Story by Vanessa Díaz

There she was standing alone in the middle of the street coming back from highschool. Her eyes seemed to be looking a man chasing her, she was very nervous, but actually, she didn't see anyone. When she arrived to her home, she felt relieved but worried because she didn't know what could happen the next day or if it was only her imagination and no one was chasing her. To take away this horrible thought she started chating with a boy that she had met throw the chat and only knew through the msn. She told the guy what had happened and how was day in highschool, she told him that she played in the highschool team of football. Then she asked with which number of t-shirt she played so she answer with the number two, and they continued chating a little bit more. After this conversation and many others before, the guy could gather enough information to go and meet her in reality, because he knew in which neighborhood she lived, to which highschool she went and with the number of her t-shirt, it was very easy to find her.
The next day in the football game the girl felt a very strange looking, somebody was staring at her, but she didn't get worried because she thought that it was only her imagination because she was paranoic. That night, when she was returning to her home like every day at the same hour, the guy was waiting for herin the forest that was on the way to her home.
Since that night the girl dissapeared and no one could fing her. But her parents, looking for information in her computer, found many conversations that the girl had with this guy. When the parents spoke to her friends about what they had discovered, they realised that all of them had chated with this guy, so they were in danger that this could happen again with some of her friends...

STORY BY Santiago Carrère

There he was, standing alone in the middle of the Madison Square Garden. his eyes seemed to be looking the basketball game but suddenly I realized that he wasn't. He was looking at a lost point in the basketball field. It was there when I asked my self Why is he doing that, at first I thought that the cause of this "lost looking" could be the big break up that he had with his girlfriend sometime ago, But I knew that it couldn't be that. So I kept thinking why he seemed to be watching the game in that strange way. nothing came to my mind so I asked him what happened.
He told me that in two days he was going to leave the country because he had met a beautiful girl through internet who live in Isla Navidad (its a real place).
he took the decision to leave because he belive he could find a better life there that the one that was keeping him here.
I can tell you that in that moment I felt need of giving him a piece of advise, so I told him not to leave the country, because it wasn't just a country, it wasn't only a piece of field; it was a family, it was a group of friends, it was a home for all of us. But he didn't want to hear my words, he was decided to leave. So my last words were "in Isla Navidad we will be with you in the same way"

Story by Sofía Iirigoyen

There he was standing in the middle of the countryside; his eyes seemed to be looking nowhere...

Paul had been working a lot that night, he felt really tired and bored, but he also had a strange feeling, he was anxious but he didn´t know why. This feeling became to get bigger and more powerful. He decided that he was just stressed so he gave up working. Slowly, he picked up his things, turned off the lights and started going downstairs.

Silence was the only thing Pal could heard, he had to close the office in order to get out. After doing that, he opened his car, and started driving to the supermarket, his watch marked two o´clock in the morning, he thought the time had gone very quickly.

Not only on that night the time went by so fast, all his life had been like that. There he was ,a middle-aged man, with a belly that continue growing as a consequence of the excess of beer and whiskey, with a family that he would never see again...

Paul thought “my life is a complete disaster, no friends, no family, no pets, I cant´t even have a relationship with a goldfish”. His anxiety started growing more and more and the feeling of doing that, that thing he couldn´t control that lived in the bottom of him, and thatwas the reason why he couldn´t keep any relationship.

Paul was inside the car, he felt he had to control those feelings and just forgett; he opened the door and silently walked into the supermarket.

When he entered, he saw the teller watching a soap opera while she smoked a cigarette.

- “Miss...” Paul said

Nobody answer.

- “Sorry...” he said.

She didn´t pay attention.

- “Hey girl!” Paul shouted, and his face turned immediately.

-“Yeah...” the woman answered.

- “I want cigarettes, Marlboro” he said.

- “Don´t have” she answered without looking at him.

- “Ok you mother fucker! What´s going on with you stupid?! I´ve been like 10 minutes here and...” Nothing else could be heard, only a suffocated scream...

Paul´s hands were grabbing the teller´s neck.

Immediately he felt extremely bad, guilty, it was a mess and he coludn´t do anything.

