Italy. A dream fulfilled

Since I was a child I always knew that I would live in Italy (for some time). It was the year 2016 and after starting my second university degree I had a clear objective: I wanted an Erasmus experience in Italy. After doing the paperwork, I had the fortune to get a place for the eternal city: Rome. It was my dream, but it had just begun.

This was my room:

The room had two floors. The main floor had two Doric columns, a sink and a shower in a corner behind the bed. This bed was under the stairs of the second floor.

The upper part had another double bed. The ceiling gave off an indirect light. It had painted a fresco of a sun in another depth, illuminated with a warm dim light. It was lovely to see the ceiling during the night, without a doubt the most beautiful one I ever saw in a room... But what I liked most was the morning light, entering through the huge window.

It was perfect from the beginning.

From that moment I lived a beautiful year, visiting the places I had dreamed when I was a child: the Coliseum, the Fontana di Trevi, the Imperial Forums, the Vatican City, the Pantheon and the Circus Maximus were some of the first places…

I had some very intense months, visiting places and meeting new people. I tried to know other cities around Italy, and that, among other places, took me to cities such as Verona. There I visited Juliet's house, and I met the wall of lovers. The wall is located at the entrance to the patio of the house, and couples write their names on it, to preserve their love for the rest of their lives.

Another of the cities that I was able to meet was other of my favorite ones, for its entire cultural legacy in the Italian Renaissance. Florence. I love the Renaissance. Since I was a kid I read stories about Leonardo da Vinci, and I admired him for all his abilities. When I was 18 years old I bought a famous video game called Assassin's Creed, set in the city of Florence in the Renaissance, and of course, when I was there, I made a wonderful photo imitating Ezio Auditore (the protagonist) ...

I was in many small towns and villages, but I could spend hours talking about them, so finally I will talk about my experience in the city of the canals: 

Venice

I had the great opportunity to visit Venice in the most important event of each year: Carnival. History, beauty and mysticism that Carnival of Venice has…  It’s unique in the world. All people have a maximum respect for their conservation, and the costumes they use are works of art…

Beyond the gondola rides, the canals, and the magic of the city, the best moment was without a doubt in the middle of Piazza di San Marco. A group of ladies was posing for the journalists who were covering the event and without thinking twice; I got in the middle of the photo to immortalize the moment. Everyone laughed, including the ladies, who were very serious before!

I am sure that I will live in Rome in the near future, I love Italy in all its virtues, and I still have a lot to discover. Sincerely, if you have not decided to visit it yet, I can only say one thing. 

Do it, you will not regret…

One Piece

Hello everyone, today I am going to talk about one of my passions that is the One Piece manga. The author of this incredible work is Eiichirō Oda, a japanese manga writer. This piece begin in 1997 and continues in development at one volume per week. It has more than 900 volumes, exactly 941 and and he has only made 70 percent of the complete piece.

One Piece has sold more than 450 million of copies around the world and has a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author. Nothing less than 320.866.000 of copies until 2014.

One piece is a pirate adventure manga in which the premise of the main character is to become the king of the pirates but this is impossible without his “nakamas”. Nakama is a japanese word that means a great feeling of friendship but more than a family, it is like your friends become your real family and you feel that you need to protect your nakamas at all cost. Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Nami, Ussop, Chopper, Franky, Robin and Brook are the main members of this kind of family.

I knew this work when I was only a 10 years old child and I've been seeing it since then.

Since I met One Piece I have read many mangas. The culture of Japan is fascinating and mangas are impregnated with all that culture. You can learn a lot reading mangas.

I think you should reads this kind of literature. Almost every manga has a impressive plot and make you spend hours reading. And could teach you about friendship, conflict resolution, overcoming, honor, not giving up... You can contact me if you need any recommendation.

The dance in my life

Since I was a child, I liked a lot of activities when I had free time after school: Roller skating, swimming, aerobics ... But since I was seven from now, I decided to practice dancing.

Practicing dance I had the best moments in my life and the worst too. I started dancing in Lalin in a little group who`s name is Máisquedanza, but now is a big group with 400 dancers between 4 and 60 years old. During the year, we practice one hour per week because all of us are students out of our town, on Fridays is the only chance that we can met. In every year we make 2 public dancings at the end of june with the end of the school course, except in my case because we participate in a few competitions.

