Fashion models expose sexual harassment

This news talks about the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme that showed some stories of models that had been sexually harassed.

It mentions some short stories from different models. The first one is Marissa who says that she was doing a photo shoot for a jeans brand and when she took a break and came back, the photographer wanted her to make “a performance” for him. The second model is an anonymous one; she says that a stylist wanted to kiss her against her will, so she pushed him away and he ended up masturbating next to her, and the worse part of it is that this stylist is still working in the same place.

There are a few reports more from other models like photographers who wanted nude photos, or molestations by photographers or stylists.

Personal opinion

I simply haven’t got words for all these events, I don’t understand how evil can people be. I mean, when these models are posing for a photographer, they are working to get some money from it; they don’t need to go through all this abuse. The most shocking about all this, is that most of the assailants turn out uninjured and are still working with other girls. In my opinion, a worker who molests anyone as, little as it might be, should be fired and punished by law.

Another sentence that has me freaking out is the next one: "I told my agent about my abuse, they told me to 'stay quiet, he's too important to lose as a client'" I can’t believe that someone can play down something as big as an abuse. This agent has even thought how the model felt when “the important” photographer abused from her? I think not, this man clearly has neither empathy nor heart.

To sum up, I think that this should be more reported to put all these abusive workers in jail.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42230705

Self-evaluation

A few weeks ago, a friend and I did an oral presentation about dreams. We thought it was a curious topic to develop considering that everybody dreams and not everyone knows why  we dream or what's the meaning of the dreams. We explained what they were, how they happen, the 5 stages of sleep, the meaning of some dreams and sleep disorders.

To support our explanation we used a power point which was pretty complete, but not excessively. We used images and some key words to help us remember and manage all the information. Although we could have expanded on the topic, we only explained the essential so the presentation lasted more or less what it had to last, nine minutes.

My body language was not bad because I looked at the audience, but I think that I could make more gestures with my hands and arms. I read sometimes from my notes but just when I couldn't remember a word or I went blank.

I consider that the content was pretty good because as I said before, this is not a topic that everyone knows a lot about so we introduced new information to the audience. The information was clear and concise, just enough to get to know the topic superficially.

Regarding the grammar, I think the only complex words were the technical ones because I still don't know why,but I didn't say the things I wrote in my paper, on the contrary it came naturally. For this reason I think that although everything was easy to understand (when I didn't get tongue-tied), my vocabulary was not very rich and varied. As I said, although I got tangled up, I think my pronunciation was pretty good and everybody understood what I wanted to say.

Volleyball

In this post I want to talk about volleyball and what it means to me. Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net, and the aim of the team is ground the ball in the other team's field.

I've been playing volleyball since I was 12; a bunch of girls wanted to start a volleyball team in Castelló, so we did it. Some of us had never touched a ball before, but we were willing to learn. Nowadays, five years later 5 of us original girls are still playing together  in Sant Pere Pescador. 

I always think that I started playing real volleyball when I moved to Sant Pere, in 2014. That year was the first one that we played in a higher level, and we started to play every weekend.

Every training and every match made us better, in each match there was something better than the match before, we were improving week to week, until now. We still keep learning every day. Thanks to our new trainer, we started to learn a team works, we learnt to trust in our teammates, we learnt values such as commitment, cooperation and unity. 

Since 2014 nothing has changed, there are some new girls and other ones who have left it, but as my trainer says, the ones who really want to play volleyball, who don’t mind spending all the afternoon in the sports complex supporting other teams or playing, the ones who wake up at dawn to take the bus and drive for 3 hours to play, even if the night before was carnival. These are the girls that keep playing.

I am so proud of my team, we are a very united team, on and off the field, and that’s because we spend a lot of time together, not only in trainings but because almost every time that we play in another town or city we have to stay there and have lunch or dinner, so we talk and laugh a lot. Also, every year we go to another city to play a tournament, so we spend a complete weekend together. Nowadays, thanks to all these things we do, there is a lot of confidence with all the teammates and with the trainer.

To sum up, I want to say that volleyball has made me live experiences and feelings that I couldn’t live if I didn’t play. I wouldn’t change at all the feeling of making a point during a difficult match, and celebrate it all together or the adrenaline that you feel after a good match. Playing volleyball is my passion, and thanks to it I have met a lot of fantastic people and spent a great time with them.

'Butterfly child' given life-saving skin

This piece of news talks about Hassan, a boy who suffers from an odd genetic disease called junctional epidermolysis bullosa that leaves his skin fragile as a butterfly’s wing therefore the title of the news. This sickness means Hassan’s DNA lacks the instructions for sticking his epidermis to the dermis.

