Halloween

Hello! I hope you are well, this week we have to talk about a free topic so... as Halloween was recently, I will tell you about the origins of this tradition.

Well, this tradition comes from a long time ago, the Celts called it "Samhain" (it means the end of summer), It was celebrated on the last day of October when the harvest season ended and a new year began for them. It was believed that the spirits of the dead returned that day, so they left offerings of food and candles to guide their way. Later, a Papa (I can't remember his name) to replace this pagan holiday, names November 1 as All Hallows' Eve and therefore 31 as Holy Eve.

It was the Irish immigrants who brought this tradition to North America in the 1800s, but it did not become widespread until around 1900s.

And to complement I will tell you the legend of Jack O'Lantern.

A long time ago there was a man who was a drunkard and a trickster, they called him Stingy Jack and because of his fame the devil decided to visit him to see if it was true and take his soul to hell. When Jack was caught by the devil he asked him for a last wish, a beer, but he said he had no money so the devil turned it into a silver coin, which the trickster put it in his pocket where he had a cross, the Devil seeing himself deceived and trapped, granted him 10 more years without taking his soul.

When the time was up the devil met him again in a forest, Jack asked him for an apple as a last wish, the devil climbed a tree, while the drunk stamped a cross on the trunk, made him promise never to take his soul. Jack then died and could not go up to heaven due to the bad deeds he had in life, he went down to hell where he was not received either. With a few fathoms and a turnip he made a lamppost that guides his way, without his soul reaching rest.

Well, what did you think? I really like these kinds of stories, I'm sorry for the long hahaha, here is an entertaining video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbwFsnL995M

Education

Hi everyone, I hope you all are okay, this week I will tell you what advice I would give to a high school student who is about to enter college.

If he can already enter university, I think the first thing to learn is about the benefits like university grants since it can be a great help for the pocket, after that, always keep an eye on the renewal date so as not to lose it.

Meet and participate in other activities within the university, so that you find things that you like to know and meet many people with different points of view with whom you can make friends, who can help you in your personal development.

You have to know how to organize your time, be it for homework, study, home activities, your family and friends, although we must not forget that not everything is about the university and that time for oneself is very important so as not to collapse.

Finally, seek help when you need it, there will always be someone willing to listen to you and help you, be it your family, your partners, teachers or the institution's social worker.

Religion

Hello, I hope you have a good week, today I will talk about religion and how important it is to me.

To start, since I was little my grandmother taught me to pray, I did it every night I spent with her on vacation and we also went to mass on Sundays. In the country school, there was a small chapel that always had to be cleaned for the important masses and we all attended, I made my first communion right there, my little brother was baptized there too. The priest who gave mass was very nice, my family loved him very much.

Well, in general my family is believers, but they don't go to mass or pray much since my grandmother died, and now that I have grown up, I have decided not to believe, but I respect people who choose to have faith in God, I pray and persigno myself when it is necessary to do so, since I know that for some people it is a great source of support to believe in something and it gives them the strength to continue. Religion can bring together the best in people, but there is no denying the bad things.

Healthcare system

Hi! I hope you have a good week, today I will talk about how I think the health service can be improved.

Well, It is a complicated issue since I am not aware of how the entire health system of our country works, but my mother works as TENS, that is why I will talk to you based on the experiences that I have been told or that I have heard or seen.

I think there is an increase in the number of staff to attend patients and 2 people caring for between 10 and 20 is too much if an emergency occurs. Should increase the amount of supplies such as medicament to deliver to patients in addition to the variety since buying them in pharmacies is very expensive for a person who does’nt have the resources. Hopefully there were more specialists and technology from different branches of health in regions, so that people who need it do not have to travel long distances, I remember quite well how my grandmother, who died of cancer, felt so bad about having to travel to do radio therapy and then come back coming to faint. And finally, better manage the system of hours for operations that are very necessary for someone's health, although I think there will be many others solutions to give.

An increase in the health budget and more regulation by other agencies in the health system may help these problems.

Politics

Hi everyone!, this day I will talk about politics, specifically how it has changed my political opinions during my life.

During my first 15 years of life I was not really aware of politics, the parties, their ideas, history and everything related, just that my grandfather talked about being part of the Democracia Cristiana and he was proud of it, but didn't pay much attention to it.

Already in my last years of school, before university, my history teacher taught us about the history of Chile and as the political parties over the years were part of the development of our country, from that moment I was forming my opinions on politics. In my opinion the extremes of the ideas are bad, searching to benefit a certain sector of the population while neglecting other sectors, that's why I don't like them.

It is very difficult for me to take a solid position on politics because of how changeable it is, but I know that it is necessary and important, after all, that's how we make decisions that affect many people in the country. 

Blog experience

Enjoy doing the blogs and reading those of my classmates, I remembered good experiences that I went through, in addition to getting to know others a little more. If it helped me improve my English by learning new words and writing extensively on different topics, he had never done anything like it, other than a speech that he had to write and then read in front of others in English. The advantages of blogging, as I said before, is to learn new words, to write sentences that make sense in the text, allowing us to also know their structures. The disadvantages could be the time since sometimes I was in trouble to do the blogs and on Monday mornings, I could not do them because there were classes. My suggestion is maybe to save the deliveries for Monday night to have a little more time to improve them and make a general feedback in the class of the things that we go wrong in the blogs so as not to repeat it again, besides that, nothing, I liked the themes and that I was making progress on how many words I should have.

