Piece of New ~

Hello classmates (: , today I am going to talk about a  tradition that, to me, it’s terrible. Annually, thousands of girls are subject of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Indonesia. This tradition consists in “cutting off part of the hood and/or tip of the clitoris with scissors, a blade or a piece of sharpened bamboo”. The Islamic institutions that perform the intervention explained that this is realized to control the women’s sexual urges. This proceeding involves physical and psychological risks to the girls that undergo this.  In a country like Indonesia, which is considered by geopolitical standards like a “superstar” in Asian region, the world’s fourth-largest country and most populous Muslim nation of 240 million people, it results weird that a tradition like FGM is legitimate, above all this is not an obligatory practice for the Islamism.  Today, most of Indonesian hospital offers a pack to the parents for newborn baby girl, which includes the costs of childbirth; the ear perforation and the genital mutilation.  If parents didn’t take this option, there are foundations that do the intervention in schools, disguising this like a party for the girls.

I choose these piece of new because, to us and for medicine’s eyes, the female genital mutilation it’s a barbaric tradition, but like the news says, to the Islamic people it must be perpetuated, so I think anthropology must try to understand the reasons why they try to preserve this and try to get a solution that conciliate both opinions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/18/female-genital-mutilation-circumcision-indonesia

Hombre mirando al sudeste~

  Hello everyone! The movie that I’m going to talk it’s called “Hombre mirando al Sudeste”, it’s an Argentinian drama movie, but it also includes elements of science fiction.  The movie was filmed in 1986; the director is the Argentinian Eliseo Subiela. The movie tells the story of Rantés, a man that appears in a psychiatric hospital saying that he cames from another planet to investigate the human stupidity, because this is the only human weapon that the people from his planet doesn’t know how to fight.  The character of Rantés is performed by Hugo Soto, and the doctor who tries to help he it’s perfomed by Lorenzo Quinteros.

I saw this movie when I was in a class of cinema in a cultural center.  I enjoyed it because, being the principal character a man that says that he is an alien, he does a critical to the society, the mistakes that humans do, and he does it because it’s like an external agent. I like it too because all the music it’s composed by Pedro Aznar, and also I like the fact that the director relates the scenes on the movie with pieces of others artists, reproducing paintings like “the lovers” of  Magritte, or sculptures like “la pieta” of Miguel Angel. This movie it’s also important to me because when I came back to my home after the class, I told my mom that I have saw this movie and she tells me that this was also one of her favourites movies, and she saw it with my dad when they where boyfriends, so it’s a pleasure that I share with my mom (:  

Greatest Chilean~

Hello everyone!. There’s a lot of Chileans that I admire, like Juan Carlos Bodoque or Alberto Hurtado, but today I’m going to talk about one that I have heard about since I was a child, because my mom admires him a lot, and now in university we are studying his life and deeds in detail. I’m talking about Clotario Blest.

He was the father of syndicalism and worker’s organization. I think that Clotario’s deeds are important because he was conscious that being organized was the best way to confront the employers and to fight for what workers want to obtain. I think he was a personification of consistency and commitment with his cause, to build a better country, more fair to everyone. He lived his commitment with his cause every day of his life. He was a pacifist, admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, and he achieves to combine the ideas of social fighting with his catholic faith. Was a critic of political parties, being a defender of the political and social movements.

He defends the idea of “direct act”, which is understood as the resolution of troubles for the people, without waiting that the government does that, or forcing the government to respond. He also takes part in other political activities, like the defense of Human Rights during the dictatorship in Chile.

