My experience learning English at the university



When I was at the school, I first learned German languaje, since I was four years old. Then, when I reached the fifth basic grade, with ten years old, I started learning English, and I remember it wasn't difficult at all, because I've been learning another languaje since I was a child. Then, my parents moved me to another school: the first one was very expensive but very good too, this one was a rural state school, so it was free but, I'm really sorry to say, it was very awful: most of the teachers didn't even have a teaching degree, and neither our english teacher. She was an uneducated woman, sorry to say so, but she didn't even speak spanish well!, quite later I knew she didn't even finish school.
When I reached the university, I didn't know if we were going to learn English languaje, and at the firsts two semesters, I really ignored if there was an English class. Then, at the third semester, I knew we were going to have English classes, because they tested us in an exam at the computer lab. I made the test very quickly, I think was even funny and easy, just like a quiz, and at then I finished plenty of time.
Later, at the fourth semester, I started having my English classes. At first, I used to miss a couple of classes, because I was working as a waitress in a restaurant all the weekendsand holidays, I was really tired all the week, and fridays were specially hard to wake up for me, knowing I had to work the next day. But then I gave up that job, because I was lefting apart the university, and I certainly didn't want to do that: I prefered to give priority to the university.
The classes used to be nice for me, friday mornings, I was much more relaxed as an unemployed person. At the first hour, we do some grammar or vocabulary exercises, and then, at the second hour, we go to the lab and work in a single computer each one of us. At there, we write on a personal blog, about different topics, all of them can let you express freely, I mean, it's not necessary to do a research, or look up for information at the internet, most of the time. All the topics have questions that you can answer by yourself, directly, about your taste or your life experience.
I think that's a great way to learn English languaje, because you don't have to use technical vocabulary, and you can write an entire text without consulting for information, so you can work exclusively in the computer lab, and write about many things you like. It has been good for me because I've learned vocabulary and reinforced grammar, I use to practice English by listening songs I like and translating them, as well as reading blogs in the web that are written in English.

A beautiful soul

Today I have to tell you what's my favourite classmate's blog, so I'm going to talk about my friend's blog, Once upon a time or maybe twice.
She's very shy and a very serious person, she doesn't like to be well known, I guess. Right now she hadn't come to class, maybe because she's ill. Lastly we had to study much more than the other weeks, and she felt very stressed. What can I tell you about her?... Well, at first, she's a wonderful person, very sweet and gentle. She's incredibly smart and funny, but as she's so shy she doesn't make jokes very loud, only with her friends. I'm very proud of knowing her, even more of being her friend. She likes to make things perfectly, that's why she gets so stressed. I'm much more mediocre in my studies, but she gives the best of her and never gives a bad work. She's so responsible and studious, that sometimes make me feel really lazy myself. But this is very good for me, because it makes me want to be a better student, and person too. She always make feel like that, but without making feel ofended, instead, you feel you can give much more than what you're doing. She's gorgeous too, but she likes to be very refined and calm.
Her blog reflects her thinking, that's why I love it, she writes with no shame, freely and sometimes is very caustic. For the first time, there's someone I know with such a great english level, I'm not myself a great english speaker, but I had always been very upset about don't knowing anyone who talks and writes it well (excepting some english teachers), until I knew her. Reading her blog, apart from it's very interesting, it helps me learning english, because she manages it. Also, as she can write better in english than anyone else in the class (sorry guys, but she's the best in it), she can write clearer and more preciser than others, I might say I'm a little envyous about her because of this. Sometimes I really didn't know how to say something in english, but she always knows, even more, she thinks in english as well as in spanish. I wish I could have that great mind skill. The post I like the most is the next: Nowhere man... (actually woman), where she'd spoken about nothing at all, because we had to write about any topic we wanted (I wrote about I nightmare I had), but she couldn't choose anything, and finally she talked about this strange confusion of matters... I JUST LOVED IT.
She's amazing.
As her blog is in english, I think she would easily spread her thoughts around, to whoever wants to read interesting posts, and know this wonderful soul.
Cheers for Nardy!

P.S.: I was just forgetting, she loves the Lord of the Rings books, so I've put some images about it.

