First Term: Good and bad points.

I have to talk about the good and bad things I lived in the last term. Fortunately, there were more good than bad things.

In academic level, I learnt a lot. We had six subjects. I was interested in two of them: Statistics and Quantitative Methods, but the teachers were very bad and I got very disappointed. On the contrary, in Economics and Chile's Social History we have master classes with two eminences: Hugo Fazio and Gabriel Salazar. But the subject that contributed the most to my sociological knowledge was, definitely, Sociological Theory I. In this subject I finally could know the big theories of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, that some of my classmates already knew, but I didn't.

In the last term I went for the first time to the gym. I've never went before, because I used to think that it was for silly and vain people, but I had to take this subject, because it was one of the only choices that my schedule allow. At the end, it wasn't that bad, I increased my physical capacity, I got thinner and it makes me quit smoking.

I think the hardest challenges I had to face was in the academic field. Economics was a very hard and demanding subject for me, I had to study a lot more than others subjects and, at the end, it was the worst final mark I have had in my whole life.

Love was another field in wich I had to face some challenges, but in the good way. I had to adjust activites and schedules for having time to share with him; I had to learn how to leave the pride aside and talk in a calm and mature way to resolve issues. On the contrary of the first challenge I talked about, I think in this one I have had much better results.

Let's eat some paella!

All of my life I wanted to visit the usual places that people say they want to visit when they are asked about that: France, Egypt, Jamaica, Italy, Greece, Brazil. But a year ago from now, I have changed my mind and I've decided that I want to go to Spain.

Why? I have lot of reasons. The first of all, spanish people talks in spanish. That's a fundamental thing because -second reason- I want to study there, maybe in Barcelona. I know a little bit of english and a little bit of french, but not that much and taking classes in another language is not very simple. The third important reason is that I've recently discovered a part of my family I didn't knew before and some of them are actually living there! And, the last important reason is that I also discovered that my grand-grand mother was spanish, and she came to Chile, scaping from Franco's dictatorship. Going there is like founding my roots.

I don't know very much about Spain, only a few things that people say about it. I don't research yet. I know that the weather is very extreme; that Barcelona is a very crazy city, whit a lot of night life; that inmigration has grown a lot in the last time; that there is a conflict in the Basque Country and in some places the terrorism takes place very often.

I'd like to study in Spain because there are very good Social Sciences schools, some of my good teachers have made their post-grades there, and they are very good in what they're doing now, specially in social science's methodologies, wich are one of my interest areas.

Transantiago: Before and after.

Most people say that Transantiago is making everyone's daily life more difficult and messy. I think that's true, but in my case, I think I've been benefited in several ways.

When Transantiago started, my first impression was that the new system was slower than the old one, but cleaner and more organized. And the better thing was that finally I had a bus that actually reached my neighborhood. I've always live in a place so far from the "city" that none of the transport systems reachs it.

With the time and people's demands, the system has been changing. The payment ways have changed and now we have a Bip! card that makes very easy the pay and the trip itself. There's new routes that make the trip faster, but I (and everyone else) have to get used to make combinations of buses and subway. The good thing of this is that you pay once, not two or three times, even if you use a bus, the subway and a bus again!

And, even better, with the new routes now I have three differents ways to go to my house, and all of them are very fast!

One thing that should change is the frequencie of some services. There's people that have to wait even half an hour for a bus. Also, the schedule of the subway should be longer, the "Bip's points" should be more and should be installed in places that are far from downtown and the old buses should be replaced by new ones. They pollute a lot.