The End of the Road!

     Hello girls! How are you doing today? How was your weekend?

     Well, I took some time to write because, to be honest, I actually did not know what to write about. Nothing really interesting happened to me this previous week and I did not react towards anything, either, haha!!

     But yesterday night something kept coming to my mind and so I decided to share that information with you. This something that kept coming was this fact that I'm less than a month away from finishing the career! When I realized about it I could not believe it! And, I started having flashbacks and recalling events and I could not help going like wow!! And asking myself: is this for real? Or am I dreaming?

     For you to understand why I am so amazed, I'll tell you my story as regards this career:

     I started studying the Teaching Training Programme in the year 2005 (long ago, right? ha!) I didn't sit for my entrancy test here at the IFDC, in fact, I was about to study in another province. 

     When I finished high school, I do not know how I convinced my parents to let me go and study English in San Juan. I had a sister living there. So in the summer, in February, I travelled to San Juan and stayed there for about three weeks. I attended the entrancy course and I sat for the exam, which was a qualifying exam. We were 100 students, more or less, and the ones who passed the exam at once were 20 (me included), the rest of the students had to sit for a make - up test. After I passed, I had to wait 20 days or so for classes to start, so I came back to San Luis. In those 20 days, I decided I did not want to study in another province (even when I had already looked for an apartment in San Juan and, well, that part of the story is a mess, let's skip it! haha!) and classes at the IFDC were about to start and I was accepted there. I had to present my entrancy exam certificate and I was not tested again. I started my classes just like any other first year student.

     Unfortunately, I was not able to finish the career in turn because of many reasons. One of those reasons is that I started working (even though I never dropped my studies, I may have gone slower, but I never dropped the career). Another reason is that I sat for final exams and did not pass, and I sat again, and I didn't pass and that became an obstacle for me to keep on going.

     In these 9 years (if we also count the year 2005) I went through many things, many feelings. I got angry because I couldn't progress; I got ashamed for not finishing when I had to and seeing all my classmates finishing before I did. I got depressed, since many times I did not believe in me and in my capacity to be an English Teacher. I got angry towards the Institution and for many years, the mere building of the IFDC made me feel really bad, until I could finally adopt a different attitude towards it all. And now I see myself on the edge of becoming an actual English Teacher, I see myself at the end of the road and, I cannot believe that is really true.

     I may not be the best student, I may have not fulfilled all my assignments in time; there are still things that I consider hard to understand or overcome, things that I am not 100% positive about in relation to the language and to things we've been taught. But, regardless all those aspects and things mentioned, I think that my best virtue in relation to my studies was and is my perseverance. Even when last year I did not pass my Practicum (which brought me really down, since I was not having a good time in my life due to some family problems), somehow and, with the help and wise words of some people, I managed to continue attending lessons and to continue fighting for my degree.

     So, we are there girls (most of us, and the rest of you as well!!) And it's something worth celebrating!! 

Have a nice week!! =)

The Victims of Insecurity

     Good Morning everyone!!!

     As I believe you've seen this week in the news, there had been a strong search for this girl Araceli who disappeared when she went out of her house for a job interview and never came back. The suppositions are many but there are some things that haven't been clarified yet.
     Anyhow, this girl was found dead last Friday, 11th. Apparently she was strangled and the people who are investigating this criminal case still don't know whether she was raped or not.
     Her case, as well as Ángeles case and many other more, where innocent, fragile and helpless women, adolescents, girls, children (most of them referring to the female sex) got me thinking in what a crazy society we are all living in.
     I still cannot understand the minds of those criminals. I don't get this idea of them finding pleasure in kidnapping a girl and beating her to death or keeping her captive. I still do not understand the point for all that. How can those men (if they can actually be called "men", since, for me, they lack the dignity of such a title) be so perverted and twisted - minded so as to commit those crimes? How would their mothers feel when hearing that they have children whose lives are extremely immoral and who deserve a severe punishment for them to learn? Even though in this country, there are no severe and fair punishments for those outlaws.
     I cannot imagine what Araceli, Ángeles and the rest of the victims of overuse of power might have felt when forced to be fallen apart from their families, their houses, and to "obey" the orders of this mentally ill men. It might have been really harsh for them to fight against their abusers and killers. Maybe they could not even have the strength to fight back and do something so as to escape and try to remain alive. It is absolutely unforgivable what these perverts have done and not even the Judicial Power has the necessary tools to provide the families of the victims at least some sort of peace. Who will bring those girls back to their families and back to life? Nobody, and that is just the saddest part of it all and what causes such anger towards how our Justice System functions.
     I really want to believe that in the near future (if it is possible to say near future) there will be changes, positive changes, where homicides, rapists, perverts, paedophiles, etc will be fairly punished and will not be wandering freely in the street where they can attack again. I want to believe that good will prevail and that Justice will be plausible and tangible for us all. I want to believe that there will be a better world but, first, we should start by our own society, our country and visualize the changes in there.  