There was no cure, but a team of biologists specialising in gene therapy helped the family, and the parents, desperate because their child was going to die, approved the experimental therapy. They extracted from him a little bit of his skin and they injected a virus that inserted in Hassan’s DNA, the instructions to stick his epidermis to the dermis.

Nowadays, his skin is totally functional and there’s no sign of blistering.

Although this treatment is not currently available to the public, with some improves it could be a therapy that lasts a lifetime.

Personal opinion

From my point of view, science is making progress at full speed. Every day the world discovers and learns lots and lots of new things, and this is something amazing. Although, it could be good like new treatments or medicines, it could also be bad, like new weapons or bombs. But in this case, science has won and these scientists have probably discovered a cure for this illness.

I believe that maybe if this boy had been born to a different family, maybe he wouldn’t had survive, because nowadays there is still a lot of people who don’t believe in new science and refuse to try new treatments. Thanks to him and his family, science has taken a step forward and probably found a new solution to an illness.

Goosebumps

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41914101

2nd of batxillerat

In this post I want to talk about how my second year of batxillerat is going. Maybe it's a little bit early to talk about it, but it already feels like there has been no summer, like if we hadn’t stopped. We started the first day so hard, and I thought well this year I know what is batxillerat, so I’m going to review everything we do every day, I’m going to be up to date, I will not leave till later what I can do at the time… Yes, well, that’s impossible. Maybe you can do it for the first week, but once you get the first exam you can say goodbye to your organization, because before you can summarize or revise whatever you did in class, you will have to do an essay, advance TdR, or study for another exam, so your perfect planning for the week is not plausible.

Since we started, we haven’t had a single week without an exam, maybe the two first weeks but from that point we have had an exam every week, if it’s not a subject it’s another, and besides we have to do homework, essays, and review what we’ve done in class. And yes, if we did all this just for one subject it will be fine, but no, all these things aren’t just for one but 9. Additionally, I’m not a robot; I’m only a human that needs to sleep, to eat and to have free time. When I don’t have volleyball training, I spend all the afternoon locked in my room studying, and doing all kind of school work. I need to socialise or I will freak out soon. I thank the universe that somehow we manage to go out every two weeks more or less because otherwise I would already be out of my mind.

I know that we are doing batxillerat because “we want to”, that we could drop out of school if “we want to”. But no, you have to keep studying and working hard if you want a proper life. And I’m tired, this is not what I want for my life, I don’t want to spend the next four or five years locked in my house, stressed because I will fail exams or I won’t deliver works on time. I want to live, I want to explore the world, I want to die satisfied with how my life has been.

I’m aware that I can’t change all this, that it’s hard because it has to be, so I’m going to get the best out of it, I’m going to keep working to improve my marks and above all, I will enjoy every moment I can.      

TOC TOC

A few days ago, I went to the cinema and I saw a film called "Toc Toc". This film is about 6 people who have OCD; one is a woman who can't touch anything and if she does it, she has to wash her hands right after that; another one is a man who can't stop counting things; there is another girl who repeats everything she says; there is another man who says swear words constantly and it's out of his control; the other one is a woman that has to have everything under her control, she has to make sure almost every minute if she has her keys or she has locked her house, etc; and the last one is a maniac about order.

So, the thing is, they went to see a doctor, and when they got there it turns out that the six of them were summoned at the same time and to make matters worse, the doctor’s flight was delayed. At the beginning they refused to do group therapy, but they end up talking to each other and expressing their feelings to each other.

This film made me think of all these disorders; people who suffer from it, are completely conscious that they have it, but at the same time they do it unconsciously. In my point of view all these obsessions become a problem because you let them be a problem, I mean, maybe one day you are walking in the street and you start to avoid the lines, if you keep doing it, it will end becoming an OCD, but if you realize that you are dodging lines, maybe you can stop it.

Saying that it can be stopped I’m not saying that OCD is nonsense because I really think it’s a problem. Sometimes, I don’t know why, but I get out of my house, and I have the feeling that the door isn’t close or the lights aren’t off, so although I am sure that I close it I have to go back and check it to get rid of that feeling, on account of this I can’t imagine how would it be if I had to check those things not just one time, but 10.

Some people think that people who suffer from OCD are just obsessive people, but behind this there is a whole list of problems that come with that disorder.

Does humour play an important role in life?

We all know humour is what makes people laugh, and that's the healthiest thing in life. It takes away stress and pain, furthermore, it binds people together.
Imagine just for a second a world without humour or laughter, how would it be? All day working or doing anything in absence of smiles, like robots, it could be so much worse than it is now.
From my standpoint, a life without humour is not life, I mean, you have to enjoy every minute of your life and it my view it can't happen with no humour.
A life cut off humour would be sad and depressing, that's why humour is so important, to keep bad thing away from our life.