Post 10: English English

It’s hard to me talk about this, basically because I did not learn this language at university. I learned English when I was a kid playing an old videogame. It’s true that I’ve learned some things this year, but I haven’t improve very much what I already know about it. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that English is important and it’s very good that university provides these tools for students, but it really needs to become a little bit harder, because –at last in anthropology- we are demanded to read researches and articles that are way too hard for us.

Writing blogs is ok, it’s fun and useful. I think that I’ve improved my writing skills with it. Also it’s useful to improve reading skills. My English weakness is to listen and to talk in English, but I try to watch series and TV shows without Spanish subtitles or at last with English subtitles, to listen and reading. This has been useful for me, but I don’t know how I’m going to improve my talking skills, because I don’t use this language in my daily life.

Even if I don’t use English in my daily life very often, there are some occasions where I use it. For example, I help my mother learning English, because she is a sculptress and she usually travels to others countries. Even when it’s not an English-speaking country, it’s useful for her in the airports and planes. Also, I will try to take TOELF test next year, so I will need to learn so much more and improve all my skills.

Post 9: Good and bad things about this (academic) year

It’s hard to say if it was a good year or a bad year, not because it’s not finished, but because every year has its own good and bad things. In fact, many important things don’t happen in the course of a single year, but through many years of the life.

My life is almost exclusively about university and the academic life. It’s sad, but true. So, if I have to say something good about it, it’s that my grades are very good this year (finally!) and I’m learning a lot. On the other hand, I became the teacher assistant of ‘quantitative methodology’ and it has been a good experience for speaking in public without getting nervous. Also, I became an active member of a gender group. It’s a group of anthropology students and we did an introductory presentation about gender and machismo in everyday life. I gave that presentation and I was terrified in the beggining but it went so good that people congratulated me at the end.

(This is me in the presentation)

A bad thing is that I lost my job. It was a research about sexual behavior on prostitutes, but the research needed to take blood samples and the ethic committee decided only nurses could be involved. I’m sad about it, because it was a very good fieldwork as anthropologist: I met many sexual workers and they told me about their lives. Also it was a well-paid job.

Besides that, I haven’t been sick or something and I’m hoping to end this year with amazing fireworks and a good New Year celebration.

Post 8: Vicente presents Hooverphonic

My favorite kind of music is trip-hop. I actually listen to many kind of music so it’s hard to decide which one is my favorite, but I’m going to talk about trip-hop, because it’s what I’m listening recently. Trip-hop is catalogued as an electronic kind of music, but I think it’s more like a mix between hip-hop and electronic, but no one of them is really recognizable. Trip hop was born in 1990 and I describe it as a really slow kind of music and usually accompanied with soft voices (although men usually sing as ‘rapping’). But actually, trip hop music is very experimental and that’s what I like about it ¡There are many weird things in every song!

One of my favorite bands of this genre is Hooverphonic. Hooverphonic’s most famous song is ‘mad about you’. I came to know this band when I was in secondary school, when a really good friend introduces me to this kind of music, but actually I never really listened until I enter into university (I don’t know why, just happened).

Also I like Massive Attack, well-know because one of their songs appears in the opening of House M.D. (a medical TV show) and Portishead, which is maybe the most important band of this genre. Anyone who says they like Portishead must know ‘glory box’. In fact, Hooverphonic mixes their song ‘mad about you’ with Portishead’s ‘glory box’ in their concerts as a tribute

Post 7: Who's to blame?

I’m not a very environmentally friendly person in my daily practices. I don’t know a lot about it, but this is also something I personally don’t believe. Don’t get me wrong. I do think that worrying about environment is important and I really appreciate what many people do about it.

But being ecologist is expensive, for example, to throw away you garbage, you need to buy these big black bags and you are not supposed to use a supermarket bag. But, what you are supposed to do with so many bags every time they give you when you buy in the supermarket? Yes, you can buy an eco-bag, but how you are going to throw your garbage? These black bags are expensive! The poverty in Chile is very high and people who live with the minimum can’t afford those expenses.

On the other hand, people can separate their garbage in organic and non-organic garbage, but there is only one garbage truck. That makes no sense!

I think that companies and industries need to worry about the environment because they cause most of the problems to it. They contaminate and people should ask them to do something about it. For example, people complain about smokers because they contaminate, but industries contaminate like one million cigarettes and nobody says anything about it. I really like organizations who do strikes against who really contaminate about environment.

Post 6: In the field

As anthropology’s student we have to do a lot of fieldwork. In my personal experience I’ve visited many placed, for example, in urban anthropology I went to Bajos de Mena, a suburb in Puente Alto, described as the most dangerous place in Santiago and in rural anthropology, I visited Llallauquén, a little town placed on the shores of Rapel’s lake. In Ethnography I went to El Golf neighborhood and I made ethnography about Plaza Perú, a very interesting square where many Peruvian maids gathered together. Finally, for Qualitative Methodology, I visited Lastarria neighborhood, a place in the core of Santiago, well known for everyone in city.

This was very interesting, because –as I said- a well-known place means you need to clear your mind and think about it as you have never visited before. Like a tourist. One of the problems of visiting a neighborhood like Lastarria is that everyone wants to tell you the marvelous things about it, but you want to know the problems, something interesting to study in. A hard thing to do in there was to make older people to trust in you, and in Lastarria many people was very old.

But one of the good things is to know what people things about themselves, but this is maybe the best thing in every fieldwork you made.

Post 5: From politics to cooking

I would like to work in something related to my career. It’s not very accurate to say that I will work as an anthropologist, because it doesn’t say too much about it. I would like to know many places around the world and to write books or reports about my travels and to know different cultures and societies. Also, I would like to record on videotape my experience and to make documentaries to teach about anthropology and its ethical and methodological problems. But that is like a dream job, because I don’t know who is going to pay me for that. Travelling is expensive.

On the other hand, I would like to do a PhD in political anthropology. Political anthropology studies how do different cultures understand the social link between people. For example, countries in the world are organized by State and it controlled everything inside the country, however, they are cultures that do not follow this pattern, for example, there are cultures in Polynesia that are organized by giving and receiving gifts. This is very interesting because it teaches you that there are others kind of social organization and not only the Greek concept of politics.

If no one of them works, I’m very good at cooking and I can be a chef.

Post 4: Cultural shock

Since anthropology is defined as the studies of culture –in a very simple and general definition-, the anthropologist used to see everything different to their own culture as something strange and worth of being studied. From this point of view, a cultural shock can be defined as an aspect of a culture that is different from ours and cannot be understood. This is very usual when we visit another country or even, when we visit a non-urban place (as urban people) in our own country.

For example, when my family and I visited northern Argentina, my father asked for potatoes to dinner and the waiter told him that it was one potato, and my father reply that he wanted at least two of them. The waiter told him that they were big, but my father insists and when the waiter brings the dinner to the table, we realized what he meant. The potatoes were really big; my father couldn’t even eat one!

This can be funny, but there are others cultural shock that can be really hard to face. For example, my friends and I visited a non-urban place two weeks ago and the machismo was strong. The girls were sexually harassed by men. For the men it was something normal, to say things and to whistle when we walk in the town. I felt terrible because I couldn’t do a thing to prevent it.