My favorite subject

My favorite subject is Ecología General, for the importance it has when talking about the structure and functioning of ecosystems, in addition to the relations that exist between living organisms with their environment and the scale of that.

What I do mainly in class is to take notes of the most important thing the teacher says, or what I reach. After class and when I have time, I finish the notes and read the readings that the teacher leaves, it also leaves the most important highlighting, because something related may also appear in an evaluation.  We have seen topics such as the basic concepts of ecology, the adaptations of plants to resource limitations, the flow of energy, the functioning of ecosystems, the flow of water among many more varied topics that help us understand.

I like it for the variety of topics that must be known and understood to finally know how the ecosystems do they work, in which we will work as forestry engineers, and thus also know what is their best management for the benefit of us and them.

Website

The plant list is a website that in the first year I learned to use for various jobs that include plants, because it gives me a scientific name that is more acceptable to the species I am investigating. When entering the page, we realize that it is completely in English, but it is not complicated to use, you just have to enter your search engine and enter the genus or genus and the species that one thinks to find, for example, Zea o Zea mays.

Then a table with names will appear with the names, their status either acceptable or a synonym of the plant, the level of confidence that is represented in stars, the best option being the one that contains the most, the source and the date supplied. Once the plant is finished and found, we can also know which family the plant belongs to.

I like this site because it allows me to know the species I am looking for, also allowing me to discard information that may be from another plant. But I must admit that I still don't use the whole website. And generally, I use this page when looking for plants that I am just getting to know.

Link: http://www.theplantlist.org/

My favorite picture

My favorite picture was taken by my old classmate Víctor Acevedo, show my old classmates, and I, in the travel of my last year of studies in Bariloche, Argentina, in front of handicrafts stalls. It was taken on January 16, 2020, that day was the last of the travel and we take the opportunity to take many more souvenir photos, I also remember that it was very cold that day.

I like it because it brings me many memories of that travel, it was the first time I left the country to know so many beautiful places with different people and eat their delicious chocolates and alfajores, also for the first time there you can ice skating, I was so happy. They took us to reservations that the city had that were beautiful and at night to discos that I really didn't like much because of the loud noise there was. That was the last time we were all together. 

Despite the problems, I really had a great time and really that photo reminds me.

What will I do on my next vacation?

Questions:

• Where will I be? 
• Who will I be with?
• What will I do?
• Where I want to go?
• Why can't I do more things?
• What would you do if the pandemic was more under control?

I'm going to stay at my house with my mom and my brother. I'm going to reread the stories that I like and look for new ones, while listening to music. I hope to sleep more if my cat Kim, allows me, although I would like to get up at the same time. Maybe, I'm going to see a series or anime that I like and I'm going to practice drawing the subject of realism so that I don't forget.

I would like to go visit my best friend who lives in another town and stay with her, or if you prefer that she come visit me to catch up on our affairs because now we are both occupied by the university, I haven't seen her in a long time.

The situation the country is going through due to the pandemic limits many things that I would like to do on my vacations, If the contagion situation was more controlled, I would go to the cinema.

Why did I choose this career?

When I was a child I lived in a rural area, I always saw animals like horses, cows, sheep, turkeys, also in my house there were always pets: dogs and cats, I really liked everyone and I wanted to help take care of them, so I wanted to be a veterinarian when i grow up. 

When I was close to finishing high school where I was studying in the city, I thought about being a medical technologist, a history or arts teacher, even an astronomer, but I ended up applying for just medical technology and forestry engineering.

The moment I chose to study forestry engineering I did it because I find their work interesting, all areas covering, also because it would allow me to go places and learn in practice.

For now I have found the topics we learn interesting, some more difficult than others, but I know that because of the pandemic everything has also been complicated and I have to be patient, hoping that everything we were going to learn in practice can one day be done and not lost.

I would like to work for SAG or CONAF, although I have not decided something specific yet.

My favourite piece of technology

In this pandemic, the object that has served me the most has been my cell phone, a Huawei, that my mother gave me in 2019, after my old cell phone can't take it anymore after the battery failed.

It is pink, it has only three buttons, on/off and volume up or down, it took me time to get used to the large touch screen it has, the good thing is that it has an input to load which is very common.

I use it most of the time, because i can do multiple things like communicate with my family, friends, classmates, see the classes, know my email, among many other things, but my favorites are read, take photos, listen to music and see various things on the internet. This is why it became my favorite object, i never get bored, there is always something new to see.

Without my cell phone the situation would be a bit difficult, because i would lose having something small and easy to transport everywhere and do the functions what i said previously and because my computer fails.

My Auto Biography

Ivanouna De María Gajardo Soto was born in San Antonio, Valparaíso, Chile in 2001. She studied at Judith Varela de Esturillo Portales at elementary school until to 4th grade, then until to 8th grade in Villa las Dunas. Later, she attended the Instituto Bicentenario José Miguel Carrera.

In 2020, she started career at Universidad de Chile in Santiago, where she studies Forest Engineering.

She lives with his younger brother Claudio, she is 6 years younger, and her mother Valentina who works at the San Antonio hospital, where she lives. She has a cat named Kim and a canary named Freddy, they look calm but are very naughty.

His main hobby is drawning and painting who was inspired by his grandmother Valentina, she also like to read fantasy books like Harry Potter and she likes lisen to music from Avicii, Imagine Dragons and Los Vásquez.