Transantiago

Transantiago is much better than the old system. Buses used to be old, very polluting and very noisy. Also the Bip system makes everything more eficient and reduces the corruption of the bus drivers. With the old system we had to pay with coins, and sometimes the drivers used to go mad because he had to drive the bus and at the same time give you the change. Now you go to a special place where you charge your Bip card , so you just go inside the bus, pass the card next to a machine and you are ready. The problem of this is that sometimes you can't find a place to charge your card, and until you do, you can't take the bus even if you have money with you. When the Transantiago just started it was horrible, because there were not enough buses and the people was pressed inside. But now I think it's a much more intelligent system than the previous one, even if it took to long to start properly. But still there are some problems that I believe must be changed. For instance, even if the majority of the old buses were replaced, many of them are still being used, so air and acoustic pollution are still a consequence of the public transport system. So this situation must change, the goverment has to force the owners of the buses to use only new machines.

A COUNTRY I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT

I would like to visit Rusia very much. Since I discovered the amazing russian literature as a teenager, russian people never ceased to impress me. I haven't read a lot of it, but Dostoievski was enough to make me wonder about Russia, russian poeple and what was to live there. Because of political propaganda from USA, Russia and their people appeared to us to be very cold and boring, full of angry, agressive and depressed people living in an oughfull way. I remember some marcial arts or action movies I watched in the 90'; in most of them the bad guy was an horrible russian giant, heartless, killer, and the heroe was an humble, handsome and correct middle size american. But after reading russian authors, I discovered a different face of russian culture, more realistic, more true. Since then I met some russians, and I found how different they are from us in many ways (uncomprehensible language, almost no physical contact between them, a soft and silent way of talking), but also how similar to us they can be. Maybe I don't want to live there, but at least to visit it and travel spcecially through Siberia in the Transiberian. I would like to go to Moscu to visit my russian friends and, way not, to learn russian, that it's to me a very beautiful language.

The good and bad things in 2009

This year has been very strange but also very important for me because it`s my last year studing here (at least for the moment). Next year hopefully I will be writing my tesis and doing my working practice outside of Santiago. This matter make me very entusiastic about my studies; I have the feeling everything is finishing, so I have to do my best and enjoy as much as I can theses last moments here. During last semestre in particular, I had the same ideas but I was feeling strange. Besides this optimism, there were moments that I was feeling trapped in my everyday`s life, and I couldn`t enjoy university as much as I wanted. I didn`t have time to do any sport because of all the time I needed for the studies. So this was my challenge, because most of the subjects I decided to study demand me a lot of dedication. In other hand my personal relations with my friends worked very good , the same as with my girlfriend. I also wanted to get a job so I could leave my parent's house. Maybe beacause of the crisis, I don't know, I couldn't find one, so this gave me sometimes the feeling of being more and more trapped to things; in this case my family. Is not that I don't like them, is just that I'm a little bit tired of being with them everyday. They are cool, they don't botter me at all, but anyway I would prefer to be alone sometimes, not to have to justify or explain myself in case I want to go out or invite someone.