The Blog Project

I think that the Blog Project is a very good way of expressing things to your classmates that maybe you wouldn´t do at class. It´s a wonderful way of interacting that allows you to use another register of the language and it´s a space where you can give opinions, explanations or help. Maybe some people can have problems with this project if they don´t have internet or a computer, or both; but I don´t consider that a big problem because you can always go to the computer lab. What can I say? I don´t know who had the idea of this project, but I would like to congratulate her or him.

...about Present-ations

During the preparation of my presentation I basically learned how to organize the information I wanted to provide in order to talk only for 30 minutes maximum. It was not easy, the evening before the presentation I had to change my thesis and my conclusion because I decided to cut one part, the presentation was too long, so I couldn´t tell you all that I explained in my paper. But it doesn´t matter, I think that it´s more important to explain well one thing than explain poorly many things (and if anybody is interested in learning a bit more about jazz and its apearence I can pass you my paper ha ha ha).
I don´t like talking in public very much, I recognize that I´m afraid of that and that i have a bad time before doing it, but just before I do it. When I start talking I really enjoy it, I like explaining things and I like when people pay attention to you and learn something. I think that my presentation was not very complicated to understand because I focused in only two or three points. I guess it was not so bad, I hope you enjoyed it.
From listening to others presentations I learned some things about water resource managament, about the explotation of children and fair trade, about diabetes, about "slow suicide", about the use of cell phones and its history, about the sense of smell, about smart purchasing and the tricks of ads, about computer companies history and competence, about credit cards and debts, about the relation of memory and stress and about the dangers of tobacco. From all your presentations I learned something because all of you made me think. Thank you.

Research Project, "The Making Off"

To be honest, it´s not been easy to give birth to my paper. My biggest problem was to put in twelve pages all that I wanted to say about the origins of jazz music and the discriminative and racist environment that has always surrounded this music genre. I enjoyed the part of looking for books and articles, reading and thinking. But when I started to write I thought I was not going to be able to present a decent and objective development of my thesis; to my surprise things flowed and the ideas got clearer while I was keeping writing. Finally I had to change a little bit the thesis and the final product was not exactly what I had in my mind, but it doesn´t mean that I don´t like what I wrote. I wouldn´t change any word of what I said, and if I did it I would just provide more information like more examples and other approaches to the subject.

I have the feeling that my written expression has improved very fast in a few days, as well as my capacity for organising ideas and develop them. Especially during the last days in the computer lab, I enjoyed the process of writting. It´s been a very rich and educative activity (now that is over I can say that).

Oh! I almost forget!! The best thing it´s that I´ve been listening to a lot of good jazz during these last two weeks!!

Oh, Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I´ve walked in his moccasins

This sentence means that before we judge somebody or his/her actions we should try to understand first in which situation he/she is and what his/her feelings or thoughts are. By doing this it will be more difficult to do something to somebody that we wouldn´t like to be done to us.
I think that to identify or emphatyze with others feelings is a good way to understand us much better and avoid communicative and social problems. After all, we are not so different. This was the moral that we could learn from the video we saw today. By the way, if somebody is interested in watching the video again (Hi Helen) or knowing more information about the experiment take a look in this web: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Animal Experimentation Unit

The unit that I most enjoyed was the one regarding Animal Experimentation, especially because the persuasive paper that we were asked to write using the different articles relating the topic was the most hard that I had to write before the Research Project.
I must admit that I had a hard time trying to connect what was said in the articles with my own approach to the topic, and I must admit that I like suffering. I think that the Persuasive summary was a good training for the paper we are now working on. In my case, all the written tasks we are asked to do are helping me to improve how to connect the ideas that I want to capture on the paper in a most understandable way. It´s not really my style to say things directly, but I´m really enjoying learning how to write in different ways.
And, I must also admit that after working on this topic, and after some years of doubts and meeting vegetarians (including my mother) I have decided not to eat meat anymore. For the moment I´ve been 10 days without tasting any animal that doesn´t come from the sea!

Theo Jansen´s Strandbeest Lecture

I only have good words for describing the lecture that Dong and I attended at Concordia´s Hall. To listen directly to the creator of such a fantastic and original project as strandbeest is not a thing you live everyday.
After Theo´s speech regarding how he started to create the strandbeest, many questions came to my mind relating the meaning of our lives.
Theo´s meaning is working in his marvellous creatures until he dies. I understood that in this meaning there was beauty, strandbeests are something that the rest of human beings can enjoy, not only Theo. There´s something magic on them. Perhaps our meanings of lives will improve if we adapt the concept of beauty in them. I personally would like to transform my life and it´s meaning in something lovely that could be enjoyed by others.
I left you with a video of a Theo´s presentation that I hope you will enjoy.

Popullation

My father has one brother and one sister, and my mother has only one sister; so I cannot say that I have a wide family, but I can say that is a young one because I met all my grandparent´s parents when I was a child.

I have one brother, his name is Carlos, he´s much more responsible than I am and he´s 27 years old.

I would like to have children, at least two, but I don´t know when that´s going to happen because I have been always moving from one city to another for the last ten years.

The population of Spain is 45.2 million people (according to wikipedia), and Spain's population density is lower than that of most Western European countries. I have already discovered this last data and I considered it funny because some politicians say that we are too much people in Spain and that we shouldn´t allow the entrance of immigrants. Spain is the "door" to Europe of african immigrants who are willing to improve their lifes.

I come from an island named Mallorca, it´s in the Mediterranean sea and it´s a touristic destiny because the beaches and the weather are wonderful.

It´s interesting to know that during the summer the population of the island increases five times. That means that the number of cars increase, and so the pollution. The use of water is a problem because there are not enough reserves of drinking water for everybody. The natural balance of the beaches is specially altered, the huge number of people that visit them is destroying these beautiful and unique ecosystems, and the life in them.

But money rules, and things haven´t changed for the last 15 years.