about the blog

Hello everyone!! How is everyone doing? Well, for today’s post we are supposed to post a post about posting on a blog. Funny isn’t it?
At the beginning of the pre intermediate English course, or English III as we called around here, Ms. Crystal proposed us to create a blog for the English class! (That explains why I have randomly posted things without any reason. Except the fact that this assignment it is mandatory and if I don’t do it, I would be bad graded)
I think my blogging experience has been great. Although at the beginning I wasn’t excited at all by having to keep a blog because I’m not really a blog’s fan-- I think they are sort of silly—I have come to find that I like sharing things with my peers stuff that is curious to me or make me think different. Is a way to put out there what I have learned so other can join me on my trip of “discovering life”. Sorry if it sounds corny! Posting on a blog is also a good instance for improving my English by practicing. I have lost my capacity of speaking and writing fluidly since I left the U.S.
But on the other hand, posting is boring sometimes, too basic, too lame may be? Even though I never did this before, I only found a few post that I was interested on writing or reading. But overall, it has been a good chance to meet my class mates… I have to admit I’ve started to talk to some people I never talked to before because of the blogging thing. That is definitely an advantage, I love meeting new people, but just people that is nice to me, not the mean ones. xD
Love my classmates !! :D

My ideal job.

I think my ideal job would be at the U.N. or any other kind of organization where I can do research and field work. I dislike being just at one place... I mean, like an office, doing just paper work, making calls, working on the computer all the time. That’s not the lifestyle for me! I would like to go out, to have the chance to meet different pespectives and experiences and then apply them to my work on political science. It would be easy for me to develop this kind of job because you need to speak other lenguages – no problem with that, I love other lenguages J . Also, you need to have social skills that will help you on meeting different people and being able to go through a cultural shock without dying on trying – I think I have ability too. But the most difficult requirement would be having enough knowledge to do the work. It is a must having recongnized degrees and a perfect academic history, in some way that proves that yo are smart enough to work on this. I’m to young to know if I’m cualified on this, but I assume that with the years I will learn more and I will be more knowledgeable... so far so good. But in an area where there’s a thousand people trying to get the same job as me, I know is gonna be hard!

“Design and the elastic mind”

On spring break 2008,I went on a trip to New York City with my host family and I met my brother there. He also went on vacation at the same time I did and at the same place I did. So, while we were taking a walk at the Central Park, he showed me some pictures he had taken at the Museum Of Modern Art. My brother is an architect, therefore he was all excited showing me by picture, all the great things he found there. One of those things was the 3D printer.
Basically, you draw something at a digital board with a 3D dimension, like a chair…and immediately the printer starts working with some rare kind of white plastic that is melted on the bottom of it. From that melted plastic it emerges a solid structure that is shaped with a specific laser -- it works by 'printing' successive layers on top of the previous to build up a three dimensional object In seconds. So you get a chair of real size made with plastic from a printer. Although I’m not sure you can actually sit on it, they wouldn’t allow it. You can print everything that’s on 3D dimension and digitalized. The weird thing is that is not something new at all, the first 3D printer was presented in 1990 at the Conference of National Computers Graphics Association but it was invented in 1987.
I was surprised by this because it was like a fiction dream, in 20 or 30 years we are probably going to have one of those in our house, and in 50 years we might have flying cars. This is my favorite piece of art! It is so high tech 


*for more information visit www.moma.org/elasticmind

Schooll kills creativity

It´s really hard to realize that what Sir Ken says is true. The speech he gives at the New York Public radio about the education system taking away from us creativity it is certainly controversial. We are made by education as people that think and live according to the needs of this new era of the information. In order to survive we study things that might be useful in the future to raise some money and live decently. So in the order to do it, we delete the rest of the stuff that is occupying space in our brains… stuff that are not useful enough –like art, music, painting, dancing. We are raised to believe that those kinds of subject won´t help us out to make our living, and we forget about how important they are to give to our life some meaning. I personally forgot about it, and I took them out of my life because of the lack of time I had… they were not my priority, I think. But they should be important in every human life, like the in Greeks culture. They put the arts above the development of other areas, because art would take you into perfection. Perfection now is having a huge degree and a big house with a big bank account, and don’t forget the nice car. If education wants to be successful, I think we need to put the creativity at the same level of math or literature… that way our priority would be the enrichment of our soul and integrity that comes with it… not just the money.

So far, so good.

After reading a pile of articles, chapters of books and other very interest texts I couldn`t get what was so great about them if all what they said to me was non sense... They were written in an other time, when a different paradigm was ruling the streets. I just started studying public administration a while ago and Im just beginning to understand the real stuff. Is hard to catch up when teachers encourage you to read things that apparently are not related at all with what you think this major is about, but after all I think it does. I learned to give up a lot of time before getting the real meaning of the things I was learning. It happened that way when I read a book by Douglass North, an famous economist of the 90`s that won the nobel prize. The book was about institutions and the role of them in economics, society, politics. It was the first time in this semester I read someone who was saying things that would make sense to me. His ideas are so true, they work perfectly with the real world of the XXI century.
So, If I had to choose someone that does a great job and that I think is the best on my field, so far I choose North; I think he is a great genius in the matter of economics and the development of institutions. It hasn`t been in vain his work, because has brought a new way to do things in here, and I like it.

post correction

So, this is my favorite picture. It was taken at the Lincoln memorial in D.C. by my host-mother Liza while we were on a trip to Virginia for a funeral of a friend of Liza´s mom. That day we took a long walk through the mall of Washington D.C. We went to all the museums that we could, and then we went to the WWII memorial and saved the Lincoln memorial for the end. I am a big fan of Lincoln, because he was one of the greatest presidents in the history of America. He was such a pragmatic man that could do everything without thinking on his convenience or the convenience of the parties that he represented, but he did the things thinking on the common good. So, I was very excited when we got there. This beautiful place reminds us of the bases of democracy and civil rights. Although the reason for the trip was sad, I DID HAVE AN AWESOME TIME! I loved D.C. from the moment we arrived there. It is such a beautiful city, full of tress and huge parks to go out running with your dog. They also have amazing places to go out, have dinner or just to take a break. The houses and buildings architecture´s is amazing. If I had to choose a place to live, I would live there.

A career that chose me.

I kind of got here because of destiny; I wasn’t chasing for this specific career or thought about it too much. I have learned that life goes and comes, you cannot pretend to have an exact plan for your life because you don’t know where are you going to end up at last- I used to thought that every step of my life that I have planned it was going to be followed correctly, but for some reason or another, it never happened that way.
So, I figured out that when you know who you are and what you want -with all your soul- no matter what, everything is going to be fine and it’ll all fall into place at the right time. That’s how this career chose me, sort of. I just allowed myself to follow the flow without worrying so much.
I always had the idea of contributing to the world as a whole; I would regret spending my entire life just thinking about myself and money issues. I have been so lucky in my life that I think I need to return in some way, and this is the way I have chosen. I would love to work for the development of Latin America, but for that I need to be brave to confront difficult realities that will put me on the edge of risk or depression, I don’t know ha, ha, ha. Also I need a complete resume with different areas of study, like math… which is very difficult to me. The other areas are fine, I enjoy pretty much every subject, so besides number, I don’t really think I will have much trouble.
I know is going to be hard- impossible for some of you- to “save the world” in one day, and the context probably will try to put you down, or my interests will change, turning me on a greedy old lady… but I seriously think that this is not about ME, is about everything in the world that is not going ok… I just feel responsible for it, ignore it is not the option right now.