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Podcast about the post "home"

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Girona F.C.

This year Girona has made an impressive season and has finished the league in the fourth position. That has been very impressive especially because the last season Girona it finished in the last positions and near the relegation positions, and this year with almost the same players has achieved the play-off position. This has been probably for the new young coach called Francesc Rubí whose has received a lot of nice words because of this year.

Moreover this fourth position it let to Girona the possibility of play the play-off and to get promoted to the first league. Girona played the first part of the play-off against Alcorcon and the whole qualifier finished with a result of 4-1 for Girona. Now, the team has to play two matches against Almeria who finished in third position in the regular league and who is the harder team in the play-off. The squad have arrived to this part of the season with a lot of problems of injuries and with important players like Acuña almost injured.

I hope that Girona gets promoted because is a team near here, which I can see in its stadium and surely that if it does, I will go to the stadium the next year to see some matches.

An anecdote is that when the season started nobody went to the Girona’s stadium because people thought that it would be another painful year near the relegation, but now, when the team is near the achievement the stadium is always full and the tickets finishes quickly.

Film review

HOME

This film is called “home”, and it talks about the earth, its history, the recent pollution, the causes and the consequences. The title relates the earth, with our home like a lovely place where we have to live and to take care of it.

Truly it’s more similar to a documentary than to a film because there aren't characters who talk or something like this, but the earth and us as the main characters and a narrator that explains the story.

Apart from the plot it have to be recognized that the film have been a very hard work and shows us a very beautiful and real landscapes of all around the world.

The main objective of this film is to raise awerness to what have happened in the earth, what we are changing to worst and which consequences it will has this and teach us to be more respectful in this topic.

In my opinion this film is a good initiative and it's done for a good reason, but the most of the companies that have helped in the production of the film have started with a lot of the problems and I think that the big companies are the only ones that can change the current situation.

Against the mobile robberies

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/13/technology/mobile/smartphone-theft/index.html

The mobile robberies have become an important problem in the last years and this is talking about the “Secure Our Smartphones” initiative of develop a technology which can deter the thieves. They are trying to develop a “killswitch” method which will make the mobile useless when this has been stolen. The only problem until the moment is that thieves can sell the mobile in different parts. But at least they are putting barriers between thieves and easy money, and that is what they say that is the key to deterring much of the current street crime. They say that if a thug have problem to sell the mobile or they have to pay somebody to unlock it they is a bit deterred to steal it.

“There is no silver bullet. But these thieves are not technologically savvy.”

My opinion:

In my opinion this is a great initiative because I know a lot of people who have lost, or somebody have stolen, their mobiles and it is a very serious problem because the mobiles are becoming more and more expensive and a there are a lot of people who stole mobiles and then sell it for a lot of money. I think that it also will happen this in the future but there will be less thefts. The other problem now, is that the police don’t do anything against that so they can do what they want.

Words I have learnt:

- Thug

- Silver bullet

- Deter

Final evaluation of First Batxillerat

In these two last years I think that we have learnt a lot but especially this year in first batxillerat because we have started to do exercises and grammar more complex, and in my opinion this can be seen in our oral presentations if we compare it with the ones in the last year and obviously in the exams that are the final evidence of our real level. More over the activities that have helped me more have been the oral presentations to improve my speaking, the blog in general to improve my facility to write essays and finally the vocabulary book of the "Aula d'idiomes" that in my opinion have made me learn a lot of new words.  The activities in class like a competition in groups and the reading of the original version book it have been useful  too, although the book has been a very hard work because we had to search a lot of words. 

On the other hand the more usefulness activities have been the films in class (you can understand the film but you don't remember any word or sentence used) and the songs in class that I don't like.

The activities that I want to do again the next year are the blog, the oral presentations, the reading of books, the vocabulary and the games in class. 

Finally I have to say that the English classes, this year, have funny and useful, and not at all boring because is a class where we use a lot of technology so it makes you more easy the class.

