Nepal

I really love to travel; if I had the money and time, I would like to travel around all over the world. I had visited many places that I wanted to know, for example Easter Island, Peru and Bolivia; but still there are many other places that I wish I could go.

When I was in Peru, I met a German girl and now we are facebook friends. About 2 years ago, she uploaded photos from a trip that she did to Nepal, and when I saw it I loved that place…specially the architecture, it’s really beautiful (at least in her photos).

Although, I must recognize that I don’t know much about this country. Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal, and if I went there I would like to visit all the Hindu and Buddhist temples and palaces.

An interesting thing that Nepal has is the world’s highest mountain, the Mount Everest, at the Himalayas; its summit reaches a peak of 8.848 meters above the sea level!! If only I had the physical conditions and abilities, I really like to climb it.

Another special characteristic of Nepal is that it’s considerer a multicultural and multilingual country. So, as anthropologist, if I went there I would like to know the diverse Nepalese culture; its religions, traditions and the different ethnic groups that compose its cultural heritage.

I don’t know if I would like to study, work or live in Nepal; maybe if I went there I only would like to stay awhile…or maybe if I loved Nepal, I would want to stay forever and ever.

Love

Hello! In this post I’m going to talk about a topic that sometimes could be a little bit complicated, but that it’s always around us…love. So, what is love?

In my opinion, love is one of the most important and intense feelings. Of course that love is a concept that can change through time and cultures, but I think that its essence remains. And this essence is what changes everything.

I have a great anecdote related to changes. I have a friend who always said: “I don’t believe in love”. Last year he went to Europe on vacations and he met an American girl; he spent 4 days with her and he fell in love. Then, he came back to Chile, and a few months ago he went to USA to see her. His plan was stay two months or something like that, but instead he changed his ticket and decided to stay until his passport expired. And when he came back to Chile, he told me that he got married!! It was so so unexpected!

So…if my friend could change his thought about love, anything can happen; you know, as The Beatles said… All you need is love.

See you!

My last semester

Hi everyone!

Today I will talk you about my second semester, a special one because this is my last semester as an undergraduate student…finally! :)

First of all, I really expect that this new term will be good, and in particular I hope I will not to be under a lot of stress because of the classes.

On this semester I’m taking the last 3 subjects to finish my career, and I think that the most important is Taller de Investigación, because in this course we have to make a thesis design. So, I look forward to learn to do it well.

This is not my first summer semester; in fact, this is my third summer semester so I think that is not so awful. Furthermore, is a very short term, so I hope that time fly.

These are my expectations for this second semester. I hope you will have a good semester too!

See you on Monday!

The last one...

When we started with the blog sessions, at first I didn’t like the idea because I thought that I couldn’t do it. But through the semester I started to enjoy it and I realized that my English was better than I thought. When I was at secondary school, the English classes were very poor and we often talked in Spanish about things not related to the class itself… so, I learnt less than I should.

I’ve always thought that all the readings in English that we have to read in Archaeology helped me a lot to improve my English during the last two years, at first as a real challenge. And now, with the blogs I think that I’ve improved more because it’s not only read, but write too (and every week), maybe this was one part that I lacked.

Another reason that I like blogs is because it allows knowing about likes and dislikes and a little bit of the life of our classmates. Many of the stories were very funny, especially those with pics of the moment that it described on the comments.

However, I must to say that there was one thing I didn’t enjoy at all: the classes at 8.30 am!! It was so terrible for me to wake up so early, especially the last weeks that it was so cool and dark hahaha. But the classes were entertaining and the entire group was great. I like that we were a mixture of different careers because besides to improve our English together, we could learn a little about others areas.

Summarizing, I think that the blog sessions’ experience was very good and it helped to improve my English. Blogs was a useful tool in the process of learning a language.

Hope to see you the next semester…

One of my favourite dish...

