Chile 2010: What is my views on Chile's bicentennial year?

This year Chile celebrates 200 years of independence, like other countries in South America. It supposed that this important year would be awesome, with big projects like build or fixes some monuments and has new social programs and reforms, doing huge things that people could remember like part of the bicentennial and commemorating this date, and of course celebrating a lot in the holydays. An example of that could be the centennial of our country; that year were inaugurated the Bellas Artes museum with the Forestal park, the Mapocho station, etc. But the truth is that this year wasn’t that spectacular because for all the difficult situations that have happened.

Well, the first bad thing that makes difficult to create a good atmosphere was the victory of Piñera in the elections. It is a personal opinion, but I don’t agree with his thoughts about how to conduct Chile. So I think that is a regression for our country, and that have change the way of celebrate, and makes it uncomfortable for some people of the left side.

At the end of the summer an earthquake took us by surprise and let more than 2 million of people that have some serious damages in their houses, a lot of families loose someone and even worse when you think about the tsunamis that affected a lot of cities in the south of our county. That is very sad and in my opinion that is a problem a the time of celebrate the bicentennial, mainly because we had a rough winter and almost today there are a lot of families that don’t have a decent home.

And finally, the accident of the miners that finished good. But before knowing they were alive has really sad and I think it was so difficult for their families that expect for 17 days to kwon if they were alive. That ended excellent, all of them were well and now they are enjoying all the money the won with that situation.

All of this thing might sound like not that important, but I think that we have to see it from all the people that are suffering even today, some of them don’t have a home and I think that the government is the responsible for that and for other things like the hunger strike of the Mapuches and now for the women miners. So, even if we are having this important celebration where people used to forget bad things, Piñera haven’t been capable to improve his image. And I hope the tercentenary will be better, with true social reforms and with lots of monuments that help poor people to overcome that situation. Until that happened, there is no bicentennial that helps.

What if?

More money than you can spend....Three times a week on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, someone can win the lottery. That means that you could have 10 million dollar, so you can do everything you ever wanted.

So, what would I do if I won the lottery? Well, most of people would change a lot of things on their life, may be they leave their jobs, and have a whole new life style. But I’m not like that, I’d liked to keep studying in here, may be have less subjects because is so stressing at the end of the semester.

But I’d love to do some things that I’ve always wanted like fix my car, because it have a broken door, or having an alarm that someone could hear it. However, I’d like to travel a lot, and my first destiny would be Machupichu and Disney, and I’d like to go with my little brother. After that I want to go to Morocco, Turkey and Middle East with my boyfriend, and then going to Cuba with my whole family. And, I think that’s enough to me for a while, I can’t think in any other place to go.

Well, I’m not that self-center, of course I would do things for my family like pay the rest of the house, getting a new beach house to my parents, because that’s their dream, and of course giving them all the need to stop working and start enjoying their life. Also paying for my brother’s university and getting him a lot of instruments and the best teachers to learn how to play them, and I’d bought him a car.

I’d help to my boyfriend’s family because they are having money problems, so may be getting them the things they need. Also, I would buy a new car to my boyfriend, some sport model, with every luxury he wants.

I’d would pay to my nanny a lot of travels to go anywhere she’d like, and also would hiring some to help her with the job in my house.

With other family members I’d help them with some things they need, live paying some bills, or any house, things like that. And I’d bought a new department for my best friend’s family because they already lost theirs.

Finally, I would like to help some institution that helps children in social risk, or may be inaugurate a new one, that have the best team of psychologists, social workers, teachers, etc. I think that’s the best idea to put your money at, so you can always do something for kids.

Thinking greener.

Every day around 8 thousand to 17 thousand of trees are cut, that makes it in a year from 3 to 7 billion of trees are cut. What’s happening with our planet?

It’s not a new that human needs some things to survive, but every day we all do things that kill the environment like using cars, taking long showers or letting the lights on in our own house. I think that people (like me) don’t realized that kind of things are important, one day we don’t will have trees to make paper or even worse to create oxygen for breath. But today isn’t a lie that you could kwon and learn about those things in so many spaces. Every day in television are programs that talk about it and teach people how to take care of the environment, also that today are some important organizations that are really worry about this subject and you can participate and have some information of them in internet, and also is free to join to them and actively participate. But we all also can do little things every day to make our planet better.

