The DNA detective helping to reunite families

Julia Bell is a woman who helps people find their parents, siblings, or other relatives. A man, Robert Weston contacted her because he wanted to find his siblings. He was abandoned in a cinema toilet 61 years ago and now he has found his siblings.

First she has to do a DNA test and then she has to look in the databases to find someone that matches with some part of the DNA. 

Weston told Julie that he had been searching for a long time, but when she did the DNA test and searched on the database, she found a second cousin who told her about other relatives in his family. So Julia took a DNA test on some relative and she found coincidences with Robert's test, he was his brother. She got into this because her mother didn't know who her father was so she found that he was dead but there was a sister who was alive and now that sister is in touch with the family.

Personal opinion

I think that is very beautiful to be able to use science to figure out things like this. I can understand that people abandoned their children in the second World War because there were no safe methods of abortion or ways to prevent unwanted pregnancy but now, I don't know why people keep abandoning their children, because if you decided that you want to be mother or father you have to do whatever you can to protect your child. Maybe the parents had some reasons to abandon their child so I think that the DNA detective is very useful in these cases.

GAP YEAR

I always wanted to do a gap year, but nowadays I want it more than never. I think that a gap year has to be a year for yourself, to do the things that you want, and to be out of stress and worries, in my case I want to travel.

I'd like to take so many gap years, but the first one will be after batxillerat. I'm going to do it through Eorkaway, which is a web that contacts people who needs help with something , so you work in exchange for food and accommodation, and the only thing that you have to pay for is the flight. In this year I want to visit as many countries as I can, so to start I will visit 3 countries; Palawan, Philippines, Thailand and Los Angeles. First of all I will have to get the money working so, once I finish batxillerat I'm going to work from June to December to save money. In January 2019 I will start my trip, well, we, because of course, I'm doing it with Fatine.

The first stop is going to be Los Angeles. We are going to stay in a house that accommodates backpackers, and the only thing that we are going to do is take care of the house, and help with the guests five hours a day and five days per week, so in the free time we can visit the city and do whatever we want. We are going to spend three months in each country so, after 3 months we are going to take a plane to The Philippines. In The Philippines, we are going to stay in Palawan, an idyllic island- perfect to relax and sunbath everyday. The job that we will have to do there, will be helping in a hostel in different ways, like painting, travel blogging or taking promotional photos. The last stop will be Thailand. We are going to be stay in a bamboo hut in Koh Phangan, helping a family with rescued animals. I always really wanted to do something like that with animals so this is my chance to do it.

I think this kind of "volunteering" is perfect for people who don't have much money and want to travel and know other cultures. In my case, I want to improve  my languages, know other cultures and traditions, etc. I also want to take this gap year to take a break in my studies life and hopefully decide what is what I want to do in the future.

Burgos

The third day we woke up at 8 a. m. as every day, to take the bus, leave the hotel and go on our way to Leon. Before arriving to Leon, we went to Las Medulas, an ancient mine where Romans extracted gold. It was so hot and we had to walk for three hours to arrive to the top of the mountain, so I was really tired. After that, we went down again, and we took the bus to get to Leon. We arrived at 9:30 p. m. to the hotel. We left all the luggage in the room and we went to have dinner. That day we didn't ate so well because we had only one hour to find a restaurant and have dinner. We spent about twenty minutes finding the restaurant and the other 40 minutes we had to eat very fast so I didn't enjoyed all that I could have enjoyed.

The fourth day was like the last one because the fifth day we spent all the day in the bus. Well, Thursday, we got up at eight o'clock and we went to Valporquero's cave which was amazing because it was a cave with six "rooms" full of geological forms like stalactites, stalagmites, columns, etc. I loved that place. After that, we went back to Leon, and we had lunch. After lunch we visited the basilica of San Isidro, and afterward we visited Leon's cathedral, it was so beautiful but I was tired of visiting cathedrals. Finally we got some free time to do whatever we wanted so we bought something for our families and we went to have something to eat. At night,our  teachers told us that after dinner we could go to a bar, so we had dinner and we went to a bar to dance. We went back to the hotel and we stayed like 10 people in the same room, talking until we had to have breakfast. The route back lasted 9 hours, so every 3 hours we had to stop. As we didn't sleep during the night we slept all the 9 hours.

It was a great trip and I enjoyed a lot from everything we did.

Remote island has 'world's worst' plastic rubbish density

This news talks about Henderson Island, an uninhabited island in the South pacific with the world's worst plastic rubbish density. This island has 37,7 millions pieces of debris on its beaches, the reason is because it is in the middle of an ocean current so it collects all the litter that goes into the current.

An Australian and British study said that there are 671 items of rubbish per square meter,of which most of them are things of single-use.

Another study said that most of remote islands are in the same situation as Henderson island. Most of the objects that are found in this rubbish are things that humans throw into the ocean like toothbrushes or cigarettes lighters.

Dr Lavers said that almost every island in the world and almost every species in the ocean are affected by the plastics that we throw.

Personal opinion

I think that this situation has to stop. We have to be conscious that we are not alone in this world, we coexist with animals, so we can't be throwing our trash everywhere because we are polluting their habitats. Also, humans have to live in this world for so many years, and if we don't take care of it, and we continue throwing our waste to the nature, we won't be able to live on this planet.
 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-39931042

Chechen police 'kidnap and torture gay men' - LGBT activists

 Lately we have been hearing in the news that there are some lgbt camps where people is tortured and humiliated because they are gay.