The Greatest Chilean

When I think about some hero or heroine of this country, I can't imagine one that could be entirely my favorite, because I don´t like them to had killed, even defending their own country, and many of the national heroes had done that. Or another had been womanizers, which is something that I really hate. Or some of them died resigning their beliefs. Some others have done great things for the country in other areas, as literature, art, and science researching, but I can't choose only one. I think I can tell you that there's a group of people I admire, but they're not exactly "chileans", the mapuche people. I mean, they don't consider themselves as "chileans", because they know they're an extremely different culture, not inserted in the system, and that's why they had been exploited, their lands and beliefs. I've already said that I condemn killing, but when they fought in the Conquest against the Spaniards, they defended their lands and their families, also their culture, bravely, until nowadays. They are not evil, or ambitious in a bad way, instead, they just defend and preserve what is theirs. They’re very respectful of land and nature, and their religion tells us that they believe in deep powers, which can be performed by a person, a good witch, called “machi”, who can stop diseases and get apart the illness. They also celebrate good harvests, and they feel thankful to the land, which lets them live comfortably and plenty. We have so many things to learn about them, about their knowledge. We feel very proud about our modern society and technologies, but we ignore too many things about cosmos and our own nature that they know very well.

Brandon Lee R.I.P.

Hi everyone!
Today I'm going to talk about the movie I like the most, which is The Crow.There are three movie versions with this title, but this one is starring Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's son, who also played in action movies.This movie isn't an action movie, I guess, because it's more related to drama and suspense. Eric Draven and his girlfriend Shelly Webster are murdered by a band of junkies, they rape her until death and he is pushed through the window, dying on the street. He comes back from death, in a raven's body, and takes revenge of their terrible death. One by one, he kills all their murderers, and finally he dies in peace. I like this movie because of its gothic set, kinda rock and underground. Eric Draven was in a rock band when he was alive, so he recovers his clothes, dark leather pants, a black shirt and boots. He steals a guitar from a corrupted salesclerk, he lectures his behaviour, tells him that behind every dirty marriage ring he buys to re-sell there's a life behind that's gone because of his ambition. He extracts the heroin from a prostitute's body, and tells her to stop sellying her body, because there's her daughter waiting for her around the streets, in danger of being abused. He says: "Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children".
The crow is not a simple avenging, he kills for revenge, steals, destroys, and sets fire to spread his anger and sadness. He's the opposite of a surrender, he avoids his own death, and comes back to take the lifes of the damned and swine.
Some parts of the movie remind to Edgar Allan Poe's sad poem, The Raven, which means Crow.
Brandon Lee couldn't finish this movie because he died in an accident on the movie set: in a scene, he was supposed to be riddled by a group of gangsters, but one of the guns had a real bullet instead a false one. He died a few hours later, and the case is still open.

Hobby? or Job? I need to feed myself!

Hi everyone!
Today I have to talk about the job I would like to do in my life, it's a hard question to answer, because I'm already studying at university, but I'm not pretty sure if it's what I really want in my life... Perhaps I think that life is something too big, too long, so I'm a little confused about what I want in all that time, I think I'm afraid of failing, being wrong about what I want to do in order to live my whole life. I only know that I would never work in an office, I mean, with four walls around me, because I need air, freshness, nature, wind and/or sun, so it can't be on a desk, telephone, or computer all the time... I think I would like to be a painter, an artist, but a very educated one, interested in all kind of arts nowadays,  but I'm not really talented, so I think I would probably die by hungry that way lol...
I would also like to get involved with people, like a museum guide, I think that's a perfect job for me, I like to talk to people, feel that I'm spreading knowledge about art, I don't like the idea of being a teacher, but a guide would be perfect for me, I also love to walk around, and I love art, of course.
I would also like to be a librarian, but maybe it could be too boring for me, even I would spend all the time reading all the books I could.
At least, I have to say that I have some plans for future, which implicate kids, so I would like to travel around the world, doing art research, and hope children's education won't be difficult because of that, instead  it could be a huge source of knowledge and life experience.

I would like to meet...

