Christmas holidays

In this post I want to talk about Christmas and how I spend it year every year. To me, Christmas is the most beautiful celebration of the year, in fact it is the only thing that I like about winter (because I hate cold, and being an onion with all the jackets, scarfs and jumpers). A lot of people think that Christmas is becoming a materialistic holiday, and yes, obviously the industry gets a lot of money from all the presents, but I don’t think that Christmas has to lose its magic because of this. Apart from spending time with my family, the thing I love the most of Christmas time is the atmosphere; I mean, everyone is in the streets doing their Christmas shopping, the streets are full of lights and people singing Christmas carols… Everything is so magical and it reminds me when I was little and the eagerness I felt during these special dates.

As a tradition every year we decorate our Christmas tree on the long weekend of December, and then it’s when I feel that Christmas is about to start. When the school trimester comes to an end, me and my family pack the suitcase and hit the road to Barcelona. We used to stay in Barcelona from the 23^rd to the 27^th but this year for certain circumstances we only spent one night there, which makes me very sad because we almost didn’t have time to spend with my grandparents. But well, we had lunch all together on Christmas day, which by the way it was delicious and I couldn’t eat more. The following day we got back on the road to arrive to Albacete. We stayed there from the 26^th to the 3^rd of January. There we did a lot of things with our family; we were having lunch all together day in and day out, my grandmother took me and my cousins to the cinema, I saw my friends from there and all the time we spent there was great and perfect. Regarding New Year’s Eve, my sister and I used to spend it having dinner with all my family, but the last two years, although our heart hurt because we love having New Year’s dinners with our family, we decided to spend it with our friends in the village we go to in the summer. Well, after these Christmas days, the 3^rd of January we took the car again, but this time to go to a little village in Huesca to finish the holidays snowboarding. Apart from some falls, to be the second time we did snowboarding, it was quite good.

I have to say that my Christmas holidays have been perfect and every year is better than the year before.

Pakistan gang 'stole spinal fluid from women'

This piece of news talks about four people who stole spinal fluid from women to sell it on the black market. This happened in Pakistan, one of the members of the gang was acting like a doctor while he was telling his victims what did they had to do. The impostor told his preys that they had to give their blood samples to qualify to the Punjab government dowry fund. But when they had to extract the blood, the gang didn’t take women to the hospital, they took them into a house to perform the procedure.

Personal opinion

First of all, I have to say that every time I hear news like this one I can avoid thinking what kind of people they have to be, who they think they are? I mean, they aren’t anybody to be cheating people to get profit from them. Why is it so hard for everybody to behave well and be kind to each other? The world would be so much better than it is now.

On the other hand, I think that this kind of things happen when a country is not regulated enough, if this illegality was punished harder or maybe just more investigated there would be far less corruption like this. I know that it must be so difficult to rule a city but I'm sure there is a way to control all this bad incidents and protect more the residents of the country.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43042867

Self-evaluation

A few weeks ago, we had to do our research project presentation in English class. As I said in another post, my paper was about antimicrobial resistance.

To support my presentation I used a power point, in fact it was almost the same power point I used in my real presentation, so I think it was pretty accurate talking about the making up for between the images and the texts. Although it had to last 5 minutes, mine lasted 7 ,more or less ,but well, it doesn't matter, the more the better isn't it?

About body language, when I was doing it, I thought I was looking more at the public than I actually did, but it wasn't so bad given that I didn't read and I wasn't completely still, I moved around pointing at the screen to make myself clear. 

As for the content, I believe that it was good considering that I prepared the paper and the presentation over so many days, and regarding to the content, it doesn't matter if I did it in Catalan, the only thing I had to do was translate it, so that's why I think it was a great content. I tried to summarise the best I could to not make it tiresome.

Regarding the language, I think it was proper and quite good because I perceived that everyone understood me. But on the other hand it was not very complex, because as always, I wrote my paper with the perfect word for every moment but on the day it came out as it wanted, so I ended up talking normally. Finally with regards to my pronunciation, I did a very big mistake mispronouncing  antibiotic but well, the rest of the words I think were pretty good.

Research project

Last 15^th of January, the nightmare of the research project ended forever, no more stressing about the deadlines, no more experiments, no more surfing on the net for hours and hours to get information. It’s true that the paper itself, was delivered before Christmas, but we still had to do the presentation after Christmas so the stress of doing that was there.

I remember when I was in first of batxillerat and all the teachers told us that the students of second of batxillerat were doing the presentation of the projects, and I thought it was so far away from me, I mean, it was one year away, but here we are with all the work done.
We’ve been searching for information, reading articles, looking for experiments to do, and preparing the paper all summer long, to start the new school year with less work to do, yet, during the first trimester we had to do a lot of things, apart from all we had to do from high school (homework, essays, studying for exams…). In my case, although I had the theoretical part pretty advanced, I still had to keep doing it because it wasn’t as perfect as I wanted. On the other hand, I had to start the practical part, I knew what I wanted to do, but I had to do it, so I missed some classes to go to the lab, I had to stay in high school some afternoons… Even though I had to spend a lot of time, it wasn’t so bad given that I was doing something I like and I want to study it in the future.

Once I had all the paper done, I had to focus on the presentation, so I prepared my presentation, and I waited until my turn. I had the presentation at 5:30 pm therefore I saw a lot of my classmates going into their classrooms, and coming out happy and relieved while I was there super nervous. When the time came, I went into the class and I remember the worse moment ever was putting the pen in the computer and standing beside the screen. Once I said the first two phrases, everything else was so easy and fluid. When I ended, I was so overjoyed, I couldn’t believe that it was finally over; I felt so relieved and euphoric at the same time.

Nowadays, I can say that I am so proud of all that I have done and the mark I got. I’m so happy about the ending of all this stress, but, although the TdR is finished, we have to keep studying until selectivity.