Running he got into the car, and went far away, really far from that stupid teller...

There he was standing alone in the middle of the countryside his eyes seemed to be looking nowhere, but Paul knew what he was looking at.

I found this..talking about Emos!

By Florencia Zarlenga

Nowadays is really common that teachers make students do a lot of projects or prepare special classes to make them investigate and learn by their own.

Firstly, in my opinion, on the one hand, those kind of work that are very useful and interesting because involve students to search information, change opinions, maybe socialize with older people than them that can be a good search of information.

On the other hand, I would like to say that when I have to do those kinds of projects I’m not sure if what I’m doing is good and I started feeling insecure, so sometimes I’m not very enthusiastic of doing those kinds of works.

Secondly, I will talk about my own experience. Last year, I had to do an important project for high school. It was an interesting work in group about means of communications. I think that project was really contribution and a big change for me because I have to investigate a lot, do a lot of questionaries and analyze them, and observe and be focus on people actions.

I believe that it was an important, good experience and challenge for me.

To sump it up, from my point of view, investigate projects are really contribution for the education for all people ages.

Those projects make students be open minded, search, socialize and study in a different way as it is common.

For all that reasons I consider that it is an excellent experience to try and do someday one.

An amazing invention by Sofía

I´ve always dreamed with an idea that I have in my mind since I started going out. This invention is not applied in my life because is quite difficult, and expensive, i guess, to make it real. The invention is a big bed with little wheels, this bed is full of pillows and softs and warms blankets. Besides the bed there is a little refrigerator with some food and drinks. This bed will be made for people who love going out but hate the way or transport they use in order to return to heirs homes. From my own experience, every time you have to return home, there are not many buses at night, the bus stop is really far away from the place I went, we don´t have subways and taxis are too expensive.

Just imagine, the night is freezing, you are tired from being dancing, you want to sleep, you are hungry and thirsty and the only thing you have to do is saying: ”COME DEAR BED”, and it would come as quickly as you can dream. Froward, you just enter to it, you eat a sandwich and drink an orange juice (or whatever you want, because it has everything) and you say the destiny you want to go. Before eating, you can start sleeping as an angel, because be sure that this bed is also provide from anti-thief's, crashes, burnings and everything.

I know this is an amazing invention that will be accepted only by lazy persons like me, but also by the ones that have walked like 20 blocks to go to the bus stop, and when they have arrived there, they had to be waiting 1 hour and a half and the bus didn´t stop, after that they had to count every little coin to see if they can afford a taxi, and forward, when they realized that money was not enough, and after asking to all the saint including Zeus and Krishna, why they don´t live in a place where the subway exist, they decide, while they wait for the next bus, that an Amazing Bed is the best solution.

By Luisina

I would like to tell about my personal point of view about this Topic.

Talking about our own challenges and difficulties isn´t something easy, at list for me.

Everything that is related to the academic area of a person combines the success and the failing. But the combination of those two things, makes you grow as a person.

The strategies depend on each one, as on the age. Through my path as a student i have changed a lot of times my strategy of studying, but always there are some things that you never change. I have always been interested of finding the roots of the problems, (why somethingis like that and not like this). As a matter of fact, when i don´t forget something that i have studied is when i have done that. A friend of mine, on this aspect is similar to me, so we are good study partners.

On the other hand, the worst defect that i have, is that mainly, i´m not sure of what i do. I started feeling insecure of what i´m doing. This is a characteristic that i´m trying to change, i think that with the time i will change it!

On my high school stage i was a good student, however, i was a little bit lazy, and i preferred not to study a lot. I think that my strategy was paying attention on class, and grabbing the ideas from the teacher. Different was with English that i needed to do homework in order to pass the exams.

It was different on preparatory because i did the biggest effort in order not to have exams on summer. Luckily was worth it, i had holydays except for two exams. My technique of study was getting up early, having breakfast and then study all day till night. Some days alone, and sometimes with a friend.