He was a weird, quite unkown man in his time. He lived in New England in XX century, raised by a religious fanatic mother and some cold aunts. About his father, I don't know, there's no much information about him, only that he became crazy and died when this man was a little boy. Spoiled and scrawny, this boy was raised in a very irregular home, because of his family had gradually lost rank since their arrival to the United States from England. Because of this, this person grew up believeing in the proud of his blood, the despise of the others, and an extremely outrageous to the outside world. But wait, I don't support his thoughts or behaviour, as opposed to him, I think you have to go out to the world, and respect everyone, because everyone's blood is precious. Anyway, this man, solitary and racist, is the one I would had liked to meet because of his fascinating imagery. He became a writer, and in his sick mind he invented a whole universe of terror and epic battles between beings we can hardly imagine. He created a circle of myths, named The Myths of Kthulu, which appear in a supposed book he said was called the Necronomicon, written by an insane arabian named Abdul Al-Azhred  in the Middle Ages. This was an invention, that man and that book doesn`t exist, there are many editions of that book nowadays but they're all false, or written by other people, not Al-Azhred, and neither so old. The man I was talking about before, the one I would have liked to meet, became a prisoner of his own nightmares. He, and some other writers, wanted to reform terror literature. They thought it was too romantic, too "human", with Mary Shelley's and Bram Stocker's legacy, their characters where too close to our imagination: the graves, coffins and blood where too real, too known for every human being, after the war. They needed more sublime, something greater, stronger, far from religious and law, far from HUMAN. So he invented the creatures with kilometres of height, from out of space and out of time, living in a dream that's going to be interrupted by the pray of one single priest. He was terryfied about the sea beacuse he believed that there lived unnamed terrors, and his work is known as cosmic terror because of the size of his creations, bigger than anything we can imagine, only we can understand that knowledge trough the reading. He died when he was only 47, plunged in terrible pain by a gastric cancer. His name: Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

-"Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time."
H. P. Lovecraft.-

Perfect Day

Sometimes, when at the end of the day I feel it was wasted, unproductive, lazy, I feel it wasn't a good day, I wish I could go back in time and save it, amend it, make it more speeded up, move around, do something, or simply relax myself in a peaceful rest. So, I think that my perfect day would be a day when I would do anything I like, with the beings I love. I can imagine myself waking up in the early morning, climbing a hill near my parents's house, play around in some secret watefalls I know, read a book lying on the wet rocks (it might be a waterproof book lol),  make a pic nic to have breakfast, all this with my boyfriend, family and friends. Walk back to home, make a meeting, with the people who couldn't have gone to the waterfalls beacuse of their physical condition or diseases, have some delicious food for lunch, could be a barbecue but some of my friends wouldn't like it, so we could do some kind of fish, fruit, and/or vegetable skewers, talk about good news, have natural juices. I would like to build something, help to make a greenhouse, or perhaps a playground, or a hole for a pool. If I had a swimming pool, I would like to swim in it, make a swimming pool party, play swimming pool games, make a party at the afternoon or the night, but I don't think it's necessary to be only at night, it could be all day long :)... That's it, I don't think a perfect day might have great things, but share, spread the affection and have beloved company. I also think that for me, a perfect day must be outdoor, with grass, water, sunlight and fresh air.

My favourite song at the moment

Sorry guys, I was supposed to write down this post twelve hours ago, but my mind was in another place as it was a large weekend... When I first read the task, I thought about some songs I had like in the past, like "Duvet" by Boa, because the very piece of music that I like the most at this moment makes me feel a little embarassed to talk about, is a song terribly sad and a little emo, which is "Cry for you" by Tool. I use to like depressive and a quite gothic songs, but it's not equal as my feelings, I mean, I don't feel sad in my life because I like those kind of songs.
The song I'm gonna say it's my favourite at the moment is "Triumph of Defeat" by Epica, the music group I've talked about some posts back. I've heard this for the first time a couple of years ago, looking for some music on the web, when I'd found in Youtube this song and it called my attention because of its title. It appeared to be something interesting, and of course the name of the group, Epica, had seemed special to me too. So I heard it, and I thought it was amazing, very epical, very un-historycal. I thougt that the other songs of the group would be like this one: without lyrics, only with voices and a choir, singing like angels or demons as well, and with a guitar, drums, and bass. Not all the other songs were my taste, but I like some of them too.
Unfortunately, they didn't play this song when they came to Chile this year, it was a shame.