Dialogue and podcast

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Jamie: Tania's girlfriend but unfaithful (Jaume)

Tania: Jamie's girlfriend (Roger)

Polly: Jamie's "lover" (David)

Dad: Jamie's father (Eloi)

Text in the book

…

Tania: What the fuck is going on here?

Jamie: It’s not what it looks! Relax!

Polly: emm… Can you show me the homework, please, Jamie? That’s why I’m here. (excuse)

Tania: Are you kidding me? I know what’s going on!!

Dad: What’s up?? Shit, I’m trying to sleep!

Tania: What’s up!!?? Your son is an asshole, and this is his fucking bitch.

Jamie: Sorry dad, now we will leave and…

Tania: Shut up! You will get out with your fucking bitch; I don’t want to see you again.

Polly: The only whore here is you, motherfucker, you only wants Jamie’s money.  Don’t you?

Jamie: Is that true?  I’m freaking out.

Tania: I AM!

Dad: You have woken me up and now we are arguing in my house. Get out of my house, right now!

Tania: Shut up! It’s not your argument; I’m sorry but the truth is that your son is a fucking liar!

Dad: Is not my argument but is my house. Go out bitch and shut up!!

Polly: Okay sorry. Tania stop. We can argue out.

Jamie: Yeah! Babies go out!

Polly and Tania: Fuck you! Bye!

(Polly and Tania leave the house together and Jamie remain there alone)

We have almost leart to respect the world

In  the last  years we have become aware that the environment and me have started to be consious of all the pollution we produce and which consequences will have in all that. Thankfully, we have changed our mind, and now we are more responsible with our actions. All this change of mind is probably caused by all the environmental organizations that with their advertisments and campaigns have helped us see what we can do and wy we should help to protect environment.

I believe that world would be safer without all that excess pollution that we produce. Is scary to think that because our fault a lot of species will die, the ice of the glacieres will melt, and also we will live worse bacause of the increase of the sea, the climate change and the hole on the ozone layer. A recent example of that, is the increasing number of skin cancer because of this hole in the ozone layer.

The most important reason to the change is that's not any reason in favour of produce more pllution and there are a lot of reasons against pollution, that only can improve ouyr world.

In conclusion, I would say that, If we produced less pollution, the result would be a better world for most of us. 

The only solution is to be more responsible, produce less pollution and keep improving. 

The blog

I have been doing the blog all this year and this is probably the last free post I will do. When the course started and I knew that I would have to do the blog I didn't like that because I thought that would be boring and a lot of work. We are approaching the end of the third term and I have done almost all the post ( I haven't done the tasks that we have to do in class) and it hasn't been too hard, but the problem is that sometimes I had to do 3 or 4 your says in the last 4 days, because I had been a bit lazy during the term. Instead of  the first thought finally the blog have helped me a lot in English because it demanded me to do short essays regularly. 

Moreover another important thing is that have made me think in my opinion of news and different topics and express these opinions, which I think is very important because with the blog I have seen that we usually hear news or hear topics, but we don't really think in the topic and in our opinion, so the blog have helped me to think in that and to realize in what I really care.

In my opinion the hardest work has been to choose the topics for the "your says" because it had to be a good topic which you can talk a lot about it, so it had to be a topic that really like you because if you don't like you wouldn't talk good and you will do a short and poor post.

Finally I have to say that I'm waiting to do the blog the next year and that I probably will use the same blog.

Book review

Deception Point

I read this book in English, because we had to read a book for English class. There were a lot of books to choose, but I chose because of the title that is a bit mysterious and it doesn't give you any information of the book and because it was one of the non-adapted books which gave more points to read it.

I only read 110 pages of the book because it was what I have to do but it was quite good. The part of story I have read it it's very interesting but there are too much descriptions of places and characters (that probably could be justified because I have read only the first pages) and all them are a bit extravagant. The story is very mysterious because it happens things and you don't know exactly what is happening after some pages. 

Apart from that the book tells the story of parallel happenings in the same time but of different characters. 