To conclude, i will like to say a few things about my actual situation, as i am on my first years on collage i am not so experienced. But I have realized that the best thing most of the times is doing the projects in groups. Always it will appeared the differences, but also it enrich. Having more points of view apart form the others. This is something positive for all students.

Luisina Romero

By Sofía Irigoyen

Reaching goals and overcoming challenges is not a simple work; you need to be really patient and persevering in order to have academic success. In the every day life we have a lot of obstacles and difficulties to reach our academic goals. Many times we feel stressed or frustrated when we have bad grades or when they were not what we had expected. However, all these problems have solutions.

First of all, everybody has different challenges and also a variaty of skills and strategies to overcome their difficulties. In addition, everyone must find which are their own strategies in order to reach their goals.

Afterwards, the most significant challenges in our lives, about academics, are exams and projects. In my opinion these two things can drive crazy any student, because the most of the times these two types of works are really stressful. Furthermore, students when they have exams spend lots of days studying heavy and long books to succeed in their exams, or they spend reading lots of information on the Internet to present a wonderful project. The fact is that many times they get overwhelmed and they don´t receive the grades they had expected.

On the other hand, there are many strategies they can use to study more quietly and relaxed; they can select the best information of what they have and only keep with the best of the best, then they can sum up all the information in order to be more easy to read and to keep it in mind. However, they can use colors and pictures to make the projects or the summaries, more funny and colorful.

What is more, every person can try different strategies and then find the one that is more useful for he or she, because some people keep better in their brains, key words, others colorful objects or others, pictures.

All in all, we must overcome our challenges by finding good strategies to improve our academic skills, reach our goals, and have better grades.

Life´s challenges...

Thinking about the most significant challenges that i`ve gone through, the first thing that comes to my mind, is the first international English examination; It was the first diploma that i recived. That was a real challenge, requiring a lot of patience and dedication in order to prepare it.
I didn´t have problems by solving the exercises, but i used to spend almost the double of the prestablished time to finish a whole first exame simulation.
So i tried over and over again untill i finally could do it.
When i was able to take the exam I did it, and after a few months I recived my diploma; it felt great because i´m the kind of person that never finishes the things that I start.

Another thing that I felt as a challenge, without any doubts, was entering on my first job (Radisson Hotel), which actually it`s still my job, but now it´s very different from the begining... let me tell you about the begining...
Ideas like stopping going out every weekend (and sometimes week days too), being on time, wearing a unifom every day in perfect conditions (i mean perfectly clean and ironed) meeting new people, most of them very nice but not all of them, knowing that i was going to spend 8 hours of my day there with them, even if i didn´t want to, dealing with a cashier with 500 dollars and 10.000 pesos, learning how to use "Opera" the hotel program that isn´t easy at all...it was really too much for me...but what can I say... after one year and almost nine months that i´ve been working there I tell you now that if you try hard nothing is impossible, even if it looks like too much at the begining.

I know that people who know me will laugh about this one. Another challenge that I`ve being through was hiding an exame from my parents, ha ha!
I didn´t tell my parents that I failed that subject during the year because it was a hard year for them and I didn´t want to contribute with bad news.
As I told you before, I didn´t tell them that I failed physics and consequently, I didn´t tell them that i was going to take an examination on February either; It turned to be a really difficult situation, beacuse on that time i was not working, so i didn´t have the money to afford a privet teacher and on the other hand, without a very good professor, with a lot of patience to teach me how to resolve the exercises, i didn´t have any chance to pass the exam.
The funny part... I started to prepare it on December (as soon as i knew that i had failed the subject), that was two months before the examination (that was on Febuary); So i didn´t go out (dancing or anywhere) during those two months to save money, every weekend i asked my parents for money to go out, just like always but instead of going out, i stayed on a friend`s house sleeping to in order to earn enough money to pay Nicolas (the prefessor), poor me!
Everything ended up ok, I passed the examination, I did pay to Nicolas and my parents didn´t find out the truth, not until I told them, but not after a lot of time.
Now i still think that i made a huge mistake when i decided not to tell them about the real situation, but it was because i didn´t want to disapoint them, and i think that grown up people sometimes doesn´t know the pressure that a teenager could have.