Taking advantage of the ocean

Hi dear all!
Today I'm gonna talk about somewhere I would like to go, a place I would like to visit. When they ask me about this, the first place that spreads to my mind is France, because of its lovely places, museums, historycal streets, the famous Eiffel Tower, the Versailles Palace, the thiny little cafes (so romantic), the restaurants, the haute-couture festivals, the mimes, the parfum factories, the beautiful houses and gardens...
I also think in Japan: about japanese culture, the zen, the Mount Fuji, the kimonos, the Tea Ceremony, the delicious food, so lovely to see lol (sorry, it's what I think...), the amazing Manga-Anime Festivals, with cosplays (people disguised of their favourite characters, some of them are UN-BE-LIEVE-VA-BLE), gaming tournaments, merchandising, the rice fields, the Ghibli Museum (Hayao Miyasaki's anime studio), the pagodas, and of course the gorgeous sakura cherry trees (I don't care they're so sickening pink, I LOVE THEM).
I also think about Italy, because of The Vatican, the masterpieces in their art collection, the Sixtin Chapel, the libraries, the Chapels, the statues, Venice, the antique Roman culture, etc.
But there's a place I would like to know, because a very deep but special reason: I have a little phobia about the sea (I know it's incorrect to say it like this, because the phobias are never a little thing, but, anyway...), so all the other places have a little inconvenient, the closeness to the sea. So I had developed an strange but understandable love for mountains, lakes, rivers, hills and even volcanoes, and places that are very high. But never near to the ocean.

The place I would LOOOVE to visit is Switzerland, because of their mountains, basically. They make me feel safe. Maybe it's some kind of freaky supervising instinct, the matter is that I'm terrified about living near to the sea, but I would love to live in a mountainous place. I love all the vibrant green in the area, the fresh air, the cold wind, the snow, the lakes, the fields, the castles, and the Alps, of course.  

Kidunguënewn Nguen!

In spite of the social and political advances of the last time, specially the signing of the Human Rights and the eradication of most of the torture and slavery practices in the west, there's still in our conscience the deep idea about the inferiority of some races, a colonialist thought, which keep us believeing in a specific code of beauty (the caucasian) and an admiration for ancient and actual european culture. All this things make us think that our ethnical origins are brut, thick or mentally inferior. So we deny them, and extol our european genes, the spanish ones.

Because of this, we use to pretend that the lands that were stolen to the mapuche people were made the most by the spaniards or their sons. But the matter is not if the mapuche did or did not take advantage of their lands, the matter is that there was steal, which one to the eyes of the prevailing capitalism was not...

They don't care about in-touch-care of land, or the attachment to nature, they just care about the production, and the profits, of course. So, the lands that we could say were "by right" theirs, were taken by the wealthy only because the mapuche had no legal papers that said those lands were from their property. They didn't understand the belongings to the land of the men and the men to the land. In those times (and today is quite similaire), the land that is not sown and profitable is for bed or transitable way, but any other use must be lucrative, because it's all about the productive system.

The mapuche interests, which are more related to the religion and rituals, were not important for the landlords, and not even important nowadays. They sow the land and celebrate the good harvests, but they produce for themselves, not in a production scale like the merchant system.

"Independence. Freedom.

kidungüneun./ To live independently, in freedom: kidunguënewn nguen"

