology

Hi everyone, today's assignament is to write about any technology equipment or thing that I love and use a lot, and try to describe how life would be without it.

First of all, I am not a huge fan of this kind of technologies, I like other kinds of technologies like kinds of fabrics or materials that are used specially in industrial design... for example before I got in this career I wanted to be a prosthesist, to work doing peoples legs. It was because my dad does that and those kind of technologies are really really interesting for me.

But, talking about the technology in our houses... I love my cell phone. I mean I have a ver old one, that has an aweful camara and nothing elese, not bluetooh, not mp3, but just the concepto of a mobile phone is great. I actually think that in future people is gonna stop using house phones, because mobile phones have everything you need now. But I bought a touchscreen mobile and I really don't like it, because usually I'm too messy, my bagpack is always disordered, I never find anything so, my old mobile is always into the mess and I don't have to care about have sisors or penknifes near to it because I know it is gonna work anyway if something happens. But with really great mobile phones or touch screens you have to be really carefully and I don't want to.

In the other hand I have my laptop, or notebook wich I love. The same thing that with the mobile, I mean having like a tiny thing that is your computer and you can take it to anywhere, is amazing. I love the one I have because it is really good and I really take a lot of care of it.

But I think that in the future everything is gonna be into your mobile, and people is not gonna have computers, home phones, cameras, mp3 devices, nothing because of the nanotechnology, the one that focuses every innovation to the tiny thing, to que minimum space to to everything, wich is a very good way to think because if you look the comfortable things, most of them are the tiny ones.

But I still like old things like doing staff with my hands, I mean painting, drawing, writting, building, etc. For example when I have to do planimetry in my presentations I always rather doing with my hands than with the computer because it just makes me happier. Of course if I don't have much time I do it with computer, have no choice.

And talking about life without technology.. I think of course it requires more work, but also it makes you apreciate the simple things of life, that has been lost with last generations.

In fact, the NASA published like 5 months ago or something this article about the end of the world. It did not say any clear thing about the end of it, but they pronosticated a solar storm between may and october of 2012. A solar storm emanates electomagnetic waves, and I is supossed to be so huge that it would hit the Earth planet. Normal people is not gonna even notice that wave, but an engineer told me once that those things make all electric and electronic devices to stop working for ever, which means that maybe some parte of the world will have to start over again everything. I do not believe it so much, but the solar storm is true, and if it happens, I hope people can live without techs, because otherwise i would be really hard.

That's all for now

See you

Kind of dry

Hi, in this post I am gonna talk about a very magic place for me, because it is a very dry place in a very dry desert, the Huasco salar.

This place is in Tarapaca region, near to Iquique, my hometown. Iquique is just beach and sand, nothing else, so if you go to the Los Andes hills, there are lots and lots of little towns. One of them is Pica, where you can find the "Pica lemon". If you leave Pica into the hills direction, there are lots of miles of dry desert. Finally you get to this place that is very high and very hidden, called Huasco salar (Salar del Huasco in spanish).

This place used to be a lake, there were lots of plants and animals, and I actually went there for the first time when I was 8, so I can say that I knew the lake like it was before. Now, it is just a salar, with very little water, because there are some Mining companies that had taken the water from the underground in the north so there are lots of places like this that had lost their water, even some Aymarás towns got dry because of this companies. It's aweful.

There are very little grass and the animals are not so many now. There are lots of flamingos, llamas, wild ostriches running everywhere, but there used to be more of them.

This place has a different weather than everywhere else, because it is part of the north Plateau (or Altiplano), and if in Iquique is winter, in the salar is very sunny and hot, but in the regular summer, the salar has rains and snow, and the lake used to freeze in that season, so there is people who says that the flamingos used to stay in the frozen lake waiting until the "Bolivian winter" ended, so they could go and get food and move. I think it is a nice story but I do not know if it is true.