The plot of the story is about a girl called Rachel whose father is a senator (called Sexton) who is applying to be the president. Rachel works for the government making important briefs for the president, so she is in the middle of his father and the president. Sexton's campaign is especially against the NASA overspending and uselessness. In this situations it seems that, when Sexton is going to win the presidential elections soon, NASA have made an important discovery. The president wants that Rachel and some independent scientists go there to see the discovery and make sure that is not an invention of the NASA. It seems that is the most important breakthrough ever done. Since this moment the story starts and...

I can't tell any more because I haven't read it all, and I know the discovery but I won't say it here because you will have to read it if you feel interested. 

Obviously I don't know the final but for the title, probably the discovery isn't true or something like that. 

I have to say that I would recommend this book because I don't like too much to read, but I have liked a lot this book and it has been very catchy.

Finally I have to say that I liked a lot this book and I probably will read the whole book, but this time in Catalan because it was a bit difficult for all the complex vocabulary that I had to search in every page. 

To get a job for the summer

This year is the first I can work on summer because my birthday is in the end's of August and the last year I couldn't.

Currently I have just distributed my CV for Empuriabrava and Castelló, especially in "campings" and supermarkets. It's a bit difficult to get a job because of the crisis and because I haven't got experience in any other jobs. This is a great disadvantage especially in these times when there aren't many jobs and there are a lot of people with degrees and other things that can't get jobs too. Apart from that the worst is that in a lot of supermarkets and "campings" is that you can let there your CV, but they usually phone only to people they know and that usually they didn't let there their CV. 

For the moment I only have received a call from a supermarket called "Aldi" but I had to refuse the offer because they only had a job in Roses and I couldn't go - that's another problem because I can't go too far every day.

So I don't expect any offer for any job for the moment. Therefore I probably will have to work with my father in the farm and recollecting things in the countryside, which is the thing I have tried to avoid all this time because is a very hard job, in the countryside, with the sun, whit mosquitoes, whit sand and dust, and especially backache because of the action of pick up vegetables from the ground. 

Exciting end of season (football)

This weekend it will decide which teams will be relegated and in the second league, which teams will be promoted. This year the league, if we talk about the first ones, it has been very boring because since the start of the season Barça had a good difference of points against the second, so this year the most exciting part of the league have been to see the teams that can be relegated and the teams which can go to play to European competitions. If we look at this, it have been very interesting because there are a lot of modest teams that have been in high positions and that are still playing for achieve a good place and to go to Europe. For example this weekend, we will finally see if Real Sociedad will achieve to go to the Champions after its magnificent season and a lot of others teams as Betis or Rayo that have been a great surprise for this season.

On the other hand, when we are approaching the end of the season, when each team only have to play a match more, four teams can be relegated: Mallorca, Zaragoza, Celta and Deportivo. Only one of them can survive in the first league and in my opinion it will be Celta because although they aren't the one with more possibilities they are the ones that with the matches they have to play can be saved easily. However the team that depends of itself is Deportivo because if they win they will be saved, but the reason that makes me doubt is that they play against Real Sociedad that want also to win to achieve a Champions place.

Moreover the first positions for get promoted in the second league are very interesting. This second league have been very exciting especially because Girona has made an awesome season and has been a lot of time in the second place that provides a direct promotion to the first league. There are still two matches to play but if Girona doesn't finishes in the second position they have another opportunity to be promoted because they will have to play the play-off's against the teams since de 3rd position until the 6th.

There are a lot of matches to be played and it depends on a lot of results but my preferences are that Girona rises to the first league and that Celta survive in the first league. About the European positions I want that Real Sociedad finishes 4rt as prize of his season.

Life elsewhere?

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/18/us/planet-discovery/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

In the midst of chaos, three planets have been discovered as a hope of life elsewhere outside our solar system. They don't know surely if these planets have all the conditions to have life but they say that these are by far the better candidates. They were in the research of earth-like planets (of the same magnitudes and with a host star similar as our sun) and they found these planets. They are called only with the name of its galaxy (kepler) the number of its star and finally a letter assigned to each planet. So following this rules they are called Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c. They didn't know almost nothing more about them because they have been seen by a satellite from light-years of distance. They are all a bit  larger than earth but they have a smaller star a and similar (as the earth) days to round it's star. The main reason to think that they could contain life is because they fit the bill for the habitable zone, which is the one that can has liquid water to hold life.