An Extremely Touching Movie!

   Happy weekend everyone!

   My post today is going to be about a movie I saw the other day.

Since most of you know, I am attending the Practicum together with some of you, my classmates. In the theoretical classes, we have been dealing with the topic of children with special or different needs. For that reason, three different teachers have given us classes in order to explain us how to teach a subject to these children, which has been very interesting.

   One of the teachers who shared with us her knowledge and wisdom is a teacher who also works at the Teaching Training Programme (but in another career). She gave us different definitions as regards the topic mentioned and, also, she talked about specific cases in which she has helped those children have a life as normal as possible.

   
   The introduction of her class was by showing us a fragment of a movie. Of course, my classmates and I wanted to keep on watching the movie, since it seemed to be really interesting! That is what motivated me to search the net and try to watch the movie online.

   The name of this breath-taking movie is "Front of the Class". After looking for it for about an hour and a half, I could finally find it on YouTube.

   "Front of the Class" is a movie that talks about a true story of a guy, Brad Cohen, who suffers a desease: he has got "Tourette Syndrome". Maybe most of you do not know what that Syndrome is about, neither did I until I watched the movie. But, for you to have a clearer picture of it, it is a desease that affects the brain. In the case of the main character of the film, this desease causes him to make some strange noises with his mouth as well as have some tics on his body which he cannot control. The most astonishing thing about this man is that he knows for certain what he wants to do in his life, and here comes the main issue of the whole movie. Brad Cohen wants to be a teacher. 

   During the whole film, this man faces many prejudicial looks and he is, somehow, mistreated by society in general. He is seen as a "weirdo" and he is left aside, discriminated. He wants to teach in Primary School and spends a lot of time trying to get a job, going to interviews and waiting for phone calls. In every single interview he has to give explanations for his "funny noises" and talk about his Tourette, due to the fact that nobody understands how such a handicapped man could be possibly capable of teaching anything to children. Eventually, he succeeds and gets a job and some perspectives towards him get to be changed.

   
   When I watched the movie I couldn't stop thinking about some questions that kept coming to my mind, and one of them was: why are we, human beings, so prejudicial and so mean? Something else I kept on thinking was: why do we assume so firmly that someone who has a certain kind of desease or who is handicapped or suffers from special needs is incapable of succeeding in life? Why do we shut the doors for them?

   While I was watching "Front of the Class", in many occasions I dropped many tears and felt helpless. It made me angry to realize how insensitive we all are and how cruel we can be towards others who may even be better than us for the hard work and effort they put in their own lives so as to be someone and achieve their goals. Instead of discriminating them, we should learn from them. We should fight our own ghosts and we should try to knock down the obstacles we encounter in front of us and to do our best so as to obtain what we desire.

   As a final reflection, I have to say that this very moving and spectacular movie made me see some things differently and encouraged me to stick my mind to the following thought: we cannot let anything, not even a desease, get in our way for us to achieve whatever it is we want to achieve in life!

Here I share with you some pictures from the movie and its official Trailer! I hope you enjoy it! =)