Benjamin's Amish challenge (it is well written, isn't it?)

The last weekend I quit watching TV (no more movies) and I quit Twitter. In regard to the social network, I  enjoy reading the frustrations of the"couch activists". I thought:  "What would happen if their combative hashtags change the world and I miss it? Soon there will be time for their unintentional humor."  I went on and did not look back.

I spent the Sunday hanging around with my sisters. Awesome! It was very funny and I remembered the important things of the life. Now that I think about it, I was in a curious situation: because of the Amish restriction I made something that is commonly replaced by a message with a lot of emoticons. But we cannot always do everything, it is the fatality.

But, what if the Amish  were  right about the "evil telephones"? I understand that they see the telephones like a hindrance for the face-to-face communication. It is rude when you are talking to someone and this person does not stop of  checking  the cellphone. It is not about religion but manners.

 

Te Amish Challenge

To carry out the Amish challenge, I stopped playing the Goodgame Empire online game, that I usually play every day, for two or three hours, while I check my students homework.

                The first day I give up the game I was a little bit anxious because the game goes on no matter if I am on line or not, and I wanted to know what was happening there. The next day I stopped worrying about the game, but I needed some distraction because it if a hard task to check my students homework, and I cannot do it without a pause, so I checked Facebook and read more than I use to. Apart from that, my life does not change really in these days.

                I think that, nowadays, technology is an essential part of our life, and it is everywhere. I don’t know if it is for bad or for good, but I also do not know if the Amish life style is a better way of living (I would not like this kind of society control in my life, for example). I just believe that, whatever we do in our lives, we should do it after giving us a little time to think and being aware about the reasons behind our actions. For example, not to answer the cell phone, and interrupt a conversation or whatever we are doing, only because it is ringing; but also not to speak if you do not want or not have any interesting or useful to say, even when the customs of your society says that you have to have a constant communication with other people.

I love basketball!

Well I'll be honest: I'm not a very good basketball player; I'd like to be it. But I used to play basketball at High School in my free time with some friends. I played also football, but Basketball is indeed more special for me. In Basketball I can jump and move my hands and that makes me feel good, it's a special sensation.

I haven't practiced enough to be better, because I hadn't been challenged and I didn't take it so serious. But today I went to a park to throw the ball a couple of times, and a guy asked me to play with him and I accepted. I thought it was going to be funny, and it was. But I lost the game 12 to 3! I felt so frustrated!

But in that situation, I knew that I had a new challenge, a very good one. Now, if I want to improve my skills in basketball and play better, I have to continue practicing and playing with people. I shouldn't stop here. I think I'll be playing twice a week, because it is an opportunity of growing and enjoying.

I hope to make a progress and write a new comment!

Lego Creations

Hi everyone! Here are the objects you made with Lego. I was impressed that most were able to not only write good instructions, but that most were able to follow them and re-create the objects almost (if not) perfectly. Good work! :)

First we have Hungry Samurai Knight, guarding his section of the Great Wall:

Secondly, there is the famous kamikaze pilot known to all as Angry Butterfly:

Next, we have The Uncomfortable Alien (I think he sat on something lumpy):

Our fourth creation is General Motor sitting on his prototype vehicle, the Skyscraper. This particular make of vehicle did not sell well due to its precarious seating arrangement and lack of two extra wheels.

Finally, we have the Happy Hovercraft. This man has two controls - and he looks in control.

Task 2

Hi everyone!

Below are the indications for Task 2 (the cover letter).
See you tomorrow :)

CELE-UNAM

W-003

Task 2

Cover Letter

Research and find a job vacancy or position in an academic institution that interests you according to your academic profile, and write a cover letter as an “application” for that position. Do some research on the company/institution so that you can give relevant information. If you are still completing your first degree, project yourself a few years into the future and talk as if the year were 2016 or 2018 and you can fulfil all the requisites. J 

Your cover letter is due, with the information from the website posting (so I can check it), on Tuesday 20^th August to be handed in during class.

You’ll be evaluated on the layout of the letter, formal language used, correct addressing, relevant information about yourself and an appropriate closing. Some basic errors will also be checked.

Adriana Herrera

Adriana Herrera studied Economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) She use to study related topics with social development. Currently, she is writing her thesis about the Economics of obesity. Also she studied the international regulation from bank and securities system. She also works with international relevant topics at Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV).

In the spare time, she enjoys dancing and watching movies, also she use to play tennis and swimming. You can get in touch with her by e-mail: adrianaherdo@gmail.com, or by this blog in many different languages: French, English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese.  

