My brother Ricard is now 15 years old. He is only 21 minths younger than me. He is studying in Sant Miquel dels Sants school, like me, and he is in the technology class because in the future he wants to do something related with engineering.

Ricard is as tall as me but sometimes with his spiky brown hair he looks taller than me, a fact that I don’t like at all to be honest. He is a little bit skinny but very muscular so he has a lot of strenght. His eyes are brown too and he has a small face just proportioned to his body and big feet. He takes a lot after my father.

At first when you meet him he looks like if he was a bit conceited or even stuck-up but this is because he is shy and he is always afraid of being ridiculous but then when you know him better you find out a really nice person, very honest and warm-hearted, a very good friend of his friends who is going to help anyone he cares about. He is a very easygoing boy and a very relaible person as well who you can trust in very easily. He has always been quite popular among the girls and he is not shy at all when he talks with girls or when he meets new friends but now he doesn’t have any girlfriend because he is still too young.

Ricard i very brave too. I mean he isn’t afraid of anything. He can ride his bike at a very high speed or he can watch a thriller film alone at night without any problem.

My brother is also pretty intelligent and he prefers scientific subjects because he is better at them. He doesn’t like reading and as all teenagers nowadays he spends too much time playing with the X-Box. In my opinion, his main short-coming now is that he doesn’t want to study because he doesn’t really like it so he doesn’t get the results he could and should have. Then he gets really disappointed and sometimes even angry.

Ricard is also very keen on all kind of sports. He plays roller hockey in the Manlleu Hockey Club and he does it very well. Sometimes when I go to see some interesting match I enjoy myself a lot because it is so exciting to see how well he can skate and moreover, when he can score some goals. He is very fond of motorbikes too and some weekends he takes his motorbike and goes with my parents to some circuits to train.

My brother is a very energetic person who never likes to have a nap because, according to him, it is a waste of time but at the end of the day, he is so tired that as soon as he goes to bed he immediately falls asleep.

At the moment he doesn’t know what he wants to do in the future so that is why this year with the subjects he has chosen he hopes to know which way to take. When he is interested in something then he devotes himself to it.

Anyway, Ricky is my only brother and for me he is the best brother in the world and altough we usually argue a lot i love him so much!

MY UNFORGETTABLE SUMMER

If I had to describe this summer I would say it has been very stressful, full of good memories and very funny with my family, friends and my boyfriend. 

It all started when we finished school that with our friends we went to Platja d’Aro to spend a week in the beach and going to clubs to relax and forget about all the routine. During the same week my friends from the other school also had holidays in an apartment in Salou so I had to divide this week in a half to spend the first one with my friends from Sant Miquel dels Sants and then the other half of the week with my friends of SEK-Catalunya. 

We are ready to party in Platja d'Aro!

In platja d’Aro we were eleven girls in a really small apartment and it was really difficult to live all together. There were always problems when it came to buy food or go to the beach, because everyone wanted to do something different so we argued a lot, but at the end we were there to enjoy the beginning of the summer so we decided to try and no to get on the nerves of the others and finally we had a lot of fun going together to the clubs and then to the beach to watch the stars and so on. We also met a lot of people and friends from Vic and also some more from Marianne’s and I old school so we had a really great time all together. 

In the picture above we are in a ship in Platja d'Aro and below in Port Aventura

My aim during that week was to get a sun tan, but as my name says, it’s really difficult for me to change my skin color and look better. When the days finished in Platja d’Aro Marianne and I had to go back to ours houses to do de laundry and pack again for the next days in Salou with our other friends. We had to go there by train as none of our parents could drive us there because they were working. It was very boring to go from Vic to Barcelona-Sants and then to Salou, because there was lot of people and the trains were not on time and all together it was really confusing and we were afraid to lose the train. Finally after a hard trip we arrived to the apartment with our friends and after unpacking we immediately went to the beach. We wanted to go with the banana in the water that tries you to fall in the middle of the sea but there were not available ones until the following week so we decided to go to Port Aventura which was really close. We spent there the whole day and it was so hot that it was impossible to go there without drinking water or being wet from the water in the park. We left the park when it was closing and we all fell asleep in the bus the way back to the apartment. We really had a great time in all of the different sites of the amusement park. We also had the express ticket so that we didn’t had to cue and some of the staff there in the park didn’t remembered to cross out the ones in which we were going to so that we could go there as many times we wanted without queueing. 

