English language challenges

Until now I've had a really nice experience with the english classes at the university, they've been very different from the classes I had in other institutions.

The use of the blogs forced me to write in this language on a regular basis, thing that I never had to do before, I found that this helped me a lot, improving my knowledge every week, and at the end it was a very entertaining method.

One aspect of my english that need to be improved with urgence it's the speaking aspect, more than listening or writing. Maybe I'll take the "Inglés V" class to keep training and improving this aspect of learning and knowing the language. I can't find another realistic way of keep improving in this area in the near future, because I don't have anyone to practice speaking english with.

And to the question "Outside the English class, how much are you using English these days? What for?" I use english on a daily basis a lot, like literally everyday, this is because most of the pages and sites I follow on social media are writed and speaked in english, from news pages, to entertaining sites or any matter or subject that i'm interested in, also I watch a lot of videos that are speaked in english that have no subtitles and can practically understand every word, with some exceptions from time to time, but that cases are mostly new words that I've never heard, or that I can't understand somethings the first time I hear them because of issues with the pronunciation or accent.

Changes to my study programme

So I think that the curriculum of the major I'm currently studying it's a very complete one and satisfy the needs of both the people who wants to specialize in political science and the ones who wants to specialize in management.
The workload I believe it's just fine (when the semester it's not compressed with almost 3 less class weeks, like this one), but I think that it would be nice to shorten the lenght of the studies in one year and be able to graduate from the major in four years, like in most western "first world" countries, obviously that idea would need to be well planned, because it could derivate in more unnecessary workload for the students with not the aproppiate implementation.
But if we talk about the matter of the faculty/building facilities, there's so many things that could be improved and implemented, a proper dining room, enable the second floor of the library, open some study rooms so the students can study together in their free time before a test or exam, don't close the library for a whole day during the finals, are some of the things that come to my mind.
Sincerely I don't know in which way technology could be better implemented or used in the classes or the faculty outside of how it's already used.
And finally I believe that the teaching methods used in here, despite being very dependent on the teacher, are pretty good ones, with very entertaining and didactical classes in most cases, the development and execution of projects in real life that, even having some planification problems in their conception, ended being pretty useful from a learning point of view.


                                             

My experience with sports

I was a very inactive kid, I didn't practiced a lot of sports outside of playing baby football with friends on the weekends, and I sucked at it. In 7th grade the P.E. classes were made in the bigger playground of the school and in the gym, so the teacher let us play football and basketball at the end of each class, I still sucked, but that didn't kept me apart from playing anyway, during that year I realized that I wasn't that bad at basketball and I was "decent" as a goalkeeper in baby football, a very unorthodox one, because of the rule that you can only score shooting inside the box (which it's very small), I went out to press the player and clear the ball before he could enter the area.

In high school I went to play baby football with my classmates regularly to a park near the school after class, especially on fridays, also played basketball with friends from time to time and my best friend invited me to practice rugby, I still wasn't very good at any of these sports (with the exception that sometimes I had decent, even good, displays on basketball, but that wasn't a regular thing) but I loved to practice them anyway. The dynamic of being in a team, in a close match where everyone is focused in what they have to do, give your best and turn the score to your favor are all very attractive and amazing things in my opinion, also, and most important, you can have tons of fun playing/practicing sports, independent if you are good or bad at them, specially if you do it with friends. This ended being a habit during all high school and kept practicing rubgy some years. 

To this day we still settle football matches from time to time with my friends from school.

