Blogs I visited

I visited four blogs of people from different levels and published a comment in each one. These are the blogs and the posts in which I left a comment.

www.ancristi.blogspot.com
Post: Diwali

www.wmld2k7.blogspot.com
Post: Unit 4. Pros and cons

www.rafafade.blogspot.com
Post: Unit 3. Finding a job

www.ricardoprovenzani.blogspot.com
Post: my favorite food

Conclusion

Everything during this course has been exceptional, the teacher, the activities and the lab gave us the opportunity to learn a little bit more English, and I can say personally that this has been one of the few courses of English in which I have actually learned a bit something. I can now write compositions with no problems and my writing has gotten better. My grammar knowledge has also improoved and I expect to continue with this journey of learning this great language of such importance. I liked the classes where we discussed our favorite food and when we talked about the cities of the world, those are the topics I enjoyed the most.
Working on this blog has been a great experience because I think it's kind of cool to have a website just for myself, and this way people from all over the world can get to know me.

The biggest and the best

In this unit we learned how to use the superlative and comparative and had to write a composition about a region from our country. I chose Guayana.

One of the oldest geological regions as well as unspoiled places on earth is that one located to the South of the Orinoco River. It is a unique luscious land with magnificent landscapes, chosen in many opportunities as the natural scenery for films like Spielberg's Arachnophobia, Disney's Jungle to Jungle and Dinosaurs.

It has the highest waterfall in the world: El Salto Angel, with a total height of 979 meters, and La Laguna Canaima with more spectacular cascades.

On the way to the Brazilian border you will get to the Gran Sabana home of the very ancient geological formation called Tepuys; high mountains with vertical hillsides that host on their summits highly balanced ecosystems rarely found anywhere else. This region is more spectacular than anything you'll ever see.

It's one of the most beautiful places in the world!

About me

This was the very first activity that we had to work on at the beggining of the semester. It was great because we talked about ourselves and got to know some of our classmates through the interviews.

My name is Christine but everybody calls me Chrissie (well, at least my family does). I'm from Maracaibo, originally. I'm 18 years old and I study accounting at URBE and Economics at Luz. I live in Maracaibo, in Veritas.
I love music, my family, my friends and my dog.
I hate Chavez, waking up early in the mornings, cruelty to animals and stairs.
My dream is to be a succesful Economist and Accountant.


My best friend's name is Patricia. She's from Maracaibo. She is a student from Law school. She's 19 years old. She lives in San Francisco.
She likes pizza, hamburgers and hanging out with me.
She hates stairs and lies and her dream is to graduate


My boyfriend's name is Francisco. He is from Maracaibo, too. He likes playing soccer and eating, he doesn't like running or going to the beach. He hates fito Paez.

Conversation

This is a phone conversation between me and my best friend, Patricia, in which she invites me to go to La Puerta. This is a real conversation.

Patricia: Hello, is Christine there?

Christine: It's me!

Patricia: Hi, Christine, how are you?

Christine: Hello. Fine, and you?

Patricia: Do you have any money?

Christine: No, I’m poor

Patricia: I was wondering if you wanted to go with my and my aunt to La Puerta for the weekend.

Christine: That sounds great! I would definitely like to go!

Patricia: Then you’ve got to start saving some money. You have a month!

Christine: well, I’ll see what I can do about that.

Patricia: If you want you can tell Francisco.

Christine: Ok, I’ll call him now. Bye

Patricia: Bye

Life changes

This unit is about how people change, mostly physically, in terms of their look, given the fact that people change a lot through the years, they get fat, they dye their hair, they go bald, etc. I couldn't reflect that on my homework because I simply haven't changed a bit!!


The picture on the left is from five years ago and the one on the right is a recent one. I haven't changed much physically but I can say I'm in a completely different stage of my life right now. Five years ago I was still in high school and I had no idea what I wanted to be in the future. I didn't know what to study. I wasn't focused on that, though, I just wanted to have as much fun as I could and just enjoy life. Now I guess I am a more serious person, I'm coursing two careers and I try to be a better student each day. I have much more friends now, and I've kept only one from high school.