Opinion:

In the news it says to that there are a lot of other planets that are candidates to hold life but they are the best ones until the moment. I think this is an important breakthrough in science because they are  increasingly getting closer. Moreover that doesn't mean nothing because in the new it says to that we can know if they have good conditions to hold life but we are far away from them and we would take a lot of time to get there, so it seems impossible that some day us (us=our generations) achieve to meet new forms of life, but we will be trying it.

I think this news is very catchy because it let you the possibility to imagine that there are life elsewhere and I have to confess that I like all this topic of science, and its breakthroughs in healthy and the space.

Words I've learnt:

Linked with definitions in the text

Here the translation:

-Fit the bill: "els que compleixen la norma, o estan dins les condicions necessaries, reuneixen les condicions".

-In the midst: " Enmig"

-By far: " expressió= són, de lluny, els millors.

-Host: "l'amfitrió o el que els acull"

Pencil in a man's head

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22699975

This news explain the strange case of an Afghan man who had a pencil of 10 centimetres length located in his head. He was quickly operated in a German hospital. The pencil had injured the man's right eye socket and he don't really know how the pencil arrives there. He had suffered for years from headaches, a runny nose and eyesight problems, and he said that he remember, as a boy, he had a terrible fall and had a serious nosebleed (definition) but no more remember. To find the pencil a detailed medical examination using computer tomography.

Opinion:

This news have really caught my attention because is not a normal thing and I think is a very comical situation (leaving aside the problems for him and obviously because he have survived without important problems) because he have lived a lot of years with a pencil in his head without know it and he went there complaining about some problems, but he probably didn't expect that. Moreover what have really caught my attention is all this comical situation because have made me remind to a Simpson's story where it happened the same to Homer and he had a pencil in his head. In this case it was because he "snorted" (definition, "esnifava")pencils as a child to and one of the remained there. In the real case we don't know how it have happened and he said that he neither does but it's not normal and is a bit strange so the only situation that comes to my mind to explain that is that Simpsons's situation.

Words I've learnt:

Linked in the post.

End of football season (My team)

This last weekend we finish the football league and my football team has finished in the 8th position which in my opinion is a good position for us.

First of all it have to be said that we have played all the league with the half of the team that are "cadets" that they are younger and they should play in a lower league so I'm very happy for our result. Five weeks ago we were in the 6th position and we were very exited but the last four matches were against the first four teams of  the league so our coach decide to  challenge us and he said that if in these four matches we get 4 points of the 12 possible he will invite us to a dinner with all paid. For this reason these last four matches have been very interesting and exiting. We started with a draw against the team in the 4th place so since these moment we only need 3 points more that means to win one of the 3 last matches. We lost the next two matches and it arrives the last match against the 2nd placed that was a team called Salt, near Girona. We started losing the match but with a bit of fortune we achieve a penalty and finally we won the match and our coach couldn't believe it. 

We are very proud of this end of season, and now we only will play some friendly matches.

Here is the league table with all the information.

The only thing that haven't been good at all this league is that how is written in the table we received 69 goals, and taking in account that I'm goalkeeper that's not good numbers, but I also can say that only 29 of this goals have been scored to me.

Without hope at the end

These two last weeks will be almost painful for us :(. In these two weeks I have twelve exams, so more than one exam per day if we take in account that we only go to the high school five days per week. I have exams of all the subjects, and the worst is that now these weeks are approaching and all the exams are well organized, seems that some teachers want to laugh at us or to complicate our lives making changes at the last day or adding more exams to the following weeks, forcing us to come more days and extending our calender , to discourage us even more.

Apart from that, although hypothetically we finishes the exams on 7th June, now some teachers have added more exams later, and to force me more, I also have to come a weak more to make the research project, which compelled me to measure and weight all the students of the high school to get information before the summer.