In Salou with my friends of my old school in La Garriga

The days in Salou ended and a morning after we went out to a disco my parents came to pick me up and went to Madrid with our friends from there but I was so tired that I slept all the way to Madrid. We were going to spend three days in a hotel in Alcalá de Henares with two families which we have been friends now for six years when we first met in Morocco. They are really nice people and they both have children the age of my brother and I. 

They prepared a tour through the entire city for us and it was really interesting because there they have a lot of cultural patrimony buildings. 

Aw! I almost forgot, this year I was not supposed to go to the USA as I had to do the obligatory essay called “Treball de recerca” that has to be done during the summer about a topic that interests you. Well so I had already in mind that I was going to spend all the August here in Torelló working and going out with my friends but in Madrid my parents told me that I was going with my brother to the USA. At first I was really against going there because I don’t like when I have something in mind and they change me my plans from the night to the day so I  was quite angry but a few hours later I thought that it was a really good opportunity to learn and practice English and this year a unique opportunity because my brother’s family from last year invited us again. As we didn’t went there with any company we wanted to pay some money to them for taking care of us during three weeks but they didn’t wanted anything so we only had the pay the plane ticket. Another think I hate about going to the USA is the time you have to spend in the plane. This year it was a flight of nine hours. Quite a lot, isn't it?

We were supposed to sleep during the flight to avoid the famous jet lag, but we couldn’t sleep as we were all the time watching films and listening to music. We arrived to the airport of Philadelphia at 2 am and the father of the family and the two sons were waiting there for us. I have to confess that I was really nervous about meeting them as they were not my family from last year…This nerves I had quickly went away when the father started talking. It was a really nice man and really funny. That evening we went to have dinner in a Chinese restaurant and I tried for the first time sushi. I have to admit that I thought it was going to be worst than it was. The father’s name was Mark, the mother’s name was Pam and the two boys, the one of 12 old years was called Joseph and the youngest one of 10 years old was Matthew. I thought that I would be a little uncomfortable being all boys in the house and younger than me but we really had a good time and they were very funny and nice although sometimes I would have killed them because they were always fighting and they had a TDH problem. I also met all the neighbors and they were all very nice and sometimes I went to their pool to spend the evening, as the ones in front of us were two girls of eighteen and fifteen years old.

Our family from the USA this three weeks in Philadelphia

During this three weeks we did some really nice things such as going to baseball matches with the Phillies team (which is the one from Philadeplhia), we also went to a building called Movie Tavern, which is a huge movie theatre that inside is like a restaurant, while you are watching a movie you can press a button and a waiter comes and you can choose whatever you want to eat or drink. We also went to visit Washington DC, Philadelphia (the city) as they lived in a neighborhood in the suburbs, and we also went three days to the state of New York to a town called Cooper’stown which there is the Baseball Hall of fame museum which for the baseball fans is like the Meca for the Muslims. We went to visit this museum and the next day we went to have dinner with an Indian family that the father  works with Pam and they had just came back from Barcelona staying with my parents. I’ll explain it better: when we went to USA this Indian family went to do a tour to Europe and they spend two days in Barcelona and Pam as a favor asked to my parents if they could prepare some nice places to go for them to visit so my parents agreed and they spent one whole day sightseeing Barcelona with them. They really enjoyed their time with my parents so that’s why they wanted to invite us to go and have dinner to their house all together. They had two daughters which were eighteen and fifteen. All the family was really nice and I loved to meet them as I love to meet people from different countries and cultures. They prepared a dinner with Indian food and I was crazy about it because probably it is the foreign food I love most. 