-http://diccionarios.serindigena.org/index.php?a=term&d=1&t=5703

A nightmare before breakfast

Hi everyone,
today I was asked to write about anything I'd like to, so I'm going to write about a nightmare I had last night.
I was entering to my sister's bedroom, where my whole family was, when suddenly the sky became darker (in the middle of the day), and I saw a huge mountain of water coming to us, bigger than the hills around, it was an apocalyptic tsunami. I screamed and said to my family to run away to the room in front, where the water would hit us a little slower than there (I know it was ridiculous, but you know how dreams are). They runned to that room but I went to the next, and I found my six year old niece beside me, she had followed me and couldn't go back with her mother because the water was very close to us, so I waited for the big hit, waiting for the crashing windows and the wave that would take us away and death...
But nothing happened. I walked to the window to see what was happening outside the house, I moved the curtain to one side carefully, just a little bit, and saw the most terrific thing ever: the sky wasn't blue, grey or even dark as the night, it was like the sun had come closer and burning the atmosphere, it looked like an ocean of lava, moving around without fall down from the sky, it was terrifying. Suddenly I knew the sun had certainly come closer to Earth, and its heat had evaporated all the water I've seen before coming in the tsunami. I saw in the yard a car, and I recognized it as my cousin's, then I saw her lying inside there, with her family too, but the sun burned them, it was the radiation, I was watching them at a moment and then their clothes burned, their skin, and finally their bones evaporated like air. I knew we couldn't go out of the house because we would die in a second, it was strange but the house protected us from the sun heat, we only had to be carefull with the light that came from the windows, we shouldn't be directly exposed to sunlight. My skin started to itch desperately, I knew it was sun radiation, that would slowly burn and kill us all. I surrounded my little niece with clothes, to protect her from the sunlight. Then I took another look through the window, moving the curtain. I saw thousands and thousands of alien spaceships, I knew they were strange because they were too modern to be humancrafts. I was scared, I knew they were bad, they didn't make the Earth distruction, it was been human being, they were only waiting for this moment to come to Earth. All the spaceships were flying flush the ground, and one of them stopped and started to move back: they had seen me. I quickly closed the curtain, and heard some footsteps coming to me. I opened the curtain once more with the most care I could have: there were two boots, I knew he had seen me when he made a signal to the others with his boot, knocking twice the floor. I couldn't attain to see his body or his face because I closed the curtain and held it. Five blue little birds pass through the window and stood on the floor, they were machines, made to spy everywhere, and I knew they sent them to make sure we were alive. They looked at me and I knew that in every moment that being outside would crash the windows and catch us, so I held my niece's arm, maybe too hard, and pushed her to the hallway, out the room, and told her to stay with her mom. She runned away, and I closed the door. Then I looked  to those five little mechabirds, and I knew that, at least, it would take a little more time for them to find my loving beings.

The most Shocking Chilean Piece of News of 2010

There's something that has me really annoyed, which is the manipulation of information from the media.

In the present year we have been witnesses of all the disaster caused by the eartquake and the tsunami the past february, if we haven't been victims at all. We have seen destruction, pain and the worst side of our sellfish nature, watching the TV we have seen how some thieves stole flat screens and huge washing machines carrying them on their shoulders, but in a moment the media just concentrated their attention in this fact: the worst thing of all the chaos. The good actions and the donations don't sell well, and the drama is the best allied for sensacionalism. The horrible stories about how a woman lost her child in the first wave or the people who watched how their houses were carryed away by the sea, soon weren't enough. The media have used the information to have better sales, not to give objective information...

The days after this events, I stayed in front of the TV all day long, trying to know anything about other places affected, the people rescued, the campaigns to make money for those people, etc. Then, I felt a little depressed, I didn't have any damages in my house or my family, we were all OK, but I had the feeling that the news were not enough for my thirst of knowledge about this matter, I have family all across the country,I needed to know that they were OK too, I didn't have any signal in the phone, neither the cellphone, and the news only showed despair everywhere...

A few days later, we recovered the phone service and the thing started to ring all day long, many relatives called desperated wanting to know if we were alive and well, and so we were. My family also made a lot of calls to other relatives and friends, and fortunetly they were all fine, some people had damages in their houses but they were all OK.

The next days I stopped watching TV, I was tired of all the horror that the press spred like a virus, I know that was a disaster and many people needed to claim for help, but I think that the ambient that the media created those days wasn't appropiate for a country that needed to wake up. It was the ads, with a commercial interest, what started with a message of hope and revival spreading all the national TV channels. Banks that ask for donations, and things like that, started to make me sick: why not to make a real TV campaign exent of money interests? it's always the same condition: money behind every good action. 