Hi everyone! Today I’m going to tell you about one of my favourite dish. It’s really difficult to me to choose only one of them, because I enjoy so much almost every kind of food!!  :p (except those with meat… because I’m vegetarian).

If I must choose one favourite dish I think that would be pasta. I don’t remember where or when was the first time that I ate it, but maybe it was at home when I was a little girl :)

I think that everybody knows the recipe: you put some water to boil, and then you put the pasta in the pot, you wait a few minutes…and it’s ready!! Maybe one of the reasons that I like it is because is so easy to cook…

I also like it, because you can do a lot of different sauces to add to this dish, and always are so delicious! I think that one of my favourite sauces is pesto. But if you enjoy cooking, I think that is great that you can create sauces from different combinations of ingredients that you have in your fridge!

The last time that I went to an Italian restaurant was in February. I was on a fieldwork at Temuco, and one night we were to have a dinner at Madonna. We arrived very late, and we think that maybe the restaurant could be closed. We were so lucky, because it was open and we were really starving after a hard day of work! When we ordered, all the dishes were different so we can taste all of them. And when the waitress brought our dishes, were huge!! So we were very happy :D

Daybreak at Ahu Tongariki

Hi! Today I want to show you a photograph that to me is very special and reminds me a lot of different moments from the summer 2009. This is a pic that I took of Ahu Tongariki in Easter Island at daybreak. I like it because between clouds you can see some sun beams and the presence of Moais in front of the scene is very impressive. Although I think that this picture can’t reflect the beautiful colors and all the feelings that I had when I was there.

This photograph was the result of a very long night, that actually start the day before when with my friends rented a car to go all over the island. In the evening we decided to see the daybreak at Ahu Tongariki, so we must wake up at 4 am to drive to that area of the island. The trip was so funny… the driver was frightened because was very very dark, we couldn’t see anything around us, only that the car lights illuminated. And we start to talk about “Solitario y Crazy Joe”, a name that we give an imaginary person that supposedly was stopped our car. All this story start when we said to some native friends that we want to go to that Ahu and they warned us to be careful if any people want a ride.

When we finally found the place the daybreak was close, so we were very excited. We waited for an hour, by this time was less dark and we realized that was very cloudy, but we still have hope that the sky was going to clear.

As you can see in the photograph, that never happened… but I have beautiful memories from this day.

An important day...

I think that a really important day was the first day of my first big trip. It was on the summer of 2008, and with a friend we went to Peru! We take a bus early in the morning to Arica, and after many many hours, next day to be more specific, we finally arrived to this city. That day we went all over Arica and next day we went to Chungara Lake! It’s so beautiful!! And when we were there, started to hail so we can saw the flamingos only from the bus :(

After that day, we start our real trip, the most important because it was the first one that we did without family. We crossed the frontier in the evening. In Tacna we bought tickets to Arequipa and we had to run to the bus because it leaves the city in that moment. After Arequipa, we went to Puno and the Titicaca Lake, and after this city we went to Cuzco!

The last day in Puno we left a message in the hotel of a friends group saying that we were going to Cuzco and that we can meet the next day in the main square at 8 pm. And we did it! :) Then we all together traveled around the city and all its archaeological sites, museums and some discotheques.

And of course…we went to Machu Picchu! This was another important day, especially after climb Huayna Picchu or “Young Peak” (Machu Picchu is the “Old Peak”), a mountain that rises over Machu Picchu and when you reach its top you can see all this important Inca city!

This day marks the start of a great trip!

My laptop :)

My favourite piece of technology is my laptop. I got it 5 years ago and in spite of that now is a little broken, it has been very very useful! And I can say that I’m a little addicted to it.

I use my laptop mainly for three things: to do works for the university, to listen music and of course..internet! I use it all the time…generally when I arrive to my home I switch on to check my e-mail and sometimes I don’t turn it off until the night.