If I could ask anything to Clotario, it would be something like “¿What we have to do to change this situation?” or “¿How we have to organize ourselves? I think he was some of those persons that came only a few times in history to do great things, and are full of   knowledge. As I said before, I have heard about Clotario since I was a child, because my mom admires him a lot, and now I know more about him and I admire him too.
I also think that my mom is one of the greatest Chileans of all time. Bye!! :D 

Presents! :D

For my seventeenth birthday, my brother came to my house with a giant box; the box was very big and very pretty. When I opened the box, it was full of candies. There were chocolates, biscuits, all the candies that you can imagine…and more. I loved it because ¡I love the food! ¡I LOVE IT A LOT! I love to eat, and I love candies. I remember that the arsenal of candies was so big that I was eating candies from that box during two months. My brother gave it to me because he said that my seventeenth birthday was my last birthday as a child, because the next year I will be eighteen and I will be “an adult”. Now, I preserve the box in my room, and there I keep things like pictures, plain tickets, recital tickets and things like that, is my “box of memories”.

Well another present that I received has been the surprise birthday parties that my friends have planed for me, I talk in plural because it wasn’t ONE surprise birthday party, they have organized THREE surprise parties, and the most incredible is that they have been consecutives, and for none of them I have ever suspected anything.  I suppose I am extremely absentminded. Well, the three surprise parties have been THE BEST! I love my friends  :D ! 

Language ~

Hello! Well, I have to talk about the ideas developed by Mark Pagel in his speech “How language transformed humanity”. I think that the most of the time, we don’t think about how our language is a power tool, as Pagel says, it’s the trait that makes possible the cooperation between people, that makes possible the exchange of knowledge, the learning and because of that, it makes possible the progress of our specie. We owe to the language the existence of the culture. At the same time, Pagel talks about the language and the construction of identity, I think the language put barriers in the exchange of knowledge but at the same time it built cultural identity, so more than a conscious determination to protect knowledge, I think language is an expression of cultural mentality, it reflects the mentality, preferences and habits of the group that belong to. For example, the Chileans have a different form to talk the Spanish that the Spaniards or other Spanish-speakers, that sometimes doesn’t understand what we say, and we supposed to talk the same language. I think my form to talk form my identity as individual and as a Chilean because of that, because it shows how I appoint my reality, it’s the expression of my form to see the things, and what things I see daily. 

National Holidays

Hello ! (:
This year, my celebration of National Holidays was more familiar and relax than last year, it was good but also a little boring sometimes, so I think the National Holidays of the last year were better. The last year, my family decided to celebrate the National Holidays in Santiago, because we usually travel to Ovalle or Coquimbo to see my mom’s family. So, in Santiago, I was with my friends Samuel, Tomás, Ignacio, Josefina, Isidora (another Isidora, not me) and Francisca, and we decided to visit different fondas and places that where typically Chileans, so we went to “La Piojera” and drink terremotos, to the National Stadium’s fonda , and also visit another three or four fondas in different places,like Parque O’Higgins, Parque Inés de Suarez,etc. It was really fun, we dance cueca (none of us knew how to dance it, but we just did it), cumbia, rancheras, everything. We also did barbeque in different houses. I remember one day in a fonda, a friend tried to climb the “palo encebado”, he was a lot of time trying it and failing, it was sad...and ridiculous at the same time, so we were laughing until we get tired and then, we decided to help him, so between all the friends we lift him and my friend was happy because his dream came true, cheating, but he did it, so it’s fine. In fact, I think he didn’t remember it, because probably he was drunk. Bye :D ! 

Last Semester~

Well, the last semester was, at the beginning, really hard. I have to came back to the routine of the study and wake up early after almost five months of vacations. It was my first semester in the university, so I have to get used to mew methods and habits of study (because I didn’t have them when I was in school).
So I learned how to use better my time. Talking about knowledge, I learned a lot of new things because now I have subjects that are totally new for me, for example Archaeology, and even the subject of Anthropology, like ethnographies and all that things. I didn’t make a lot of sport activities, but one day, with the girls of my class, we arrange a female game of football, it was very fun! In fact, today we did it again, but this time against the girls of journalism.

The last semester I spent my time with my friends and family, visiting them, because I didn’t have much time to see them with the studies (this was a problem of last semester).  
It was a good semester, my family and friends are really good, so I thinks it everything alright (: