Cultural Shock at China

"Culture shock is the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a visit to a new country, a move between social environments, or simply travel to another type of life" ( Macionis and Linda, 2010)(1)

On 2012 I went on an exange year to China. Actually it was not a year but 10 months that I lived with two chinese families, attending regularly to school, eating their food, celebrating their festivals, learning about their culture and speaking their language.

China is a way too different country from ours and that was exactly why I chose to go there. It was a great experience for me, though it was very very difficult to get used to live like them. 

At the begginning I was very amazed seeing all the differences between my way to do things, and the "chinse way". The differences goes from the way to eat dinner, to the way to be polite to elders; from the way to say hi to your friends, to the way of walking on the streets. Through time passing it became more difficult. Things were not that amazing since they were becoming an habit. Also the language was a huge barrier when I wanted to express myself and have a conversation with someone. 

I remember once that I got really impressed because my host-mother didn't let me to go out wearing shorts. Outside the temperature was up to 39º degrees. But she told that shorts where inapropiated, so I was only allowed to wear them inside home, and die of hot outside with long-legs pants the whole summer. 

Learning the language was the most frustating part of this. It took it's time and eventually I could comunicate without many problems, and people frequently told me that I act just like an authentical chinese. 

(1) Macionis, John, and Linda Gerber. "Chapter 3 - Culture." Sociology. 7th edition ed. Toronto, ON: Pearson Canada Inc., 2010. 54. Print.

My holidays at Olmué

Two suumers ago I have one the best holidays ever. I went with my best friends from school to one of their holiday-house in Olmué. We were seven girls together with the whole house for us for a entire week. It was so much fun!!!

The house was pretty big. It had a pool in the backyard but we had to split in two rooms and put the mattresses together to sleep seven people in 5 beds.  We went to the centre of town just a few times to have a walk and mainly to buy some food, drinks and survivor stuffs... we thought the center was too small and boring so we spent most of the time inside the house. 

I remember one of the nights that we swam in the pool until very late and the temperature was still very high. We stayed on the grass and watched the stars. It was a beautiful scenery, I've never seen so many shooting stars before!

For me this was a very special holidays because since we graduated from school and entered University, me and my friends have never coordinateed to go out we all seven together. I miss that very much!

Sociology. Why did I choose my career?

I am currently coursing my first year of university. I am studying Sociology at the University of Chile. 

When a year ago I was preparing the PSU I was not very sure of what career I wanted to study but I did know about my interests in social affairs. 

My first option was Political Science. Considering that I was not very convinced, I talked with some friends that were currently studying Social Sciences, Humanities, and Political Science to get to know more about the possible careers that I may be interested in, and finnally I decided to try Sociology because I liked the utility and usage that you can get to do with social investigation, and that you can generate some necessary and useful knowledge for social and political issues. I also wanted to enter the University of Chile because it has a large prestige and trajectory in Social Sciences and, how best than in JGM!  because I live just a few blocks away.

I don't have a plan for my future but I would defenitely like to work for an ONG, specially if it's about Latin American or National concerns.

A country that I would like to visit.

Two years ago I met a good friend of mine from Germany. Since then, I would like to go there and visit her. 

Germany seems to be such a nice place for a living. It is not a large country and their population is not a lot. 

My friend is from Hamburg, that's the second largest city in the country and also known as the "capital of sports".  They have a beautiful scenery (specially at night) of a lake in the middle of the city wich is all surrounded with very typical architecture. I would like to go there and have a bike ride.

Berlin is another city that I would like to visit. As a urban cyclist I am very interested in this city because it is one of the three best cities in the world to use the bicyle as a main of transport. On the touristic side, I think that the Berlin Wall is one of the most important icons of the human history and it is a must to go there if I get to visit the city.

I don't know if I would like to live there, but if I have the opportunity I would spend a whole summer there, having fun with my friend, and trying to learn some german.