 In Philadelphia Art Museum with Estela a friend of Barcelona and the Drytons family

In the Phillies game

From one hand I didn’t want to come back to Spain because there we were treated Ricard and I as kings and I personally love the United States but however I wanted to see again my friends, family and of course my boyfriend who I had missed a lot as we hadn’t ever been separated one of each other for so long.

The trip back home was about six hours so it was way better than the first one, but the handicap was that we arrived to Barcelona at 9 am in the morning and to avoid again the annoing jet lag we had to sleep in the plane but I only could sleep two hours so for me that day was really hard to stay awake until the night. 

Finally, back to reality three days after arriving to Spain I started working on my essay and doing homework, preparing the new and hard year I was going to start in a few days. 

As I said at the beginning, it has been a really stressful summer because I haven’t stop travelling from one place to another but everywhere I’ve been I’ve had a lovely time which I’m not going to forget ever!!!

UNIVERSITY

University is a word that is very heard in this course but we don’t realize how close to us it is.

Most of us think that we still have two years before going there, but the truth is that we are now building and working out what we would like to be in an immediate future. For example, I’ve been studying very hard during the ESO, and now this year I’ve been acting as if I was still in Eso and the truth is that with this mentality and the way of working in ESO is very different from the way of working in baccalaureate and you have to change your mind and the way of working to be successful at it. 

I have to recognise that now I’m less in the mood to study than before, a matter which frustrates me a lot. This week that we’ve taking a rest but working as well I finally realized how important are all the things I am doing now to build a successful future and life and so I began to work harder and being more interested in searching about what I would like to be and also about books I would like to read to know more about what my interests.

We are now in a society and in a generation in which reading is an unusual thing instead of being normal as it was like before. We now only read books from school and when we finish these books we do other things but we never read another book by ourselves. Reading is very important because you learn lot of vocabulary, you improve the writting, you also acquire culture and learn basic matters of life. I haven’t been reading very much these years but now, since my parents talked to me and opened my eyes about what I was doing and about my future, I have more desire to do things such as reading and learning about things. From one hand I’m very excited to start university and living in another city, however I also know that this means I will have to be independent and have more responsabilities and this also suposses the end of (for me) the best years of our lifes, in which we didn’t have to worry about anything, except from studying.

In my opinion it’s hard to study, going out with friends and also have time for your boyfriend/girlfriend. This is for me one of the most difficult things to deal with at this age. You have to be very organised and responsible to do all this thing and all of them well, because is the easiest thing to go out with your friends before doing the homework or studing, and these are all things I’ve learned quite recently. I mean I knew all this that I’m explaining now, but I never take care about it until I saw that I had to improve a lot all my marks to do what I want in life, and you can only achieve this aim with effort and sacrifice. 

Finally and to sum up I truly realize that the university it’s the best school of life.  

A MONTH IN THE USA

This has been one of my best summers I ever had. 

During this two months of holidays I've done a lot of things, such as ballet classes in Barcelona during July, going with friends from Madrid, going out with my friends...but the thing I've enjoyed the most and I'll will never forget  is the hole month I spent with an american family. 

