What to do and where to go in Santiago.

First of all, hello. I have to do a warning before i start writing: i’m not from Santiago, so it’s possible that i said really non tourist places.
I think that a good place for a foreigner to visit here in Santiago first is all the downtown of it, because it has lots of national culture, the colony architecture, the typical Chilean people. In the downtown are places like the Santa Lucia’s hill (i like it because it has lots of trees and grass); San Cristobal’s hill with the Maria Virgin on its top, and the “teleférico” (i don’t know how to say it in English), because it’s really fun; San Diego Street with all his books, because it is one of the cheapest place to buy books; la Vega, because it’s a popular place that has lots of histories; the Chile university (obviously the Juan Gomez Milla Campus to drink beers, smoke all the things that you can imagine and fight against the police) because it’s better that the Catholic University of Chile and etcetera.
I think that would be good that a tourist go to La Piojera, to drink lots of “terremotos” (in English means earthquake) and get really drunk. Another thing to do in Santiago its travelling on the transantiago transport system, it is really fun to go on the microbus like a sardine on a tin. Other place to visit is the Pablo Neruda’s (he is a really famous poet of Chile, he got the Nobel prize) house in Santiago.
I don’t know anything else about Santiago, so i guess i won’t write more. See you next week. Bye

Alas Congress

About two weeks ago, the degree of sociology of our university, went to Buenos Aires, to a Sociology congress called ALAS (Latinamerican sociology asociation) on the Buenos Aires University. It lasted all the week long.
The conference i enjoyed the most (and the thing that a liked more of the congress) was one called "Trabajo, crisis y autogestión", because the topic that treated this conference was really good: It was about the experiences of some groups of workers of Argentina that ocuppied some companies, and started cooperatives, thing that was very curious. There was workers from a famous ceramic factory called Zanon, called too FASINPAT that means "Fábrica sin patrón" (without boss factory in spanish).
The bad points of the congress was the bad organization of it. There were lots of room change, that made me really confused about where to go. Another thing was the tend that they build in front of the medicine faculty of the UBA, because they put it in a place that, when it was raining (almost all the week rained in B.A), the wáter filled all the place, and we had to go there to certifícate that we were studying on our university, so we’ve got wet.
The highlights of the trip was that i traveled on plane, and i’ve never traveled on one before. I always was looking trough the window to see the mountains and the clouds.
I had a really great time on B.A, i hope i can go again

Transantiago: Before and after

Hi all. Today I’m going to tell you about mi experience on the transantiago system, and what I think about it. First, I have to make you know that I’m not from Santiago (I’m from Los Andes), so it’s probably that I had wrong opinions about it.
Comparing both of the public transporting system, I can tell you that they have lots of differences. The system that was before of the actual transantiago system produced lot more pollution, and now it pollutes less (or at least a little bit less). But, it had less people on the buses, and you didn’t have to wait lots of time to take one of them. Now, the system it’s really weird compared with the old one, because now you have to pay with a card called “Bip!”, and not with money, just how it used to be.
I would like to change a lot of things to the public transport system: first, I would make that the coin-pay-way came back, so the people who forgot the bip card use coins instead of the card. Second, I would like that the state controlled the public transport system, so it’s easier to handle all the difficulties of it.

Countries i would like to visit

I would like to visit France and Germany, because i like their culture. They both have great artists and great philosophers, and I like some of them, like Guy Debord, a situacionist sociologist, and Paul Eluard, a surrealist poet, both French, and Karl Marx and Otto Rühle from Germany.
I only know some things about these countries. For example, in France there’s a really famous museum called Louvrè or something like that, and there is the Da Vinci’s Monalisa. Other important French place is the Eiffel tower. Something important from there is a historical event: The French revolution, which affected all the places around the world. And, from Germany, I only know about their history, for example the spartaquist league, Rose Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht (I don’t really know how to write it), the Frankfurt school, and etc.
I would really like to study in France or Germany, because sociology there is really good, they have very smart sociologists, and their universities are among the best in the world.
If I was there, I would like to go to meet all the important places, go to party, meet s lot of people, and learn to speak their idiom, specially French – because I like it a lot- and things like that.

First Term: Good and Bad points

The first term of this year, the 2009, had a lot of new experiences for me, beginning with the fact that it’s my first term in the university.
First, it was a great change in my life because i wasn't (and still not) living in my city, Los Andes, because i had to move to Santiago. I was used to its calm way of living, and the absence of excesive pollution, so i had to readapt myself to this grey polluted big city.
I had five subjects: Introduction to Sociology, Antropology, Method I, Psycology and Contemporary World History. It was a big change in the way of studying, because i didn't studied as much as now at school, so i had to make a big effort to get into the rhythm of university. I had to read a lot of books, but i had the luck that i read some of them before, like Marx's books for example. So i learned a lot about my degree, and that made me really happy.
In this first term, in my free time i did some activities. First i wanted to work at university politics, so i contacted a friend from another university and started working together in a collective (that's what we call our organic structure). Then i met some people here in the university and they invited me to a study group, and i accepted, because they do a lot of interesant stuff. Besides this, i didn't do anything else, because i hadn't got more time to spent.
So that was my first term of the 2009, full of great changes in my life, meaning this all the aspects of life.