Finally THE END...i hope you like what you have just read, and if you don´t you can tell me too, I swear that i will not cry, feel free to tell me the true...
I´ll stop writing because i don´t know for how much time I´ve been writing, but I think that it´s a little bit more than 20 minutes...so let´s follow the rules...ha ha ha! funny me...

See you next time...
Dahiana.

My comments on your writings

Guys I'm so proud of you! I'm really glad you finally decided to start writing here. Have you seen you had visitors from other countries?

I'll be correcting your writings this week so please, the students who haven't posted an essay, do it before Tuesday :)
(I have done some editing already)

Please check the difference between CONSIDERATE and CONSIDER

consider

Reach after or carried out with careful thought.; deliberate: my considered opinion; a considered policy involving a measured response to provocations.

considerate

Having or marked by regard for the needs or feelings of others.

Remember:

be used to + ing
I’m used to riding my bike to school, so I never get tired.

be accustomed to + ing
be accustomed + noun

I’m accustomed to reading long essays.
I’m accustomed to her long books, but she’s a great writer.

Analía

By the way..wouldn't be nice if you post some thoughts or anecdotes?

Writing by Valentina Andresovas

In order be a successful person it’s necessary to face some challenges, but it is not required to deal with all of the them. I’m going to describe two of them that I consider very important.
First of all, to succeed, people have to be responsible in every sense. One sense, for example, is that if someone has an examination and wants to approve it, this person has to study a lot, and he has to study harder if it is a difficult examination. Another example of responsibility is to go to every class, in case of school, or to every meeting, in case of work. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be never absent, but if it is possible, be absent only few times.
Second of all, another challenge is about the shyness; the person who wants to succeed can’t be shy. That is because if this person has to make a speech, he can’t be shy because he will be stuck in what he says. Other problem with shyness is for example, if I go to a meeting where I don’t know anyone and I have to talk with those people to make new relationship for my work but I’m shy. I will not be able to do that and maybe I won’t feel comfortable in that meeting, so this is not helpful to succeed.
To sum up, there are more challenges apart from those that I describe, but as I said, it is not necessary to overcome them all.

Success by Vanessa Díaz

Many people believe that if you do not know exactly what would you like to do for a living, if you do not plan your future or if you are all your life without an especific goal you will not succeed in any aspect of your life. But I do not agree with this because I think in life we have many options, like a way with many streets to follow, where we will find many obstacles to overcome and maybe we notice that our decision of taking that way was wrong so if we can, we will go back to where we were before and start again from there.

I have this point of view because I know many people that maybe do not know what exactly he or she wants to do with his or her life in a future, which way follow or which is the best choice, but this was not an obstacle to succeed in life. What it is very important to have present it is that everybody wants to live in the top of the mountain but all the happiness happens while we are climbing it. This means that we have to enjoy all our life and we do not have to be only worried about our goals, maybe we can make them or maybe not, but we have to be proud of the life that we have lived.

In my case, talking about academic experiences, I am trying to decide what I really want to do in the future. For me this is a difficult decision becuase anything really excites me, and I am very indecisive so until now I am not completely sure about the career I have choosed. Many years of my life I thought I was going to study economics in order to be an accountant because I like the idea of doing the job that they have to do. An other reason of choosing it was because I did not like anything else so it was my only option, but economics requires a lot of reading and capacity of summing up. These things were the ones that I never have affinity with, so last year I decided to enter in engineering university because all my life I like mathematics and I prefer thinking and reasonig than reading and memorizing. Despite of the fact, many times I question myself if this was the best option, what would have happened if I had been an accountant or if being an engineer is what I want to be in the future or if the effort that requires this career will worth it.

To sum up, we will never be sure if our decisions about our future are the correct ones but we have to try to succes and have in mind that we can go back and started again. It is only in ourselves to succes in life and try to achieve our goals or have the ability of changing them if we realise we should change them.

