Post 9: English Language challenges

Today's topic is a kind of self evaluation of the english course. I'll start by saying that english is one of the languages that I really like, mainly because the academic topics that I like have the most prestigious publications written in english. Also a great part of the news and information of my hobbies are written in this foreign language. So, since several years so far that I'm reading a lot of english and it has helped me a lot to learn a lot of vocabulary.

Regarding to the english at the university I think it has helped me quite a lot to improve my listening and speaking skills because I heard english every week since clasess started (except the days that I was absent). The use of the blogs sessions have helped me to practice my written skills but I must confess that I wans't very exited about writing my blog and that's because this classes were so late that most of the time I didn't have so much energy left. Some times the topics of the blogs weren't so entertaining to me and it was very dificult to reach the required number of words.

Now talking about the aspects of my english that need to be improved I definitely need to get better in the speaking part and I'm not still good enough writing, but sadly I have no immediately plans to get better.

Outside the english class, when it comes to speak with other people I'm not using my english at all, but as I said before, when it comes to read I use my english almost every day because I usually visit some websites and I also read some articles that are completely written in english. I also watch some videos and TV channels in wich the host are english speakers.

Post 8: My Future Job

Certainly it's difficult to predict the future (making reference to my future job), but I'm pretty sure about what I want to do.

Respecting to my major I'm thinking of taking an Archaeology related one but I'm not really sure yet. I'm considering to study something related with heritage because I think that the conservation of our archaeological herritage it's very important mainly because it's priceless. Also I'm very interested in how the archaeological knowledge is passed to the "common" people because there are several myths or false theories (for example all the 2012 Maya or end of the world theories). In the same way the people really don't know much about how did the people live in the sames territories we use nowadays but in the past.

For these reasons I would like to get a Job related as a researcher in a museum, so in that way I could do some investigation to draw the attention of the public and kids to be more interested in archaeological related themes and I could help in the difficult labour of getting closer with the past.

The more important aspects to make my desition with a particular job would be that the project of the institution to be closer to my own interest (for example to spread the archaeological knowledege to the population). Another important aspect would be in a great work atmosphere.

If I were asked about my strenghts, I would say that when I'm really interested in a Job it became my passion and also I'm good when it comes to explain a subject or teaching something. On the other side I'm terrible at working in a subject that I don't really like.

Post 7: How Green Are You?

Maybe I'm not so green but I love nature since I was a child. Always my family teach me to respect the nature and take care of it mostly becouse I come from a family of farmers.

My house  has always been sorrounded with green (trees, grass, and different kinds of plants) but not only in order to decorate but also in order to home comsume of fruits or vegetables. When I was a child I also loved to play climbing trees or hinding in the vegetation.

I think people don't learn about environmentally friendly practices because there's no clear public policies or incentives measures like recicling. For example where I live there's no places for recycling but my family for a long time has incorporated as an habit separate organic wastes from the others and we also have a container for aluminium cans and  for plastic bottles. I also try to use my legs everytime it's possibly and in the house we have 3 bikes to move arround.

I don't have joined or supported any eco-organizations mainly because I believe that our society has bigger problems than recycling. But I also believe that the goverment or even the councils could do more efforts in order to create public policies for recycling. For example they can set up certain areas for recycling where the people could put their glass/plastic/metal wastes apart from the other trash or they can implement measures for reforesting or create more green areas.

Post 6: Literature and books

Since I was a child (even before I coud read from my own) that I love cience related topics. In that time, when I wasn't able to read, my grandfather used to read me about topics that I was interested like dinosaurs, paleontology, archaeology, etc.

That background sparked my interest in the books but not from every kind (I'm not a bookworm), for example I don't like to read novels and I must admit that I'm a kind of lazy when it comes to that kind of reading, because I only read from time to time or when I have a lot of free time. On the other side, my career demands me to read a lot and I'm some cases (in my opinion) is more important than the classes so the attendance is not so necessary.

As I said before, as a child I loved to read about paleontology or archaeology from books or magazines and I didn't like so much novels or fictional storys. In fact I remember that I received some books as a present during my childhood that I never read.  But with the time and when I was at school I discovered some interesting storys and character that take me back to the fictional stories  like "Sherlock Holmes" or "Robin Hood", so one of my favourite writers is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


A few weeks ago, I read a book for a class called "The Anthropologist as Author" written by Clifford Geertz and I really liked and took me a couple days to read because it's not too long. The autor discuss the role of the anthropologist as a writter and analyzes the way that 3 important anthropologist make their texts. If you like Anthropology you must read it!