These dates are also the important dates to know our marks and the dates where teachers calculate the average mark that used to change, usually to worse for some reasons or others. So it isn't hopeful to know that are approaching two weeks of exams, knowing at the same time that you will finish them exhausted, bored, unhappy and finally usually unfairly prejudiced.

Racism, a big social issue

Social Topic:

When we had to decide our topic for this presentation we were a bit lost but, one day, in class, we write a lot of topics which we could chose and finally we decided to do the project about racism because since we were kids we have always been seeing a lot of racism consequences and racial discrimination all around us so we really thought that was the silliest social issue (because it hasn't got any respectable reasons) and the one that provides more problems in our society.

Here I let all what we said in our presentation and the prezi presentation we used:

Racism, a big social issue:

INTRODUCTION (Eloi)

The racism is one of the worst and most dangerous social issues in our times. First of all we will define the word and concept of racism, after that we will talk about the history of the racism but, also, about examples of racism in our days. We will talk too about the causes and the consequences and finally we will show you some initiatives against the racism.

1. Definition(roger)

Okey, let's begin with the definition.

The exact definition of racism is controversial because there is little agreement about the meaning of the concept "race", and is all based on the belief in different races that truly doesn’t match with what we think. For example the most of us are caucasians and for example here is usual to hear some racial words against moroccan people that are caucasians too. So in fact is agreed that is about a discrimination between people because of their skin colour, their religion and usually related with their different social group.

Image: and here we can see the real different races in the world.

2. History(roger)

The first place where is cited the division in types of man is in a Babylonian Talmud (which is the Jew’s holy book) where it said that there were two types of man because of the different sons of Noah and the black ones were worst and similar to animals.

In the middle ages there are a lot of arabic writings that justify the discrimination against black people saying that they were more similar to animals that to humans and they used them as slaves.

Years later in Spain starts the reconquest of Al-Andalus started with the Cleanliness of blood  discriminating all the people that weren’t Christians and killing or kicking out them.

All this carried to the american and african colonization where there was an extreme racism that includes slavery that lasts until the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Near our times in America and in South Africa there were different important movements against the racism. But I will explain this later in the paragraph against racism.

The other important demonstration about extreme racism were the nazism in Germany that how you may know killed a lot of people and belief in a supposed higher race called Aria.

3.Causes(eloi)

The main cause in racism is xenophobia, when people are afraid of other cultures and ethnic groups. This is probably the worst reason because it only means that these people have grown in a racist social context and only shows this ignorance that only can be changed travelling and knowing about other cultures.

Another very dangerous reason is the economical one. This is very opportunistic and selfish because only appears in times of big crises like the actual one. These people  blame immigrants of their problems, like the unemployment. For example here and in greece have appeared racist political parties like PxC or The Golden Down which is actually in the Greek parliament.

Finally, we can also find a reason that it is very common in some neighbourhoods of United States. Some young and insecure people go into street gangs to be in a social group that make feel them important because these groups think that are higher than the other street gangs of other ethnies.

4.Modern racism (roger)

Nowadays we can think that there aren’t any important racist happenings but apart from the racism here that include a lot of consequences that Eloi will explain later, all around the world are being killed people for this reason.

-For example in Congo civil war, 10 years ago  pygmies were hunted and eaten like animals for the two bands of the war because they think they were inferior and they provide magical powers.

-Another nearest success it was in Norway in 2011 where a man killed 69 young gays and then recognize himself as an enemy of the modern multicultural society.

-Overmore in east-asia and oceania is increasing the racism against black people and against people in Indonesia.

-Here is not used to be as extreme as in other places but for example football there have been a lot of anti-racism campaigns because of things like that (** Photo) of people throwing bananas and swearing against black players.

-Another near example is the lately creation of racist political parties such as the ones that eloi have explained.

On the other hand there are some strange examples of emerging events like:

- In Africa, in Liberia the constitution restricts citizenship to only people of black African descent.

