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.