Studying Public Management

Well, so I entered this year to study Public Administration basically because it is what I wanted to study (or suited the most my interests on some areas I wanted to study and learn of) after a series of "events" that I had in my academic/student life.
I always found interesting various branches of science, whether it were sciences of nature or social sciences. I liked very much history class and the elective economy class in which we were imparted economy from an historical point of view. And also always firmly believed in the importance of having healthy public spaces and healthy public institutions and services (like the importance of having good public education, health system, transport system and so on) because of the impact that subjects have in people's lives everyday. And those are motivations and interests that cross paths with this career's professional profile.
I wouldn't say that I "want" to be a certified public manager, but I would agree in saying that I really want to have the tools and knowledge for tomorrow identify problems and come up with the most satisfactory solution for them, and also knowing a little of economy and how to manage resources it is never bad, especially applying that at home.
I knew the basics, but yet still the medular part, of this career, that it gives you the preparation, knowledge and tools to play a role in what public management and administration in general refer (knowledge which also can be used in the private world), also the knowledge to analyze and comprehend the world of politics, and when you get to the ending of the career you can choose between two specialties or mentions, Public Management and Politic Science being these two.
About where to study this career, the Universidad de Chile wasn't my only option, of course, I considered also applying for the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, and Universidad de Valparaíso, but I had already studied another (unfinished) career at this house of studies, so it was nice getting back in here.
Until now my favourite subject was one of the past semester, Historias de las Instituciones Públicas y Administrativas de Chile, a pretty long name, so we called it HIPACH, by it's acronym. The thing that make me love the class was the professor, he knew a lot and always made a very entertaining class. And if I had to answer what's the most significant thing I've learned until now I wouldn't know what to answer, maybe (and being very cliche) I would say the lots of things I still have to learn, but that's pretty obvious, because I just entered to study and learning it's a never ending task.

Best buddy

Ever since I can remember there always were varied kind of pets in home, like fishes, birds, tarantulas, water turles (red eared sliders being more especific), hamsters, a guinea pig that a cousin of my uncle left to him so he could take care of, meanwhile he was on vacations, and dogs. But since last year's february my brother decided, motivated by his girlfriend, to adopt an abandoned puppy from the city's animal refuge, a black crossbreed, half blood, or how we say here "quiltro", small dog. He named it Vato. 

The time we met with Vato for the first time I was laying on the couch watching a movie and suddenly I start feeling that something is licking my hair, I turn around to found this petite ball of black hair that it's super curious of who I am, got him up with me on the couch and starts sniffing all around me. He was super adorable (still if you ask me) and very quiet the first weeks in home, he roamed around the house with a sad expression in his face, but with time he gained confidence, with all in the integrants of the house, even with visits, started wanting to play more and give demonstrations of affection very frequently.

More than a year and a half after Vato is a full grown up dog, that still it's very calm in home, but yet full of energy when we go for a walk or to the park. He never gived us much of a problem or headache, with the exception when he sneaks and steals food when we get distracted and that time he got lost for an entire day, lucky us that a lady identified that he was a house dog, saw his necklace and call to the number that it has in its plate. The poor had an injured leg and didn't want to leave the bed of my brother for an entire day.

So in conclussion that's my entire experience, until now, with pets and the story of this precious good boy.

          

 

About concerts

If anyone asked me about the best concert I attended, to this day, I would say that the Queens of the Stone Age show in the 2013 version of Lollapalooza Chile fits perfectly as the answer to this question. It was on April 6, Saturday, during the evening of that day, inside the Parque O'Higgins, where the whole festival was made. I attended to the show with a friend of mine. The artists played an amazing show and the crowd corresponded to the show with lots of energy and creating an amazing atmosphere, jumping, clapping and singing to every song. Also we witnessed a scene like festivals in the US only could get, one would think, during the song "Little Sister", which has the peculiarity of using a cowbell with the drums during all the song, Eddie Vedder, singer of the band Pearl Jam, came up to the stage to only play the cowbell and give support in the chorus as a secondary voice, a collaboration that in the moment crossed nobody's mind, and absolutely made everyone go crazy. The greatest moment of that day.

Where to go someday

I find the question "Which country would you like to go?" a very hard one to answer, because I never visited another country and the amount of options and destinations one can think of are huge. But if I had to make the decision now and take a flight to any destination I wanted to go, any other country but Greece come to my mind right now. As a little boy I was fascinated with various elements of the ancient greek/helenic culture, from their organization in various great cities known as "polis", their technological advances in engineering, architecture and development of ships to travel the seas, to it's famous fables and never boring mythologycal stories. I liked everything about them, and even knowing that the present Greece has little to nothing to do with the old glories of the past, vestiges of that charming time in the form of ruins of it's old city structures and temples remain to this day. Apart from all that cultural aspect, Greece also it's located in a very beautiful geographic location, the southern part of the balcanic peninsula, in the mediterranean sea. The "Greek Islands" are a well known touristic destination, because of it's general beauty and nice weather.
I would love to study/work in there, but for a fixed amount of time, so I could have time to immerse into it's daily reality and also could go and experience from the very first source all the places and elements of the greek past that still exist today.


                                   

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