My future plans are to graduate and have a job, maybe leave the country and work with my sister in Washington, D.C. Anyway, before that I'm planning to visit her soon with the rest of my family, probably in December, when she is supposed to graduate from college. I'm planning to graduate from URBE in two years time, and from LUZ in three years, hopefully.

How does he look like?

In this unit we learned how to describe a person in terms of the clothes they're wearing, their hairstyle or by their actions.
We had an activity in class where we described ourselves in our notebooks and then we exchanged all the notebooks so that each person had to guess who it belonged to.

In this picture you can see me and my family: My eldest sister (Rosie) is the one in the middle with the short black hair and the green blouse. My brother (Lawrence) is the one sitting next to my sister with his arm around her. My other sister Ann is the girl with the glass in her hand. She is also sitting next to Rosie. Annie's boyfriend is sitting next to my brother. He's wearing glasses. And I'm the one sitting next to Annie.

Home Remedies

This is Unit 12. We learned about several remedies for different kinds of health problems. We did a role play in which Patricia and I had just had an accident and we had to go to the doctor (Fernando), but we turned out to be terrible actors... we were practically booed off stage!!
Anyway, our homework was about home remedies, I present to you some of them:

Acne:

Homemade Acne Treatment using Orange peel has been found very effective. Pound the orange peel with water on a piece stone and apply to acne affected areas.

Fever:

If the fever is mild, lie on a bed and completely cover yourself with a blanket for 20 minutes. Crush 10 grams of raisins and ginger. Boil them in 200 ml of water till it reduces to 50 ml. Strain and drink this solution warm.

Hangover:

Consume a lot of water before you go to bed. This should provide some relief to the dehydrating effects of alcohol. Drink lots of water even after you wake up.

Influenza:

Ginger is an excellent remedy for influenza. A teaspoon of fresh ginger juice, mixed with a cup of fenugreek decoction and honey to taste, is an excellent diaphoretic mixture which increases sweating and reduces fever in this disease. The fenugreek decoction may be prepared by boiling one tablespoon of fenugreek seeds in half a litre of water, till it is reduced by one third.

Have you ever ridden a camel?

In this unit, we talked about the things that we have already done and haven't done yet but expect to in the future.
My list:

I have already ridden a roller coaster
I have already ridden a horse
I have already been to the movie theatre
I have already driven a car
I have already been to Caracas
I have already played tennis
I have already graduated from high school

I haven’t dyed my hair yet
I haven't been to England yet
I haven't seen a ghost yet
I haven't learned Italian yet
I haven't gotten married yet
I haven't been in a crash yet
I haven't graduated from college yet
I haven't learned to dance salsa yet

And what about you?

Reviews

Te con te
Te con te is a very popular cafe in Maracaibo. It has a great
atmosphere and good service. There is a variety of hamburgers and they
are really big and delicious. My personal favorite are the
bruschetas. I love them. The juices are also very good. All the dishes
have creative names, some of them are called after movie stars like
Brad Pitt or tv series like Friends or Ally McBeal.




Beirut
I would never recomend anyone to go to Beirut cafe. I think that the atmosphere is boring and it's always very hot. The service brings you nothing soecial and the food is just plain. If you're planning on having a good time, go some place else.

As you can see in this unit we learned how to write reviews about restaurants. We also discussed in class our favorite kinds of food and restaurants and we talked about typical dishes from different countries.

My hometown

Maracaibo is my hometown. Even though it's extremely hot and very
dangerous, I wouldn't trade it for another city in the world.
Maracaibo is definitely my favorite city. It has great food, good
nightlife and the best part is the people, who are very friendly and
have a great sense of humor. I would say it's a very exciting city.

At class we talked about the different cities of the world and everyone gave an opinion about different places and expressed their wishes to travel to several destinations. We learned how to describe a city and our homework was writing about our hometown, in most of the cases, Maracaibo.

Map

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