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Sandra Alfaro

Sandra Alfaro was born some years ago in Mexico City, from an early age showed interest in working with children because she thinking since that age the child can learn attitudes available to make a better world, so since 2006 she has taught preschoolers.

Sandra enjoys her job, besides eating, resting in a place away from noise, traveling, meeting places, spend time with friends and family, drinking coffee, swimming, running, listening to music (rock, blues, etc.) and always looking for new things to be doing and learn. Sometimes looking to add more hours to the day.

Hugo Dinorin Calderon

Hugo Dinorin Calderon is a student of Chemical Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Born in Mexico City in 1992, moved to Teziutlan, Puebla, his father's brithplace, in 2004. Seven years later, he came back to Mexico City in order to study his major.

Since he was in elementary school, Mr. Dinorin has stood out as a good student with a high GPA and also has participated in several Spanish and Math contests.

After he finishes his major, Mr. Dinorin wants to study a master degree in Germany. This is why he started to learn German 2 years ago. Thanks to that, he discovered he enjoys learning about other languages and cultures. Now, he is also planing to study other languages like Japanese, Portuguese and Italian.

Beatriz Lara

Beatriz Lara is a student of Communication Sciences at UNAM. Born in Mexico City in 1993, she moved to San Juan del Río, Querétaro at age 8. During the time she spent there she got involved in artistic activities such as ballet and drama lessons and in her spare time she started writing poetry.

In 2009, she entered Escuela Nacional Preparatoria number six, so she moved back to the city and start living with her grandmother. At this institution, Beatriz developed her ability for idioms, she took two basic-intermediate courses of Italian plus two more of advanced English which allowed her to receive FCE and CAE certificates in 2011 and 2012.

Currently she is studying third semester and later on, she intends to major in Journalism. Betty is still interested on arts, when she manages to organize all her academic duties; she assists to plays, concerts, dance performances or museums. Also, on Christmas holiday and summer vacation she likes to visit her parents and younger brother at San Juan del Río and also meet with her old friends over there.

Milton Álvarez

Milton Álvarez was born in Mexico city in 1985, he is a mechanical engineer and all his professional education has been given by UNAM Enginnering Faculty. Currently Álvarez is a fluid mechanics professor and PhD Student, his concentration area is computacional fluid dynamics (CFD). Álvarez's current work is about a classical fluid mechanics experiment made by G.I. Taylor (1929) and it is entitled " Taylor vortex with anular fins in the inner cylinder", the study has experimental and numerical results. The experimental part is made by particle image velocimetry technique (PIV) where a LASER is employed to describe de flow behavior and the numeric part is made by Reynolds average Navier-Stokes equations model (RANS) which is an aproximation to Navier-Stokes equation.

Another face of his life are sports, he loves boxing, soccer and running. He thinks that this is a great way to improve your physical and mental states at the same time.

Jennifer Izquierdo

Jennifer Izquierdo was born in 1992 in Villahermosa, Tabasco. She lived in her birth place until she moved to Mexico City in 2010.
She is a third grade student of geophysical engineering at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico.  Jennifer adores math and field job, she enjoys going to cinema and reading any kind of texts.  She is looking for a master degree in petroleum exploration and hopes to travel around the world.
She lives with her younger brother called Freddy in an apparment in Mexico City.

Mónica Guevara Maldonado

Born in 1994, in Mexico City, Monica Guevara is completing her 2nd year as a medicine student. She has been studying in UNAM since 2009. During her studies Monica took a course in Histopathology and discovered that science was her passion.

One of her goals is to become a successful doctor who really worries about people’s health and not only for her personal benefit.

In the last year, she’s been working on a statistical study to detect childhood obesity due to the increase of this disease, looking for a way to promote more conscious in parents.

When it’s about fun, music and movies are her favorite words. Monica really loves going to the cinema. 

Ma. Fernanda Fdz. Aulis

Ma. Fernanda Fdz. Aulis was born in Mexico City since 24 years ago. She is a food chemistry and she studies a master in chemistry in UNAM. Her research is about natural colorants from maize, sages and others berries native from Mexico. She enjoys a lot her topic. Currently she is an auxiliary teacher in the chemistry faculty.  She had participated in two national congresses and she will have gone to international one in September which will take place in Portugal. In the future, when she finishes her master, she wants to study a PhD in US.

In her spare time she enjoys swimming, running and reading. She swims at least two times a week in CU’s pool. She reads about history because it is something completely different what she usually reads in her school.

She also likes the flowers and garden all related with nature. This year, she grows strawberries, lemon, chilly and tomatoes in her garden and she enjoys take care her plants.

