Anastasia Oplakanets: Week 2

Throughout my whole life I have had lots of friends and many best friends but they went as quickly as they came. I do not know why I cannot make permanent friends, I guess that after a while I see how people truly are and I do not want to stick around them anymore.
Still, I do have friends that have been there for me almost for ever. One girl in particular with whom I went to school since the third grade is a very important person for me.Although is true that we do not see each other everyday, I consider her one of my closest friends. She has a very odd personality, not an easy girl I must say, but her constantly anecdot telling and laughing and her craziness is so amusing I cannot resist! Also, she gives me support whenever I need it and tries her best to help me. There will always be that bound between us, the one you share with someone whom you have known for so long...That is a connection too hard to develop and I am very happy to have it with someone!

I was born in Ukraine and spent my childhood there and I guess that is the reason why I love cold places. You know the cold, rainy, grey places that appear in books and mistery films? I simply adore them. My dream is to visit places like Canada, Alaska, Norway, Britain, etc. More than that, I would love to live there. I love it when winter arrives and everything has that something so enjoyable; isn't it great to watch a film in a rainy cold day with a cup of tea in your hands? I also love to wrap myself up in coats and coats to stay warm, it remembers me a lot of my country.

Oddly, I would also love to visit Australia! It has been my dream since forever. I love animals and Australia has such an incredible fauna. I would love to discover and learn about all of the speacies, from the tiniest one to the biggest ones. Not mentioning its landscapes and beaches and surfing and diving! I am determined to go cage diving with sharks someday, which are one of my favourite animals ever. I want to mention here a book called 'A letter to my captor'' by Lucy Christopher, which describes amazingly one of the greatest landscapes of Australia and it is so worth of reading; it leaves you craving to go to Australia's deserts and feel everything that has been so well described in the book. I do not know whether I coud live there, but for sure I will visit this amazing country!

If I had enough money I would do many things. I think I would firstly help as many animal shelters and campaigns in need as I could, that would bring me an incredible joy. In our country the awarness of animal abandnonment is very poor and this lack of information causes more and more animals to be thrown at the streets as if they were some kind of useless toy. So if I had a chance to bring awarness about this theme and help the animals I would become the happiest person on earth.
Of course it depends about how much money we are talking about but if after the said above I had more money to spend I would definitely buy a house and my own horse, which I have been waiting to own for too long.

Isabel (Week 2)

Among my friends, there are specially two that I know since I have memory. We met when we were 3 years old in school. We went to the same class and eventually became close, remaining that relationship until now. We may not be the type to be talking everyday, but we are there for each other and when we go out we have so much fun. We’re different and our opinions sometimes are not the same but we still get along well. On one hand, there is Gloria that is always drawing and talking about tattoos, animals and break dance. On the other hand, Nuria is more into writing and reading. She is also there when you need to talk about something and ready to give advice. Usually we talk about TV series and how our life is going when we meet. Even though I don’t show it, I’m really happy to have them and I wouldn’t want it otherwise.

I would like to visit the Egyptian pyramides because it has always impressed me how they were made, considering that at that time there weren’t as many resources as today. The luxury in one hand, and the life of the slaves on the other hand is something that I would like to know more about. From my point of view, it is important to get to know the history and culture of other places in order to have a more critical perspective of the world and not commit the same mistakes all over again. I consider them one of the most beautiful constructions that has been ever made.

I would like to visit Tokyo because I’m interested in their culture. I’m used to watch documentaries about it but never had the opportunity to visit it. I think it would be a great travel since there are many monuments with a lot of interesting history behind and a lot of beautiful landscapes such as the mount Fuji. It is also one of the places where technology is more developed, so it would be good to try new things and get to know new people that can teach you to appreciate and embrace their culture.

If I had enough money

If I had enough money, I would firstly make sure that my parents are living a good life and I would help them if necessary, due to they took care of me since I was born. Secondly, I would buy the books, cds and dvds that I like, considering that now I can’t because of the high prices and taxes that the government has imposed to cultural products. Thirdly, I would spend money helping others. I’m interested in feminism so I would work to spread its work so we can reach a world where women are treated the way we deserve. Moreover, considering the vast amount of diseases that need more investigation, such as cancer, I would like to contribute to quicken scientific’s work and find a cure to all of them as soon as possible.

Paula Sánchez - WEEK 2

To start with, I will say I have quite good friends, and some of them are named Sara and Anastasia. Regarding Anastasia, she is an animal lover, what´s more she practices horseriding. Moreover, she can be really selfish sometimes, but she also cares about others, even though  I sometimes feel she cares about animals the most. What I think about her is that she looks strong on the outside but sensitive on the inside, and that she is a great friend, too. We have been together since the first grade of High School and we still continue to friends while at university.