Post 5: summary from a career-related article

The magic of Stonehenge: new dig finds clues to power of bluestones

A few scrap of charred wood and stones flakes, which were found in the first excavation of Stonehenge in about 40 years, reveals thousand of years of history according to the archaeologists Tim Darvill and Geoffrey Wainwright.

They think the stone chips (or flakes) are evidence of belief in the healing power of the "bluestones" wich where originally located at 150 miles in the south of Whales. The bluestone is known as spotted dolerite.

Also the charcoal fragments also add new evidence because the archaeologist have dated to 7000 BC the earliest and to medieval times the most recent. That suggest the site was already occupied 4000 years before the oldest stone circle (dated arround 2300 BC thanks to organic remains like grain and seeds). This two archaeologists concede that Stonehenge was a "multifuncional" site, the most important task was given by the bluestones.

The theory of Darvill and Wainwright says that the stones were brought to Stonehenge by human action based in the belief of their healing power, and they reject the rival theory that the stones were carried by the action of a glacier because there's no evidence of a glaciation during that time.

Many of the bodies found in the Stonehenge area have marks of illness or injurys, and this fact support the theory that they came to this place to get cured.

Post 4: animals and pets

I have lived all my life in the same house, and it has a big courtyard so my family have always raised animals and pets. Some time ago, when I was a child, I remeber we had sheep, geese, dogs and chickens at the same time, and because I grow up in this zoo I love animals.

As I mentioned, my family always has been related with the raising of diferent animals from farm and pets, but the times have changed and know we only have common pets: 3 dogs, 10 cats and 3 red-eared slider, and each one has its unique name! I love every one of them because they are so different and they have their own personality (except the red-eared slider, they just walk and swim). For example the most recent member of the pack is Pepo, a one year old dog who always want to play and he loves the balls. Also he allways follow me or another member of my family to any place of the field.

With all this zoo like house I obviously had some incidents related with animals, in fact I remeber that when I was a kid I really hate geese because one time one goose bite me! and it was really painful.

According with the chinese astrology I was born in the year of the horse, which is a cool thing because I love horses mainly because they are extremely beautiful and a dream of mine is to rise one.

My Best Holidays

Holidays are synonyms of travels, adventures or simply relax. In my case, the best holidays I ever had where when I visit Germany a few years ago.

In the summer of the years 2007 and 2008 It was the first time I traveled abroad and my destination was Germany. I traveled to that country because I have family there and they always wanted to show me their home, so they invited me.

My family lives in Berlin, the capital of Germany, so I stay there for about one a a half month and besides I live in Frakfurt for a month. I Also have a uncle living in Gothenburg (Sweden) so I visited him too for a couple weeks.

During my stay in Berlin, I visited a lot of touristical and historical places like the Brandenburg Gate, all the museums wich have amazing and huge art or archaeological collections. I also did that in Frakfurt a Gothemburg and besides "my traditional tourist activities" I also met a lot of intersting people who make my travel even better.

For this reasons this hollidays were the best I ever had because I have so much fun and in addition I learned so much from the history and the people of both countries.

Post 2: God save the Queen

For a long time that I would like to visit the United Kingdom, mainly because the turistic places like Stonehenge or the landscapes of Scotland.

A few years ago I visited some countries of western Europe (Germany and Sweden) because I have family there. One of my wishes of the trip was to go on a little tour arround Europe in train. But I went in winter and for my bad luck my relatives couldn't get holidays during my stay so they can't go with me (and I was too young to go alone). I wanted to do that trip to know a little of every country of Western Europe but the one that I wanted to know the most was the United Kingdom.

I like the UK because of their cities, like London, and their historial/touristic buildings like the Big Ben.  Also I like this country because the changing weather (it rains all the time and I love the rain!). Another thing that I would like to visit even since I was a child is the megalithic monument known as "Stonehenge". Finally I would like to do a trip across Scotland because I love the landscapes of the Scottish Highlands.

In this hypothetical journey I will stay as a tourist but also is a good option to stay as a student to do a postgraduate course of my career.