Well, this was from the 2nd of august to the 29th . We were a group of fifteen girls and boys from Spain ( five from Barcelona,  and 9 from the rest of Spain and also with my brother Ricard) that we were going to live for a month in Pensilvannya with an american family. Before going there the agency sent an e-mail to me saying that I was going to live with a family that had two children, one girl aged 12 and the other one aged 10 and that they also had a dog and a cat. After more than 9 hours traveling we arrived to the place were all the families picked us and my family was the last one to come and to pick me up. Finally arrived the mother, with her daughter aged 12 (Kaitlynn)  and a little dog, very cute. Kaitlynn was gothic and very odd and was dressing also in a very strange way, but I thought that maybe she was nice, but while we were in the car going to their house, she explained to me that she was strange and different from all the other people and that she didn't had friends at all and that nobody invited her to parties and I was quite surprised and I didn't really now what to say to cheer her up.As soon as we arrived at home suddenly a very ugly and big dog jumped over me, and the little girl Ashelyn too jumped on me so I was really shocked. Then the father of the family came to help me and said that Ashelyn was deaf-mute and she also had another disease (but they didn't told me anything about the unfriendly dog and about the little girl's disease...). And so, all the family was kind of wired and I went early to bed because I was very tired due to all the long journey. When I entered to my room, there was no light, only one little window without a curtain or anything, so I couldn't sleep because of the light it came trought but I couldn't either wake up at night because there was no light. It was very strange.While I was sleeping, at midnight I heard the door opening very slowly and I could see that it was  the little girl coming into my room screaming like she was crazy and I was really scared and I didn't know what to do, because she was deaf so I could not speak to her. Fortunatelly her mom came and take her out of my room.The next morning when I woke up, there was nobody at home and everything there was very dirty and untidy and I  have nothing to do, so I called to the spanish coordinator that came with us and also to my parents and I explained to them that this family was very strange and that I didn't want to spend all the month with them because I didn't feel good there. At about lunch time, the american coordinator was knocking at the door and she put me up with her best friends. This new family was really lovely and nice and they did a lot of things for me during all the month. I was living with the father called George, the mother called Heidi, the daughter aged 14 called Brooke ( she was like my sister), the son called AJ (Andrew Joseph) and finally the aunt called T. We went to visit Philadelphia, Washington, New York and some other places such as amusement parks (where I saw Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez), outlets, to the beach (I spent a week with their family and we did jet sky and water sky) and to baseball games. We also went to sexteen years parties and to pool parties at night to a very rich and beautiful houses...it was very funny and exciting. We went to all this parties with the girl that my best friend from Spain was staying with ( Melisa who was 16 so she could already drive).The month passed too fast and the last day I couldn't believe that I had to come back. I didn't want to leave because I had a very good time with my family and also with all the friend from Spain, but on the other hand I also wanted to come back, to see my family here in Catalonia and my friends. Before leaving we were all crying and it was very sad, but we are now getting in touch by facebook, skype and hotmail with all the people I met there and hopefully next summer I will go there again with de same family who are wonderful.

BULLFIGHTS

Bullfights,  have recently been a very polemic subject in Spain  but  mainly in Catalonia. Finally after years of debating and discussing a resolution bullfights have been definitely forbidden. This has brought up a controversy because not everybody agree with the abolition.

I'm against bullfights because I don't like to see animals suffering only for our entertainment. The bull before going out to the ground in front of the torero suffers a lot and  goes through a period of a very high stress ( they're carried from one place to another in trucks  too small  ) and before dying they suffer a unbearable agony and I personally think that it's not necessary. Also I find unfair that the fight is always unequal and the torero has many advantages over the bull and the performance  always ends in the same way, this is dying the tortured animal.

On the other hand I must admit that being against bullfights is the easiest opinion and what everybody say and what you normally hear about this subject, but I try to think like people that like bullfights and I can even understand that for them is like an expression of art and a  tradition that represents their country and with which they feel identified. Among this  people there are many famous and inteligent people - like the american writer Ernest Hemingway to give some example - and also people which are defenders of animals. This is difficult to understant, isn't it?

I can  also understand that people from other countries like bullfights because is a different thing which they hadn't seen before and they like it like a typical  folklore of the country but maybe they don't really know that this happens very often and in lots of different places and they (like us) don't really see what happens behind all the bullfight show. 

I have friends from Madrid who like to see this kind of shows  and who are openly for the bullfights and sometimes when we meet somewhere out of Catalonia we go together to see correbous or similar kind of shows but in which the animal is not killed and in which the animal isn't theoretically hurt.

I don't really know if they should also abolish the correbous because I don't really know very much about it but I think that if the animal is not hurted and it's treated in a certain good conditions that should be OK. To be honest I always enjoy myself a lot in the correbous of La Puebla de Valverde in Teruel.

Finally I think that this decision has been really politicized and of course is one of the main reasons for the catalan nationalism. It's a way to say very clearly that the catalan people  are different from Spain which in my opinion and despite all the spanish friends I have is completely true.