SHYNESS BY ANDRES CARRERE

Firs of all we assume that personality is a set of qualities that make a person distinct from another and that`s why we are all different kind of persons.
Although there are lots of personalities, we are used to following a pattern and generalizing in order to organize them, so we usually say " oh he is a very shy person! " or " she is really extroverted". This is the way we are accustomed to generalizing.
In this opportunity I`m going to be specific in shyness, which is one kind of personality that represent many people.
The shy person usually feels he or she is the object of attention at a social gathering, it's common that many people can't stand a shy person as a partner...
Many times, these people (shy ones) feel like discriminated by society because the way they are. Although, in my opinion, society should understand they aren`t bad people, they are the same of us.
Shyness could be temporary or for all of your life, When we say "temporary" we are referring to that kind of situations, for example our fist date, or other types of situations that we`re not accustumed to living.. no matter who you are, I`m sure we all have to be shy one time in our life.
On the other hand, we have the person that will be all of his life shy. this kind of people often go to a psychologist in order to change the way of life they are dealing with.
People are not born shy, shyness is characterized by excessive self-consciousness, negative self-evaluation and self-preoccupation, and that's the reason these kind of people usually visit psychologists.
To sum up the idea, we all should help shy people, we all should put a grain of sand in order to help them, because the really need us, they shouldn't feel like an object of social attention, or feel discriminated by society, they just have to feel like us.

Communities By Santiago Carrere

Nowadays, there are a lot of communities in most of the countries, but this communities are demanded for people that want to be in a public area where they can go, enjoy facilities and interact with other neighbors. Specialists believe that the communities help to improve the bonds between the neighbors and in this sense, they can develop or improve the interaction.

In 1999 Walt Disney built an Utopian city called "Celebration". This community was built based on all the ideals expressed above, such as the sense of community and the development of social and civic interaction

According to this, Celebration City was built with a lot of specials features, some of these are that celebration has a centralized market street district to reduce the traffic jams and encourage social contact in order to develop the social interaction between the people of the community

Writing Mauro Castellanos

If I have to define success in my life, I would consider as a success the fact that I found a university course which makes me feel comfortable, and I really enjoy studying. What I find interesting about this, is that architecture never, I say never, was an area that I considered to pursue until the time I had to think about my future as a university student.

During the first years of high school, I thought about studying something related with biology, as medicine, but then with the time, I realized that it was not what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. The problem was that in fifth grade I had to decide what I was going to do because I had to choose one of the three orientations of high school, which were going to determine which area of study I would be able follow then. It was in that time when I chose architecture as the carrier and profession for my future, not knowing if it really was what I most liked. So then when I started the university and began studying different subjects related to architecture, and with an architectural point of view, I realized that I really liked and enjoyed studying.

To sum up, I was a little bit forced to choose what to study for some reason, but it was a good choice and I confider it as a success in my life.

Addiction by Jessica lema

Addiction is one of the most common problems of these days. It's a dependence on a behavior or substance, that a person is powerless to stop.

There's two types of addiction : substance addiction and process addiction.

Substance addiction it's the abuse of the consumption of drugs, alcohol and smoking.

Process addiction it's when you spend too much time gambling, shopping , eating or using internet that starts to affect other areas of your life.

People become addictive to something for different reasons, such as problems in school or job, loss of a relationship, death of a love one or financial stresses. So they start trying an activity ( shopping, gambling, eating, internet...) or substance ( drugs,alcohol...) to satisfied their emotions and they start to feel so good and happy, that they start to abuse of one of these two type of addiction, and it's starts to affect their lives in many ways; Any addiction has in common the effects,such as lifestyle: they spend too much time with their addiction, financial: they spend too much money,they get broked , emotional : they want to satisfied their feelings.

Addiction could happen in any age ,race or social class...nobody is totaly free of it, the only way to prevent the addiction is with a good education for everybody, a familiy or friend support in bad times could help a lot.....

our first writing

Dear bloggers,
We are Uruguayan students who have started this blog in order to practice and improve our English. From now on we are going to be posting our ideas, opinions and worries.
We invite you to suggest a new topic for us to write.
Thank you... Nacho, Vane, Lui, Flor, Sofi, Andrés, Dyana, Vale, Marce, Angela, Nati, Santi, Mauro, Jessi.