Balance of my first term

In the last term I fullfill one of my goals that's became oficially an Anthropology student. Also I started a new hobby.

My Last term started in a very good way, because I finally became an Anthropology studend. Why I'm saying that if I'm in second year of Anthropology? Because for two years I was an student of Bachillerato at Universidad de Chile (a little program that last two years and one of its goals is to get his students transfer to a real career in the same univesity).

Another good thing of my last term was I retake and old hobby that I really love to do that's ride a mountain bike. Since I was a child I love bikes and for some time I left it in second place mainly for financial issues. The past term I have the oportunity to rebuild my bike and know I can enjoy this passion every weekend.

A negative behavior of mine in the last term was the attendance to the morning classes (specially the ones at 8:30 AM) from different factors but this semester I'll do a better effort to get to the classes in time. 

To conclude I can say that my last term was very good because I two things that I really love and as a goal for the new one I will try to solve my "morning problem" .

Last Post

This post, the last one, is about my blogging experience and I have to say that this was my first blog experience.

I think these activities have a good part and a bad part. The good part was that every week (or almost) we have to write about a new topic and it was a challenge, because in some times was difficult to me to know what to put on my post (and Rodrigo was always giving me warnings because I was talking too much). On the other hand almost all the topics were fun and nobody was complaining about it saying "is a boring topic". Also I consider that been out of the classroom, that in this case is replaced by the computers room, is good because it comes out the normality of the other classes.

The bad part I think is the fact that the blogs don't allows you to improve significantly your english level because they wasen't so challenging as for example a conversation in english. Maybe this "blogging learning method" could be integrated with more oral activities to improve skills like the pronunciation.

Finally I consider that the blog experience was in overall a good exercise mainly because it help me to improve the redaction, one important skill that I normally don't use when it comes to communicate in english.

Free Topic... Free Ride

In this free topic I'm going to write about guess what... Bikes! (maybe my readers will quit instantaneosly but I really love bikes)

As I told you in my past post one of my biggest passions and my hobbie is the mountain biking (since kid I like bikes and I live near the mountains, wich I visit frecuently), but I really don't know how to define what I really do. The world of the mountain bike is very diverse and thanks to the technological advance today we have bikes for every ride stile. There are bikes focused on the ascent, bikes focused in the descent and of course some sort of hybrid who will do both. The only thing that I don't like about these bikes is their price because they are really expensive.

Now back to what I do, the favourite part of my rides are the descents. That puts me near to the discipline called Downhill or DHI, but one central part of this sport is the timed descent. I enjoy to go fast downhill but I have never been in a competition. Aside from the descenst I also like going uphill pedaling and push my physical resistance to the limit and try to get better on every ride (also I try to go fastest on every descent).

This particular stille of mountain biking can be called "All mountain" but some time ago it was also called called Free Ride. I will keep the second name because it represent better my way of seeing the spot like a way to break free and be conected with the nature.

Pinkbike!

As I mentioned in my past post one of my biggest passions are de bicycles and specially de mountain biking. I enjoy to ride my bike, but I also enjoy to repair it (because the descents are very aggressives with the bikes) and I try to know every news  about the mountain bike (new products and parts releases, results of the big competitions like world cups, etc.) and one internet site that allows me to know all the related with the last news of mountain biking is Pinkbike.

Pinkbike is a north american internet site (I'm not sure it is from USA or Canada) dedicated to all the topics related with mountain biking. I consider this site as a good knowledge source because it has the latests news about bike technology innovations like new materials, new parts, new bikes or equipment but it also teach you some basic knowledge about bike mechanics.

Another important thing about the site is that the users can upload pictures of their bikes showing their configurations, creativity and changes. Also every day the website is updated with videos of people practicing mountain bike. This persons can be normal users that sees MTB like a hobbie or professional riders that are filmed in big competitions like the World Cup made by the Union Cycliste Internationale.

Who I'am?

Hello!

I'm Mauricio Soto and I'm 21 years old. I live in Lampa (a commune located to the north of Sanatiago). I  study Anthropology at the Universidad de Chile and I want to become an archaeologist.

One of my biggest passions of life are the bicycles, specially the mountain bikes (MTB) because it also conects you with the nature. I have been practicing MTB for several years traying to doing Downhill because I love to reach high speeds and jump with mi bike.