The lasts terrible events, I mean of course the miners trapped in the mine in the north of the country and all the attempts to rescue them, have captured the screens and averted the sights to this event in particular. At the same time, in the south of the country, some mapuche people were in the middle of a hunger strike, weak and undefended, and the authorities want to take advantage of this matter and force them to get some food by their veins, I mean, injecting it in them. The mapuche people want their rights to be respected and their lands back, but they haven't been listened by the authorities and that's because they started this hunger strike. It's very important to know that this events have occured in this days, but the miners has been a matter that doesn't blame the government directly, unlike the mapuche people's matter. The media doesn't even shows this matter, but it's very interested in the miners's matter. Very strange uh?

Epica- Design your Universe

In April of the present year I attended to a music concert of a group I love, their name is Epica. They're from Nederlands, and their songs are a kind of gothic with opera voices and sometimes also guttural voices. This concert was in Teatro Caupolicán, and we waited for two hours before the artists came up to the stage, when the female voice, Simone, appeared, it became a real chaos, because she's the pin up girl by excellence and many boys have her as their platonic love, so when she was in sight of the people, the entire public started to shout and fight trying to get closer to her and take some pictures. It was horrible in that moment, because I couldn't see anything and I started to have a difficult breathing, because they were pushing me by every sides, and I received many punches..., finally I got out there as I could and climb to the gallery, and I stayed there for the rest of the concert, singing and shaking my head, I couldn't see as well as someone in the near-stage place, but at least I could watch away the artists and enjoy peacefully the rest of the concert.
I went there with a friend and his girlfriend, but I left them behind at the beggining to be closer to the stage, but as I said before, it was a bad idea because I was alone in the middle of a violent crowd and I couldn't stay there for long. When it finished, I surprisingly met another friend that was very tall and strong, so I regreted that I haven't met him before so I could have been with him and his friends inside the Teatro and stay safe inside the crowd. Anyway, he offered to take me closer to home and as it was late I accepted. We had a really good time and had some drinks together after that.
I went to that concert because Epica has a whole ideology behind their letters and they talk very poetically.
About their last album Design your Universe, which is the same name of the tour, they purpose that "God created all the different religions to see if men are capable to find the real nature of them. The question is if  human kind can undestand that all religions are basically the same".

-Epica.

Animal Rights in Chile

I choose this theme because I care about animals, I'm not a vegetarian, neither a Greenpeace fan, but I respect life and I think that animals, which don't have any Human Rights, are many times very assaulted, and they can't complain, they live in peace and attack another animals by hungry or defense of their pride, but there's no evil in them.
I hate when some people publish videos or photos showing animal abuse, most of the time they laugh about it, and act like those animals have no feelings. I remember a video that someone sent me a long time ago, it showed a little raccoon being pelled by an asian man, it seemed to be a kind of work of that man, maybe he sells that skin to make coats and gloves, so I think he didn't do that just because of maddnes or evil, but the matter was that he made the raccoon suffer and pain horrifibly, I mean, it was ALIVE when he peelled it.
Another video that I received was about a woman squashing a kitten with her shoes, like a horror high heels ad. I don't like to receive that kind of videos, or neither sharing them to my friends, because I think that we can fight against animal abuse using words, those videos only contribute to some people's fascination for gore and horror. Most of the people that shares videos like those enjoy watching pain, and I think they're sick. I propose another way to show my disgust about this fact, which is use the word, and not images, because the image has the power to attract by its own content, and we don't want people to turn it into a circus, but understand that animals have a soul and also feel love and hate and physical pain.

"At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. "

-Aristotle.

I would like to introduce myself to you

Hi everyone! I'm Camila, but I prefer the nickname of Mila :) because that's how they used to call me at school. That's it!, Mila AND a smile :)
Well, I'm a very relaxed person, I used to live in the country so I love animals, specially the young ones. I love nature and peaceful places. I also love literature and art. I think art and artcrafts are just the same thing, I think there's no Big Art, unless we talk about all their specialties. Hope you enjoy my blog as well as I'll enjoy writting on it :)
Here's a platonic quote I like:
"You don't have a soul. You're a soul. You have a body".
-Clive Staples Lewis.