Since two years ago I have Linux system on my laptop and I really like how it works! One of the things that I like the most is that you don’t need to worried about virus :)

I like my laptop because it allows me to be connected and I can save lots of documents, pictures, and music that I like. Also I like it because I can move it everywhere…the only problem is that now sometimes if I move it I don’t know if going to work…

For this reason I had to buy a new one… and it will arrive at my home tomorrow, so I’m very happy :)

Places I'd like to visit :)

I’d like to visit the north Peruvian coast and Ecuador. Those places are really awesome if you like the desert, rainforest and also go to the beach!  In Peru there is a desert landscape in the coast and in Ecuador there is a lot of beautiful beach such as Montañita, a very popular place.

In the north Peruvian coast I’d like to visit all the archaeological sites, and you can found a lot of them! Especially those from the Moche culture, such as the museum-site “Moche” –capital of this culture- where you can see the Huaca de la Luna and Huaca del Sol, two pyramids that archaeologists have interpreted like a temple the first one and an administrative building the second. In the image below you can see a photo of this archaeological site.

In Ecuador I’d like to visit the beach and be relaxed, after the archaeological tour in Peru, in a place like this and stay for awhile…

I’d like to go with some friends and I’m sure that we’ll have a great time there! But at least for the moment, I don’t save any money for this trip…so the great adventure must wait :(

See you!

Music that I like...

When I'm sad I always listen lively music to cheer up and also I listen to this music when I must work or do something and I’m feel sleepy. In those cases, I really like listen to Chico Trujillo and Banda Conmoción, because its music is so lively… but the only problem is with that music also I want to dance! A few weeks ago, in a party at the university played Banda Conmoción and I was dancing a lot with my friends! :)

Another kind of music that I like listening when I feel a little sad or tired is folk music. I like groups such as Los Jaivas and Inti Illimani because when I listen to its music, I remember when I was in La Tirana, Peru and Bolivia and I enjoyed so much because I was there in carnival time and all the people go out to dance in the streets with the groups of Tinkus and Caporales.

Sometimes I also like listening to merengue and salsa if I really need to cheer up, or bossa nova if I want to feel happy and relaxed. But I haven't listened to this kind of music for a long time…

See you :)

Something about Archaeology..

A website that could interest you, if you want to know a little of Archaeology and prehistoric cultures, is the site of Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (http://www2.precolombino.cl/es/index.php).

On this page, you can find information about the pre-Columbian groups in South America, especially those who used to live in Chilean territory. Also, they update the information of all the expositions, both permanent and temporary, that it’s presents in the museum.

Another interesting section is dedicated to the children. With cartoons, they try to explain in simple words different topics like the America settlement, cultures, art and how they lived.

Also, on this website you can learn about the pre-Columbian musical instruments and you can listen and download music of original groups that was made as an experimental work by the ethno-musicologists José Pérez de Arce and Claudio Mercado, who have a group call “La Chimuchina”.

A few months ago, when it’s working in an extension in the museum patio, it’s found cultural remains of the Colonial period, so the archaeologist must excavated the museum itself and you can see part of the excavation process in this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrnPOuQApkc&feature=player_embedded.

I like this website because you can find information of different topics and also papers about my career, but I visit it only sometimes...

A welcome post...a little late

Hi everyone! :)

My name is Francisca and I'm studying Archaeology. Last week I was on a field work in Quintero and because of that I couldn't do this welcome post before.

In this blog, I'll like to tell you about things that I like (like the movie that I post below), a few thoughts..and of course I'll like to improve my english :)

See you in class!

The last movie that I saw at the cinema was “Black Swan” with two friends. It’s a great movie to see, because both the story and the actors. Its movie shows the life of Nina, a dancer played by Natalie Portman, who was chosen to interpret the Queen Swan in the ballet play “The Swan Lake”, and this means that she must dance two roles: the black and white swan.

This situation caused that Nina, who is perfect for the role of the white swan, must fight with a partner and especially herself, against all her fears and insecurities caused by the relationship with her mother.