- Moreover in south america is increasing a new event totally opposed to the racism against the south-americans (that here were called “sudacas”) and now the spanish, italian and greek emigrants that go there are discriminated too, and called “Euracas”.

5.Consequences (eloi)

Racism can produce and actually still produce in a lot of places inequalities in front of the law, bullying in some schools, fights and violence.

We have to say that racism is not only an individual concept, society in general is quite discriminative and children grow up looking at other races people, maybe not like inferior people but yes like different people. Now we show you a video that shows how society influence in children minds.

racist kids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG7U1QsUd1g

6.Against racism(roger)

Okey, now let me go back to what I said earlier about events against racism

In this part of the project I have to name some important people involved in this reason.

- Abraham Lincoln who abolished the slavery in the united states.

- Moreover Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela that fight against racial discrimination in the United States and in South Africa respectively.

video Martin Luther king https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgYzJGmBXU8

Nowadays the most important campaign and the one with more social impact is the campaign of the UEFA against the racism all around the world.

And this is the map of the whole world where you can see the racism everywhere so this is the main evidence of the big problem that is the racism.

-Conclusion(eloi)

All in all we have to say that humanity has improved in this type of discrimination and actually racist people is a minority. Although there are still too much people that “think” that way. But we are optimistic and we think in a not long period of time racism will have disappeared.

ROGER: so we want to show you this little video of the change that our attitude have to do.

against racism video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yVMik5Mfwk

Now we only want that you think about it and make a little thought about if the right way of judge every person is watching at his skin or watching at his heart and his actions.

Thank you very much for your attention.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Now I want to let here my self evaluation and the videos, but I have to say that we had a little problem with the videos during the presentation and we have two parts with a little space that wasn't recorded in the middle of the two parts because of the memory of the cellphone who was recording finished just at these moment.

Roger Farrés: Racism, a big social issue  (with Eloi)
Presentation (10%)	Do you use any resources? Are the resources relevant and attractive and focused on the topic? Do they support your presentation? Is the timing 5-7 minutes? Yes we used Prezi as the main resource. Apart from that we placed a lot of happenings in a world map to help our presentation and to show that racism is everywhere in the world. About the timing, the presentation took about 15 minutes but we were two doing the presentation.		10
Body language and eye contact (10%)	Are you looking at your audience most of the time? Are you reading occasionally from your notes? Are you doing any gestures / movement to hold the attention of the audience? I think that this was the worst part of my presentation because it’s difficult to look at the audience, and sometimes I used to watch the presentation, but not we had not any note in the prezi so it wasn't because I don't know my part.		6
Structure (10%)	Do you organize your ideas in order of importance? Do you use discourse markers to make your ideas more clear? Yes, we done an index and we have put the ideas in order, and we use some discourse markers.		9
Content (30%)	Do you introduce interesting, NEW information to your audience? Is your information detailed and clear? Do you give / show examples? Is your information copied from a source or is it original? Did you look up information/facts/ideas in the Internet/books…? I think we have done it an interesting presentation with new information for all the audience because we explain a lot about a sport that people didn't know nothing. We have gave it some examples of each definition, and we have placed a lot of happenings in a world map to help our presentation.		30
Language (20%)	Is your grammar correct, complex? Is your vocabulary rich and varied? Do you use sentence linkers? Do you use pause fillers? I think that I used a correct grammar, with a lot of topic-related vocabulary. About the linkers and the pause fillers I think I have used a few.		18
Pronunciation and intonation (10%)	Do you know how to pronounce all your words? Did you check the pronunciation with a dictionary, a classmate or the teacher? Do you change your tone of voice or use a monotone tone all the time? Did you speed in a fluid continuum or with breaks and interruptions? I knew how to pronounce the words because I had searched on the google translator and in howjsay. I did it with some breaks to read or pronounce difficult words but in general I think I done it quite fluid. Apart from that I made some pronunciation mistakes like "society" but because I didn't searched previously because I thought I know how to pronounce this word.		8
Self-evaluation (10%)			9
Final Mark: (100%)		90%