Last weekend, in Lalín was presented the Stars Dance competition, organized by a dance company from Portugal. Máisquedanza presented 11 choreographies and 7 of them have won, also winning the prize for best school, best dancer kids, and revelation choreographer. The two choreographies that I presented with my group won two first prizes.

In Máisquedanza we practice modern dance: jazz, lyric, contemporary, fusion, hip-hop ... we don’t focus only in one of them, we try to play all of them. I know I'm not going to be a professional dancer, because to this can happen. I would have to leave Lalín and maybe Galicia to study in a dancing studio. So while I can, I will continue dancing for many years, because with the dance I have grown, it has helped me in bad times and has known how to thank me for the effort, the perseverance and the falls in each and every one of the actions I have had, which were not few in fifteen years that I have been practicing dancing.

My exchange to Hunstanton

I will talk about my student exchange experience in a little village called Hunstanton. I visited Hunstanton when I was 16 with my classmates, I stayed there 3 months in a house with a family who lived there and with a friend and classmate called Martín. 

I remember that I have to get up very early for going to the high school, in comparison with my spanish high school it was very formal and modern, we had to spend 5 hours there but they were very enjoyable because we adapted very well to the class. In the afternoon we usually went for a walk in the town because there was not much to do or see. During our stay there we visited some cities such as London or Cambridge, these cities socked me a lot for their monuments and their expensive souvenir prices too.

Despite I was entertained and happy with my classmates and my family, once a week a receive a visit of my big brother because he was working in a close city called Stevenage, we usually picked the car for taking photos in different places of the village or for visiting nearby villages.

However, my stay there has negative points too, specially if we talk about food and weather. It was very hard to adapt to food costumes because they tend to add mayonnaise to all kind of food, something that for me is disgusting. Weather is another problem that we have experienced in this country, raining is very common in October and November ant that harmed our experience in someway because it limited us for doing certain things.

In conclusion, I would recommend exchanges to everyone, specially if you go to a country where they use a language you want to learn because it's the best way to practise and to learn it.

Hunstant high school

What I've learned from the Municipal Museum of Helsinki in terms of education

In the visit at the Municipal Museum of Helsinki I could understand how Helsinki has become what it is now, and the thing that surprised me the most was specially that once the Russian Empire was defeated and the Civil War was ended, Finland started to build a new society based in the education of all the people. It was very interesting to see how the classrooms were here years ago because if I compare them to the classrooms in Spain nowadays, there are no significant changes.
Although the museum shows how this city was evolutioning in many aspects, I would like to focus in the Educational System. I found in this progress an example to follow for other countries because until the 1960s, a date that is not so far away from the actuality, the level of education in Finland was pretty low, in fact, only one in ten adult had completed their basic education reaching an university degree. Nowadays, the ninety nine percent of finnish people complete compulsory basic education, a fact that can surprise anyone.  When we talk about improving our current Educational System here in Spain it feels like a really far and utopian future, but we can see from here that it’s not impossible.
Another thing that was very surprising for me about the museum was how didactical it is for the children. You can touch and feel everything, the old rooms and bars, the old toys... As a future primary school teacher, i found this fact very useful because pupils can learn about history through a museum in a fun and enjoyable way.

To sum up, I think that teachers should take in account that learning process has many ways of carrying out and they have a lot of different types of resources to do it. They should be in contact with museums and other teaching-learning places to achieve a productive impact on students, letting them acquiring new knowledge in a didactic way. Pupils should know that: learning is a fun and useful process, that they need to become cultural people in the future and take part in the society, and it is also very important for them to understand this because if they do not do it they will be demotivated in school and their curiosity will be getting lower while they are growing up. It is our goal, as teachers, to make students clear that learning is a life-long process and we all keep learning until the end of our lives; as Michelangelo said “I am still learning”.

Study Abroad

Hi guys I am Brais and I am going to talk about how you can make one of the best decisions of your life studying abroad. I have chosen this topic to everyone can know their options to study abroad, because, bad luck mine, I did not know about all the possibilities until I have been in my  last year of my university degree. The two more common options are, Erasmus the Europe option, and Sicue the Spanish option, those two are really easy to get and have a good  money support, but I am not going to talk about those because everyone knows and a few of my classmates already did it.

