POLITICAL ISSUES

About foreign political issues and the local ones, I used to care a lot about them. I used to be always informed about what was happening, what was going on and I was always concerned about the situation in my country and the world. 

But as time went by, I learned that I was happier if I just stopped trying to be aware of every single new. I just stopped caring so much about the issues of the world for myself to be happier.

The thing is, it’s not like I don’t care at all about the issues of the world, but I’m just not constantly trying to know what is going on. 

It’s always nice to know what is going on to be able to give your opinion in a debate, conversation, etc. 

The Mapuche conflict is an issue really close to me. I have a spiritual connection with the Mapuche people, so I care about the conflict in some way. But I don’t really go deep into what is going on at the moment. I just know that what is happening is sad and unfair.

News from other places are hard for me to believe because, usually, when we receive any news from anywhere in the world, it comes way too one sided. We only get one side of the story and that is no good if what you want is to really be informed.

The same thing happens with local news. Local national news are always, always very one sided, we only get one version of the story, so we are not really able to criticize and debate about any issue. For example, about the Mapuche conflict, we only get the version of the elite being affected by Mapuche attacks or protests; we don’t get the bloody images of the shootings executed by the militarized police in the Araucanía against the unarmed Mapuche people, we don’t get the full picture of anything that happens in the world so we can’t debate, we can’t create conversations about any issue or conflict, we can’t really be informed anymore using mainstream media. 

That’s why I don’t try as hard anymore to know what is going on, it is way too hard to know who is telling the truth, and it is simply way too frustrating. And also I don’t have time to do it. 

ENGLISH LANGUAGE CHALLENGES

About learning English at university I think that is really useful, because we don’t have a lot of time (or any) to practice and improve our English, and I can say that in name of all my classmates. 

About the use of blogs, I don’t really know what I feel about it actually. Because there are topics that I know exactly what to say, and I can write a lot about it, but there are topics that I don’t even know how to develop a sentence. And also it takes me a lot to write a post, because I don’t want to make a mistake. But I think is good to improve our writing though.

I have always enjoyed to learn this language, even when I was in kindergarten was my favourite class and moment of the day, so I can say that it’s easy for me to learn it, because I enjoyed it. I wish I could speak it better though, because I think that my pronunciation is the worst (also my boyfriend is always laughing at me, because of that –he is really good at it-), but also I like to think that at the end of the day the important thing is communicate yourself. Or, have you ever seen a “gringo” with a perfect Spanish? Nah nah.

Before I start my life in the Fau, when I had free and enough time to have a life. I was always improving my English, I was always practicing, watching movies, videos on youtube, talking with friends on skype (English speakers) and also reading a lot, I have books in English that I always enjoyed to read. But now I can’t do it anymore, because I don’t have time and I feel that my level in this two years that I have been in the Fau is in decrease, and it makes me really sad. Also I was starting to learn French and I already forgot all that I learnt. 

What I use now to improve is watch movies and listen music, also I read random stuff sometimes in English to still practicing and I write sometimes to my friends via text messages, so I can have conversations were I have to remember things. Also my father is trying to learn it, so I have fun with him and my brother sometimes speaking. I would like to practice with my boyfriend but he’s too bully with me about it, and I’m a little bit shy.