The true is that, actually I’m very embarrassed right now because, I am a horrible person, I realized that I could do a lot of great things for the environment but I just don’t do it. Well, I have changed some bad habits like take long showers, or when I did the dishes I let the water runs, but I think that it isn’t enough, because you can see how the air is on our city, or how many animals is are killed every day even if they are in danger of extinction. And that suck, we shouldn’t let that happened, and we can do something about it.

We could use a bike or go walking to some places, but the truth is that in this city is danger to ride a bike because the principal streets haven’t bike path or a place to parking. Other thing we could do is recycling and there are some supermarkets that have different spaces to put paper, plastics and cans. We also could change our water heating system that use gas to one that use solar energy, etc. Some things are expensive to buy or change, but others have to do with habits, and I think that government should give some money to people for change some systems. Someone have to respond for our behavior with the earth and in our case the government should do a big part, they shouldn’t make hydroelectric plants if we have a lot of clean energy, or they should use electric cars and but electric buses to Transantiago, for example. All the effort together should reduce our carbon footprint as a country and the personal one.

But none single effort will be enough if we don’t change our mind, and if we don’t do this quick it might be too late to save or nature and have a better life in the future. I think we all want to have a nice place for our grandchildren, and have something to teach them.

trapped miners

And they finally get out! … After been trapped for more than two months, the 33 miners were rescued yesterday night with all the media covering the new.
The pasted August 5th, 33 miners were on their break of lunch inside the mine (it was 700 meters under the ground) when it started to collapse, so the only exit was blocked and they didn’t have an emergency exit. All most immediately the authorities start different plans to get them out, but they realized that the emergency way out was useless, so the plan will take more days than the first thought. The problem was that no one knew if they were ok or if they food or even air. After 17 days of working, one machine could make it to the refuge and when the hammer get out of the hole, a message came with it “estamos bien los 33 en el refugio” (the 33 of us are ok). So in that point everything started.
All the Chilean media and some foreigners were there since day one, and when they knew that the miners were alive they started to investigate more of who they are, how their relationship is, what kind of things they like to do in their free time, etc. Also, some rich people and some artists that gave concerts in our country started to donate money, or travels, even now the parliament voted to give them a pension. So with all this presents some of them will get married, others will travel to the Greek islands, but for sure they will celebrate with their families and eat and drink for all the days they were tapped.
One of the miners is Mario Sepúlveda, he was the second of been rescued. He started to scream of happiness before he get to the ground, and when he finally get out he started to jump all over the place, he went to say thanks to the team that rescued all of them, of course he embraced to his family. After that some medical team take all of the miners to a Hospital in Copiapo, and he didn’t want to be lay down in the bet, he was sitting all the time. And today some media told that he was very energetic and he feels all right, like all most the all of them.

Last Term

When I started to think about the last semester I thought a lot of things, some of them were really bad and the others not that bad. But I wanted to talk about something nice, so I had do to an extra effort I remember something great and I don’t know why I didn’t remember earlier.

The thing is that we had an incredible teacher of the subject “teoria y sistemas”, his name is Pablo Rojas. This teacher is new in the University, he loves what he do, he’s really awesome because he was always concerned about us and how we were learning the things he pasted in class.

He always tries to humanize the authors, so when he teaches about a particular author he does a first class where he tells the life of that author. An example of that is when we were going to pass Freud we had a class of his life and it includes all the rare details. It was really funny because it always went with a lot of jokes.

But the most important thing of this special teacher is that he loves teaching, he really enjoys it. And you see that every day, even in the last day he dedicated us a poem of Neruda, and that represented how thankful he was of us like students.

So far, I think he is the best teacher ever.

Well, there are a lot of places that I would like to go, and one of them is Central America, more specific Costa Rica. I think it is a really great destination to go a lot of things, and also it’s beautiful and the people are awesome. The thing is that in going to do a trip this summer there, with my boyfriend and one friend, and we already buy our tickets to Venezuela. We want to go from there to Costa Rica, and pass by Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica, and we are staying in that area one month.

I think that I love that area because of the things that I’ve heard from people that have been there, and even from people that have lived there. The common comment it’s that the people are very outgoing, they are fun and have a great sense of humor, and the beaches from Atlantic Ocean are incredible, like heaven, and the other side (Pacific Ocean) have a beautiful nature like jungle with all kind of animals.

But the true is that I don’t really know about it yet, and I don’t want to see any pictures or videos, because I love the surprises and I really want to make of this a surprise. But, I do want to know about it, how much the things cost there, and stuff like that, but without seen any pictures, so I’m going to be in touch with people that have lived there and looking up from internet.

So I hope everything goes great.