I have chosen to talk about the Isep and Magallanes scholarships.

ISEP

It is about getting a way to can afford studying a whole year experience in USA.

This scholarships it seems to be quite easy.

Theoretically you only need to pay as always your enrollment in your home university in Uvigo,

and they in that case UVIGO  will do the rest paper work instead you.

Your only job is to make your own learning agreement with the subjects you wanna study and its over,

¿easy right? Well now is when the problems starts coming up.

The big thing here to can achieve the scholarship it is not the paper work as the Erasmus or Sicue,

the thing is have all the requirements that the scholarship obliges to have.

Have a C1 TOEFL english level
Pay 4000 thousand euros
Been a university degree student in their third or fourth academic year
Been selected in a good city and not end up in a lost town in the bowels of Texas

If you are successful and pass all the requirements,
well then  you are a lucky person who can enjoy an unforgotten experience

SANTANDER

Latin American Scholarships Degree students.
The program will grant in the next five years, scholarships with 3,000 euros each.
You can apply for grants to students from universities in ten differents countries
(Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico and Uruguay),
to anyone interested in making a semester stays.
This program does not focus as much on learning a foreign language,
as on experiencing the culture and educational system of another country,
taking credit from the multiculturalism that this experience brings to us.

My trip to Italy

                                        My trip to Italy 

Three years ago, for my eighteenth birthday, my family and I went on a cruise to Italy. 

We had to go by plane to Barcelona and there we took the cruise to Italy. The name of the cruise was Norwegian Epic and it was really big and very luxurious. 

The first day was sailing day, so my family and I had a lot of time to enjoy the cruise activities. The cruise had a lot of different types of swimming pools restaurants and shops. The cruise also had theater, solarium, hairdresser, gyms, bowling courts, tennis courts and many more things ...

The second day we woke up in Naples, the third day we went to Civitavecchia and to Rome.

The fourth day we went to Livorno, Florencia and Pisa and the fifth day we spent the day in Cannes and Mónaco.

The last day was sailing day again and we went back to Barcelona, there, we took a plane to Vigo. For me this trip was amazing and I had a really good time. I'm looking forward to do a trip like this again.

MY ERASMUS EXPERIENCE

Hi guys!! I would like to share my Erasmus experience with you. Besides,I’ll tell you some useful information that is important to know it, if you’d like to live the same experience.

This adventure started nine months ago, when I arrived to Torun last October.I lived there with Olga and Brais for five months.

Torun, is a medieval Polish city where a famous astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, was born. People are very proud of him there .For this reason, a lot of shops and places are called with his name.  Furthermore, Torun is very touristic because there are incredible churches,
many monuments in old town and boating in Vistula River.The most famous souvenir is Ginger bread, a biscuit with different shapes.

If you travel or go on Erasmus to Poland, it is important to know some important curiosities about this country: Polish people are very quiet and serious, when meeting someone, they shake hands, they don´t like kisses on the cheek. In the hotels and houses they use blinds instead of shutters. They don´t eat bread with their meals. Also, they usually drink soda water with ice and lemon all year long.The timetable,is different from Spain, the shops close at 6 p.m and the restaurant close at 8 p.m.

The weather is very cold  and it snows a lot because most of the days the temperature was under 0 degrees.While I was living there, the lowest temperature was -12ºC.However, the thermometer reached - 41 degrees in the nineteen forty .       

Many people asked me if the lessons at university were difficult.In my opinion the lessons were easy because the teachers spoke English very clearly.The lessons with the kids were the best thing at University because we taught Spanish and ours costums.                   

When I didn´t have lessons I used to travel with my friends to different countries such as Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and of course Poland. I really liked all of them because each travel was different, but my favourite one was to Budapest.

In my free time I used to meet with a  lot of people from different parts of Spain and other countries such Italy or Turkey. We went to the Karaoke and pub, I enjoyed spending a good time with all of them.

In conclusion, because of all of these things, the Erasmus experience was the best adventure I’ve ever lived in my life. I would like to repeat it in the future. I strongly recommend it to at all of you.

WHERE DO I COME FROM?