Regarding Sara she is a wonderful person, the person that best understands me. We get along so well that it is almost unbelieveble. And she is always there for me, we can talk about the most random stuff but also have deep conersations. I am really thankful for having her as my friend. As a result of our strong friendship, we have plenty of plans, and one of them is to travel in three years time to our dream country , wich is South Korea.

In relation with tha places I would like to visit, there are many countries in my to-visit list, but the most important one for me is South Korea, as I have said so above. In fact, I have been in love with S. Korea for a long time now, and soon I will achieve my dream. I adore S. Korea since it has so many interesting and beautiful things Spain (and Europe in general) do not. For example, you can find a whole building full of individual karaoke rooms where you can spend your afternoon for little money, or you can go shopping to Myeongdong, where you can find anything you may be looking for. Morever, there are so many beautiful ancient temples and palaces to visit it is overwhelming

It is a country of contrasts, you may be in Seoul admiring a palace, and when you turn around you will see some of the highest skiescrapers in the world. That is how Korea is like

 











What I would do if I had enough money 

What I would do if I had enough money is to become independent, in the first place. A good option would also be to travel around the world whenever I wanted to, having no monetary limit. And regarding filantropy, I would donate some of my money to charities that empower women and protect children. Summing up, I would just live life to the fullest, 

Anastasia Oplakanets Week 1: What do yo do to improve your writing in English?

I am that kind of a person who improves her writing through entertainment. Personally, I have never been the one who sits at her desk studying english for hours. From my point of view studying should not be boring or exhauting.I think people develop skills in foreign language writing when they do simple and common activities such as listening music or reading books. In my case, I have always loved listening to songs and reading, these two are definitely my passion. I must confess that reading a whole book in another language is very challenging but at the end is more that worth of it. Not only vocabulary can be learnt but also new structures, native expressions, etc.
Many years ago I started to surf the Internet looking for my favourite songs' lyrics, wondering what was that the singer sang. I also loved going through YouTube comments, which is something that I consider truly amusing and funny. This curiosity pushed me to learn without even trying hard, I have learnt unconsciously lots of new vocabulary words and how to express myself better not only at writing, but also at speaking. Added to this, my english lessons at school and university had helped a lot, plus the fact that not so long ago I started reading books in english, which is still quite frustrating sometimes but everytime I do so I learn different things and that is my compensation. Although everytime I write in english it takes a long time before I consider it well written, I am trying to make of it something more natural.Of course there is still a lot of work to do and many things to improve but at the moment I am really happy with my writing skilks.

Paula Sánchez (Week 1)

HOW I IMPROVE MY WRITING

By trying to improve my writing I regularly write in English, either it is on a piece of paper or on my mobile phone. For instance, when I'm on my phone I tend to communicate in English, since I know many people from abroad and that is the only way we can understand each other. In doing so, I learn both, new structures and vocabulary, since I practice it every day and my brain kind of gets used to the incoming information. And I must say it is a really practical and interesting way of improving one's writing without being stuck in front of a text book.

Moreover, I believe that reading books in English can also be a useful tool for learning more and more English. In my case, I have to say that I have not read a big amount of books in English, but regarding the few I have read, I can state that they provided me many new words I can now put in practice. Some of those words are  not everyday words, but they definitely will be useful at some point. From my viewpoint, learning new vocabulary is essential, and another way apart from reading books is following vocabulary accounts on Twitter, for instance. What those accounts do, is upload many interesting words everyday along with its meaning and a sentence containing that word. Should I want to learn new vocabulary, I look for that accounts and note those words down to add them to my own English vocabulary.

Isabel Martínez Puche (Week 1)

 HOW DO I IMPROVE MY WRITING

There are many ways to improve one’s writing. In my case, I consider that one of the main bases to obtain a well-written text is vocabulary. It provides a lot of information and it is necessary to be familiar with the vocabulary of the context you are going to write about. That’s why I try to learn as much vocabulary as possible through different ways. For example, by reading books of a wide range of genres.   It also helps you to get in contact with the structures of the English language, which are important to take into account, as you observe the different techniques used by author’s. It gives you the opportunity to choose between more than one possibility or to use some of them at the same time and make your text richer in terms of structure and writing techniques. All of this with the help of a dictionary. Whether it is online or a physical one, it is important to have a dictionary to search for the meaning of the new vocabulary that may appear through your reading. It is recommendable as well to write down all of those words and expressions you didn’t know and also to try to include them in your writings. This way, you can memorize them easily and learn which is the better context to use them properly.

Apart from reading, another way of improve your writing is to write. By including new vocabulary and structures, your writing will keep improving each time. Later on, you can compare your previews writings with the most recent ones and point out the areas where you improved and those that need more improvement.

The dictionaries I usually use when I’m reading are http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ where the meaning is explained in English and http://www.wordreference.com/ for those times when I don’t fully understand the English explanation and I need to translate it into Spanish.