AC´s Bio Blurb.

Aldo Chong´s Bio Blurb.

   Aldo Chong is a young man, born in 1994. He has been studying Economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Living in Mexico City his whole life, he has enjoyed all kind of things: From eating "Enchiladas" (one of his favoite dishes) to visiting important arqueological places like the "Templo mayor".

   Since 2012, Aldo has been coursing his university studies. In four years more he will have finished his mayor and will get his Economist title. He is planning to study something about tecnology also.

   The first sport he practiced was Judo at the age of 8 and he got some medals in tournaments.Then when he was 10 years old, he started swimming and he is still doing it. Aldo is a dog-lover and of course he has a beautiful "Labrador Retriver" of his own.

   Today, he lives with his parents and sister. His dream is to raise a family with his girldfriend, have a good house and of course, doing his part to make this world better.

Joshua Belmontes

Joshua Belmontes is a student of Economics at UNAM. Born in Mexico in 1990, Joshua grew up with his family in Mexico City. Passionately  interested in meeting new cultures, he lived with native people from Honduras in April 2013.

Since 2012 Joshua has posted writings in his personal blog. Known for his particular way  of writing, he has touched the hearts of his readers by suggesting new ideas. Also, he gives strong arguments to defend his points of view. 

Joshua is working to get his grade in Economics, but also he's studying English and German to enhance his abilities with languages and get more chances to meet new people. So then Joshua is working in increase his knowledge in Economics to become a good firms consultant.

But for Joshua that's not enough because he wants to suggest ideas for regional development in poor locations. Joshua enjoys the time he can spend with friends and family. For him these are valuable things, even though he is doing his best to grow in his personal goals.

Edwin León

Edwin León is a twenty-five-year-old mexican actor and director. Born in Naucalpan, Estado de México, he currently lives in Cuautitlán. Always passionate about Performing Arts, Edwin started his formal drama studies at Mauricio Garmona’s Acting Workshop in FCPyS – UNAM, institution where he also studied the major in Communication Sciences.

In 2010, Edwin entered to the Theatre course at INBA’s Escuela de Iniciación Artística No. 2. Since then, he has taken extra contemporary dance and singing courses to enrich his artistic abilities. Up to now, the young artist has performed seven plays, two short films and two choreographic works.

The last show that Edwin performed was an expressionist montage called Bernardas, an adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s play, La Casa de Bernarda Alba, directed by Miguel Solórzano; with a season of twenty performances in 2013. His debut as a theatre director was in 2012 with the staging La tarde en que los amantes se encontraron por primera vez by Bárbara Colio. 

Nowadays, Edwin León is rehearsing two new plays and writing his thesis to obtain the Communication Sciences degree.

Cinthia B. García Luna

Cinthia García is the author of several scientific book chapters and articles, and a curious world traveler. Born in 1984, she has lived in Mexico city her entire life; where she began to take interest in studying eating behavior. She studied Nutrition at Dietetics and Nutrition School, and graduated in 2009 with a dissertation about Central Nervous System’s genes that regulate food intake and their link with Anorexia Nervosa. From 2009-2011, she studied a Master in Genomic Sciences focusing her research in depression and Anorexia. Since 2011, Cinthia has been working in her Ph. D research, which studies the relationship between prenatal stress, obesity and food reward.

Besides her professional background, Cinthia enjoys attending to rock concerts, knowing new cultures and reading a book. She is planning to learn to play the piano and to speak French. Furthermore, she wants to know at least one country of each continent, to have fun with every new experience and enjoy life.

Fátima Fabiola Domínguez Aburto Huesca

Fatima Domínguez is currently a student of “Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language”. She was born and still lives in Mexico City.

From 1999 to 2008 she studied her elementary  and secondary school at Ameyalli,  a private bilingual school. Here she tried a lot of different activities, from painting to first aids. At the secondary school Fatima competed in inter-scholar contest of calaverita writing and poetry declamation. She studied her high school at UNAM. During that time Fatima started to study Italian and Japanese.

After, Fatima decided to study Earth Sciences at the Science School. But it didn’t take long to realize that she like languages better. After considering some ridiculous possibilities for studying she chose her current major.

The languages and the cultures are what she loves the most. In 2012 Fatima was one of the finalist in Mexico’s National Oratory Contest in Japanese, in the basic level. But her favourite activity is to translate songs to spanish.