The summer of 2016 I knew where I came from. I was born in Switzerland and I have family there. So, I have been in Switzerland several times visiting my family. But, I was born in the French part and they live in the Swiss part. That's why I didn't know where I come from.

I went on this trip with my parents and my brother and they showed me where I'd lived for two years. Besides, they also brought me where they used to work and it was amazing.

On the one hand, the strangest thing was when we visited my parent's friends and they all knew me and told me a lot of things about myself. They told me stories like "When you were born we made a big party to celebrate your birth" or "I gave you your first sleigh and you loved it". They were so nice talking to me as they knew me but I didn't know them. They were completely strangers to me. 

Here, you can see the landscape that we used to see every day. This is Le Valais, in particular, Les Collons.

On the other hand, I think that it is very important to know where we come from. A lot of people was living in other countries when they were young and they haven't visited their country of birth. I think it is a pity because it is very beautiful to see where you were living, where you went to play, where you went to school,etc.

I was very happy with this trip and I would recommend doing it. If you were born in Galicia or Spain and you don't have a different country of birth, I also recommend visiting Switzerland. :)

Why?Because Switzerland has amazing landscapes and you can do a lot of tracks in the mountains if you like walking, and if you don't , you can use the cable car. 

In this country the people is very polite and there you will know a different way of living. They have a different timetable from ours. And, at las, but not least, the food. I love their food and their chocolate! I recommend Cervelat, Fleischkäse, Landjäger and spätzli. And if you like cheese, Raclett, Fondue and Käseschnitte.

Finally, if you can, I suggest visiting this country on the first of August, it's the national day and everything is decorated. Moreover, you can see the fireworks and it is amazing. 

Thanks for reading my publication. See you!

NETFLIX OR CINEMA?

In my opinion it is a interesting question but the answers are very different.

When you speak with filmakers they said you that "There is a generation of adult people, between forty and seventy, that go to cinema but the next generations don´t do it". It is similar as the missing of the paper newspaper, none young people buy it in the kiosk because all of them have the news in their phone.

These filmakers add that their productions can´t compete with Netflix because "We can´t do anything if Netflix costs six euros and you can share it among three families".

For example, Steven Spielberg said "I want that the people find their entertaiment in any way that they want: big screen, small screen, … the most important thing is the big stories and all of us should have access to them". In addition, he added " Nevertheless, I think that the people need to have the oportunity to leave their safe lifes and go to a place where they can sit with other people to share crying, laughter, …"

In my opinion,  Netflix is more confortable than going to the cinema but we, as a teachers and citizens, should encourage our pupils and friends to go to the cinema and share social experiences that you, alone in your home, can´t reach.

Taking the bull by the horns

As we all know, we start to learn English in school when we are young. But I am sure that we are all in agreement that after all these years we haven’t achieved a good level of English going to school.

So that’s the reason why I decided to take the bull by the horns and start to learn English on my own, four years ago. I must confess that since I was a child, I listen to more music in that language than in Spanish and obviously it is helpful but, in most cases, it isn’t enough. So, I want to share with you my experience with TV series as a way of learning English.
First, I decided to search for an original English TV series and then I started to watch it but with subtitles. It doesn’t matter if you watch the chapters with Spanish subtitles at the beginning because you are accustoming your hearing to the pronunciation and other language factors.
After I watched my first TV series in English, I tried to watch the second with English subtitles and it was cool because I can understand what the characters were saying, sometimes even without watching the subtitles.
Now, I want to recommend two series that can help you to start that adventure because they are amazing and easy to understand.
One of them is Sense 8 and it is one of my favourite TV series. It’s the story about eight persons from different parts of the world who are linked mentally and their search to find a way to survive from those who want to haunt them. In the show appears important topics such as identity, gender, religion, politics and sexuality.

The second is Lost and it is also one of my favourite TV series. The story begins with a plane accident in a desert and mysterious island where the survivors will find out that they’re not alone

These shows were the first that I watch in English and they help me to incoming my reading, listening, speaking and writing skills. But there are other TV series that I have watched later or even I am watching now and they are also amazing. Some of them are Pretty Little Liars, How to get away with murder and The Walking Dead.

I hope I encourage you to watch an English TV series and to take the bull by the horns.