Another thing that I enjoy to do is play videogames, specially the ones that have multiplayer to compete with or agains my friends.

I want you to hit me as hard as you can...

Todays topic is about my favourite movie, and I will write about Fight Club. Fight Club is a 1999 movie directed by David Fincher based in a novel with the same name written by Chuck Palahniuk. The film is starring by Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Boham Carter. The first time I saw this movie was when I was in my last year of school, because a work, and I immediately love it. In fact is one of the few movies that I buy a copy (Thank you Internet!).

Warning: SPOILER ALERT!

The plot is about a insomniac worker of a car insurance company wich requires treatment to a doctor for his trouble, but he suggest him to visit a support group to see some real suffer and he join a testicular cancer group. Also he join other support gruops and his "tour" meet Marla, a trobled woman who lives of the free food given for those groups.

When he was returning from a work trip in a plane he meets Tyler, an artesanal soap seller who will transform the imsomniac narrators live, because when he arrived to his home he was noticed that was consumed by fire, so he decided to move with his recent meet friend Tyler, but they go to a bar to talk about it.

When they leave the bar, Tyler said: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can" and they repeat that behavior weekly and some people join them, so this way they found the Fight Club.

I'm not going to talk more about the plot in case some of the readers haven't watched the movie.

Michael B. Schiffer

When it comes to archeological teories I'm not really an expert because I still dont take that course (it's an archaeology course) but one of my favourite archeologyst is for the moment Michael Brian Schiffer.Schiffer was born on October 4, 1947 in Canada and now he is professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. 

He is one of my favourites firts of all because he introduced the notions of the context to the archeology making the diference between the systemic context (when the objects are in use) and the archeological record (when the objetcs are deposited in the ground intencionally or not). The archeological record (or also named context) is the one thath archaeologyst studies.

This final idea is related with another big contribution (for my point of view) to the archaeology wich change the temporal limits of the discipline because he expressed that archaeology is the study of material culture in every time (not only the past!).

Another great contribution of Michael Shiffer is the study of the site formation process which says that the objets are afected by different cultural and natrual processes (for example the earthquakes).

Pets

Today's entry it's about pets and I really like animals, in fact in my house me and my family have 3 dogs, 11 cats and 4 red-eared slider (It's a huge house), but I'm not going to talk about my favourite pet between them because I like them all, I'm going to talk about the one that I considered is missing in this "mini zoo".

This animal is the Iguana and could be a rare choise because is not a traditional pet but I like lizards and when I was a child I ask my parents for a Iguana as my pet but they totally denied it saying it was difficult to care (and this is true)

I like the colors of the iguana (I'm specially talking about the green iguana), and they kinda lazy attitude but I think I can't properly take care of them because you need a sort of things like a big terrarium, lights among others and thats the reason why I don't have one now and niether in a close future, because if you have pets, you have to take care of them and thath involves a great responsability.

My Favourite Piece of Technology

This decision maybe it's a lot much easier than the last one (about my favourite music band) because it rapidly comes to my mind the image of a computer, despite some people love them and some people hate them.

The computer in my opinion is one of the greatest invents of the past century because it changed the way that people interacts whith each other in many aspects of their lives from the most basics to more complex.

Another point in favour to the computers (and my favourite) is the multiplicity of uses that computers are supposed to have, from sailing to the vast site of content nad information know as the internet to the creation of programs that make the computers more efficient, more productives, more easy to use and even more fun!

One thing from computers that I especially like is their graphic capability, wich allow us to run amazing and amusing games, wich in fact are a big industry that involve millions of people called "gamers". The video games give us a great alternative of entertainment alone or with our friends.

From all these reasons my pick from the favourite technological device goes to the computer.

My favourite band.

I'm not sure if I have only one favourite band or singer because in all my life I have listen a lot of music of diferent genders, but if I have to choose only one I will take "Bad Religion" as my option. My favourite music genre is the Punk Rock and this band was one of the first (or the first) that I heard arround 10 years ago and I still have them in my music player. "You" is the name of the the song that introduce me to this band and certainly is on my "top ten" of favourite songs. This band is significant to me because it let me explore a new tipe of music, that lead me to listen other good bands, and the lyrics of their songs are related to social themes.