Estefanía Cervantes-Lara

Estefanía Cervantes-Lara is an alternative open-minded psychologist! She was educated at UNAM in Faculty of Psychology. Now she’s writing her thesis “Quality of Laboral Life” which tries to detect what are the main factors that cause a better or worst life (personal and work), she hopes to finish before Christmas day.  One of her dreams is going to study a master degree in Germany but first she needs to get a degree as a Psychologist.

Born in the amazing Mexico City in 90’s. In her spare time, she enjoys doing exercise, listening new music, going to gigs or reading something fascinating. Basically, she wants to discover new points of view in many ways.

For more on Estefanía, you could follow on twitter @steff_exposed.

César A. Morales

Son of the late 80’s, César Aurelio Morales-Pérez is an animal-devoted professional. Rencently graduated from veterinary school at UNAM, by the end of his major studies he enroled in the research area; he coursed an academic program in Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición SZ, working on laboratory animal’s medicine and colaborating on teaching. Nowadays, He is doing his social service in Centro Médico Nacional Siglo XXI, participating in the project: “Feline AIDS as a valuable model on Human AIDS research.”

But not everything about him comes to the professional life, in fact, he enjoys simply many of the simple things life brings to him: walking, running, riding a bike, watching flowers bloom, listening to music, playing his wooden guitar, and  of course playing with his tireless dog Capi.

Bio blurb: Andrés Rubio

Andrés Rubio is an Economics student on Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He was born in May 5th, 1994 in Toluca (Estado de México). He has lived in very different places such as Tijuana, Baja California and Mexico City. He loves his career and wants to be a stock runner one day when he becomes and economist.
He is a member of AIDS Health Foundation (AHF) and works there as a volunteer helping recent-diagnozed people with HIV. He considers himself as a bookworm of not only economic books, also he reads fiction novels and philosophy books. In his free time he enjoys writing short stories.

Rodrigo Ivan Osnaya Ramirez

Ivan Osnaya is a half Ph.D. student half musician (depends on the time of the day), he studied psychology in the faculty of psychology at UNAM but now he is doing research in the area of food intake and metabolism in the faculty of medicine, Ivan has been involved in the processes that underlay the behavior, specifically the motivated behavior,in the past two years has participated in researches that have tried to discover the link between food intake, reward mechanisms and obesity. Ivan has written in one chapter of a book that is about obesity and also has appeared in a newspaper where his research about sleep loss and obesity was published, and now he is in process to publish his thesis in the faculty of psychology. But when the night arrived he is a musician who plays in a band called Amortal (you can search it in facebook and give them a like) in which he is the lead guitar and a co-writer of the song's lyrics, Ivan recorded the first EP of his band and now he wants to study musical production in order to record his own music and to help other bands to spread their music. Ivan was born in mexico city and he has no plans of escape of his problematic city.

Verónica Hernández Landa Valencia

Born in Mexico City, in 1981, Verónica Hernández Landa Valencia is starting her career as a researcher in Mexican literature of the nineteenth century. Hernández has a master degree in Literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México —awarded with the medal Alfonso Caso—, and she is about to finish her Ph.D. —in the same university— with a dissertation about the representation of Colonial times in Mexican Historical Novels published in the period known as Restored Republic.

Participation in international congresses about literature, publications in academic journals and teaching undergraduates in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, have been part of Hernández’s academic activities in the last four years.

Her passion for history and literature encompass almost all areas of her life, so she is a member of a group of friends who get together to share their knowledge about Middle Ages. Sometimes they prepare medieval food or share stories about these ancient times.   

Benjamín Macedo

Benjamín Macedo was born in Estado de Mexico, but he has lived almost his whole life in Mexico City. He studies Informatics at the FCA by means of the Open System. Working for managing Linux-based systems, he plans to implement the new technologies to support projects for the education and training for students and teachers.
After a long time working as a carpenter, Benjamín had the inspiration to make " a little difference in the state of things", so he returned to the school. Now, he likes the web design, the code programming, the informatic security and the maths. This might seem boring, but he is a good person.
Because of the boom of the social networks, Benjamín understand their importance not only as a ludic activity, but as a valuable tool por knowledge acquisition. Therefore, he is against of the people who spread hatred and racism, or even worse, political pamphleteering or conspiracy theories.
Currently, he lives in a peaceful hill on the outskirts of the city  where the only nice thing is the view.         

 

Welcome

Hi everyone! Welcome to your blog. Feel free to post whatever and whenever you wish, and to comment on what others post. You may find you have a lot in common with other people! Remember that good writing comes with practice, not just by turning up to class. So take advantage of all the opportunities you can! If you have written something in English in the past that you'd like to share, feel free to post that as well.
I wish you all the best for the semester! Have fun! :)
Shelley