This news talks about the homophobic situation in Chechenya. The police and the government is chasing lgbt people to put them in camps to torture them, and the government just hides it by saying that "gay people don't exist in this country".

Natalia Poplevskaya of the Russian lgbt Network told the BBC that people, either gay or just perceived as gay, is being locked and kidnapped at the detention center near the capital. They suffer torture with electric shocks and there are cells that have been filled with 30 people in it.

Although there are news from the lgbt camp, the president Ramzan Kadyrov denies this tragedy, he just ignores it.

There is an email hotline to help the victims flee to other countries. Other governments and countries are trying to solve this problem.

Personal opinion

This issue makes me so angry, you can't judge people for who they love, it's like judging people who likes color red, it's stupid. We are all humans with the same rights and if someone wants to be with someone from the same gender, let it be and if you don't like it don't look at them, because everybody deserves to love and be loved with no one judging them.

Also, I don't know what is the problem that people have with gay people, I mean, they are not doing anything bad, they are just loving, as you love your partner, or your family. So I think that's not something that can be judged for. I just don't get why people cares so much about other people, live and let live.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39566136?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.com/news/topics/5dab232e-e90c-4db6-8a29-020ec21ae69f/chechnya&link_location=live-reporting-story

Another half of my family

In this post I'm going to talk about the other half of my family, my mother's family. I don't remember a lot of things from my great-grand mother, because she died when I was only 5, so I only have some images in my head. The parents of my mum are Juan and Maria. I haven't met Juan because he died when my mother was 18, but my grandmother told me a lot of things about him, he was very clever and a hard-worker, and in my grandmother's eyes he was so handsome. Maria, is the most chatty person I ever known, she loves to talk and argue with everyone. She is very active, she goes for a walk every morning with her friends, and in the evenings she goes to the gym. She is very happy and full of joy, even after everything that she has been through. I love spending time with her, because she always explains to me stories from her childhood and she is so funny. She loves all her family and she always takes care of everyone. She and Juan had 5 children.

Toñi (Antonia), is the oldest. She is 53 and she has a son, Juan Raul. Although she has never done sport before, she started running and riding the bike when she was 50 and now she is running marathons and triathlons. She married Raul ,but now they are divorced. Their son, Juan Raul is 14, he is tall and fat, but he is so funny. When you are with him you can't be serious, he is so silly and I know that when I'm going to see him I am going to laugh a lot. He is also a little bit irresponsible and I hope that with time he will change. 

The second one is my mother, Marian and she married Ramon, my father and they had 3 children, me and my siblings but I'm not going to talk about us because I have already done it in some posts before.

The third one is my aunt Merce, she is 48 and she married Nacho. Merce is very funny and happy. She works as a scientist in a research laboratory. Nacho, her husband works as a fireman and he loves going to the mountain and all kinds of risk sports. They have two children, Nacho and Patricia. Nacho is 14 and he plays water-polo in Albacete, he is very energetic and he can't be motionless. Patricia is 11 and she is so sweet and clever, I'm sure she will get what she wants in life because she is very hard-working. 

My aunt Vicky (Victoria ) is the third one and when I was little I was always with her. I remember that every time she came to Empuriabrava she brought me a painting book. She is 46 and she is very happy and she loves to make the most of her time. She married Alex and he was so kind to me, and I love him so much in spite of the fact they are now divorced. They have twins, Martina and Alejandro and they are 5 years old. They are so sweet and intelligent, I love them so much.

Finally, my uncle Juan Carlos, he is 42 and he isn't married. He works in a prison, so he is so brave.

I'm so proud of my family and I wish I could see them more because they are 7 hours from here and I miss them so much.

Burgos

In this post I'm going to talk about our experience in Burgos. This year the travel assigned to scientific first of batxillerat was  to Burgos and Leon. 

At 5 a. m. we were at the high school ready to set off on our trip. We had to take the bus to get to Burgos. It wasn't very boring because we slept all the route. We stopped at 1 p. m in a service station to have lunch and we arrived at Burgos at 4 p. m. We left our luggage in the hotel and we went to visit the cathedral. To be honest it was a little bit boring but more than anything because it was too long, and it was a little bit cold inside. After that, we had free time to do whatever we wanted so we went out for tapas because we were so hungry. We spent maybe 3 hours sitting at the bar chatting and eating. We ate so much food that when it was dinner time we weren't hungry, but that wasn't a problem because the hotel made us a bread soup that didn't make a very good impression. We went to our room and we went to sleep.

The next day we went to the human evolution museum. I think it was pretty interesting, they showed us some archaeological ruins like bones from prehistoric people or the tools that they used to use. After that we went to the archaeological site where these bones and tools were found. It was a little bit boring because although we couldn't enter in the sites, they explained to us the same that we had heard in the museum, and to top it all it was so windy and cold. That day, we had lunch in the most fancy restaurant of the trip, I was so hungry and the food was so good. In the afternoon we went to the CAREX which is a place when you learn how our ancestors made their rudimentary knives or how they hunted, etc. After that, we went back to the hotel where we had dinner and we went to sleep.