Well, this picture was taken on the end of the summer of last year, when I went there with my boyfriend, because he had never been to the north of chile. We had lots of troubles to get there because we got a flat tire in te way to the salar, we were like in T shirts and shorts but the place was like 9 degrees or something so we could not stay that much. But the view was awesome, and it was so peaceful and quiet that made me feel like heaven.

I think that this place is not that beautiful for everyone, because here in Chile everybody likes better the South than the North of Chile. Of course I love South, and the fresh of the green and cold. But when you live so many years in the desert you learn to love it, and to me it has more magic than anyother place that I have ever visited.

I hope you go there sometime, before it disappears.

Cya

Something about Design

Hi, today's asignament is to write about a web site related to our career that we oftenly visit or a person related to our career too who we admire and why.

I'm going to write about Designspotter - Where design happens
http://www.designspotter.com/

This is a website that publishes the most recent things about international graphic and industrial design.
I actually do not visit so many web sites but this is the one I most visit (like once a week) because I can find new designs, new movements, new ideas, new designers in the best places like Italy, Germany and Japan, presentations and pics of the best designers in the market.

For example my dream is to study some magister in Europe or Japan after I graduate, and I would love to go to Milan expositions, galleries and this website makes me feel like I am very near of all of it. The other things that this website has are advertisements about art show and a lot of things that are happening in the world that I want to be in the future, so I go to those websites and learn about new things, I know what is happening, and where is the design happening.

Some topics I like are Recycle by design, or Parametric Design.

I hope you enjoy it,

see you

Shut up!!

It was a very hard choice but I chose the french movie Tais Toi! (It means "shut up") by Francis Veber, you have to see this movie, is very funny and the two main actors are Gérard Depardieu and Jean Reno, both are frech but the are very known in the northamerican and european cinema. (The man in the iron mask, The Da Vinci code, etc)

I like comedies a lot, because comedy makes me feel different and can change my state of mind no matter what. For example when I have a fight with my boyfriend or I don't get good grades I always try to see comedies to cheer me up, they don't fix my problems but they make me take them differently.

The first time I saw this movie was like two years ago in the tv, and I laughed a lot and had a great time. The theme of the movie is about the relationship of this two men and what unnexpected things happend to make it a friendship. It is also very funny because you get surprised with the amazing innocence or sometimes stupidity of a man, and how it can charm other people.

I hope you see it and enjoy it as I did.

See you

Funny commercial

Hi, well, today we have to choose the best commercial we have seen and, I don't know if this is the best one, but I remember that I laughed a lot when I saw it.

It is about how men like to drink beer, especially Heineken, because it is a Heineken advertising.

I saw this like few years ago, and the funny thing is that the message that you can get is that Heineken makes men as crazy as clothes make girls.

I personally think that clothes do not make girls that crazy, or not everyone but that is how men most see us. And of course, you never get to see those expressions and screaming with men so it is very funny.

This kind of commercials are very sexists which I don't like, but I don't care, it's too funny to watch, and I am not a big fan of clothes, so I think I would be happier with the beers closet.

I hope you like it too. See you!!

Sorry about "verry funny" it was in the video.

The earthquake

The night of the earthquake I was in my hometown, Iquique enjoying a party with my twin brother and lots of friends, when a friend recieved a call of his dad who was in Santiago and told him about the eartquake, just two minutes after it happened.

My brother and I went home to call people we care about like my best friend, my boyfriend and our brother and sister who live here.

The next day and week was very sad because of the things that TV was showing and people we know loosing their houses and everything.

We worked in the Iquique stadium recolecting clothes and food to send to the south of Chile, and tried to call and see if everyone we know was ok.

When I came to Santiago I worked in the Fech, doing some charity works and now in classes we have been making our design proyects to help the people in Iloca.

Now people is saying that there is another huge earthquake going to happend in the north of Chile so I am very worried about it, I hope nothing happens there.

Let's help out country, good luck.

Myself

Hi my name is Bárbara and this is my new english blog.

I really love FAU, love the eviroment, the classes, the people and design.

I took English class because I want to be able to live and work in another country when I finish my career.

I hope we have a great time in this class.