Switched restaurant

This is our commercial for "Switched restaurant"

Blog's Feedback

I visited some of my classmates's blogs and I made some comments about them, here's the evidence and I'd like to mention that I also have a tumblr blog with activities from my previous english classes if you want to check it out my user name is xallyvargas.

Final reflection

At the beggining of the semester I thougth that this class would be the same as my english classes in high school: reading, speaking and writting. Yes, we did that in the class but we also made a lot more activities like oral presentations, videos, interviews, the collage and more.

Some times it was hard to do the activities because they were a little more complex and we needed plenty of time to make them and I personally didn't have that much time but I always found a way to make them and do it as best as posible.

I learned a lot about culture in general, other countries and topics I'd never thought about before but with the blog and all that I also learned how to make my blog more attractive, interactive and easy for people to read. For example: I didn't knew hot to embed the videos, presentations and word documets and now I do (Hope you agree).

As I said before it was hard to get all the activities done because there were a lot of projects but I enjoyed the class and it  changed my perspective in so many different ways. Thanks for everything teacher. (:

France

This is my presentation about the country. It was really easy to get the information by talking with people living there, Tandem turned out to be an easy tool to use and also helpful.

With this activity I learned that there are some things that France and Mexico have in common and also differences. The people I contacted by Tandem was really kind and they answered all my questions, so I recomend using this app.

Here's the presentation and you can also listen to the audio.

France from DiannXally

What's the best ife stage?

For me childhood is the best stage in life but I know some people might not agree, that's why I wrote this essay explaining the reasons I consider chilhood the best life stage.

Best stage in life from DiannXally

Male chauvinism essay

I wrote this essay about male chauvinism in Mexico because I truly believe that this is the origin of our major problems in the country and we need to start doing something about it, not wait others to do it. Writing essays in general during the whole semester has helped me a lot with the way I structure my thoughts and also it has made me enrich my vocabulary and be concise so that people can understand easily what I'm saying without using basic vocabulary.

Male chauvinism from DiannXally

3 words, 13 languages

In this entry you'll find three infographics that explains how to say three words in 13 different languages and later at the end of the entry there's a video that will help you with the pronunciation of these words.

This was a really cool and fun activity to do because we don't usually care about other languages or we don't even realize how different they are from each other. I personally believed that knowing spanish and english was enough and I certainly didn't imagine that there were so many languages and after doing this activity I definately feel interested in learning more languages and about different cultures.

Interactive Collage

Our topic is Gender and we represented different branches of it through art expressions.

We decided to make our interactive collage about gender because even though we are on the 21st century, in our opinion gender roles and gender identity are still taboo topics. We believe that society has established certain ways women and men should behave or act and this can be seen in our popular culture. Songs, movies, sculptures, and almost every kind of human expression conveys this ideas and in some way we end up pretending it is “normal”. However, to our minds every person should be able to be authentic and act as he/she feels without the limits of what´s socially acceptable. Every image shows how these taboo topics have a social impact. For example, the right lower corner image shows how a man has control over a woman by avoiding her to express her opinion. People believe this attitude to be normal because that is the gender role in society. We do not agree with this and that’s why we wanted to show the wrong attitudes that cause gender bias and discrimination.

(Dancing)Having been raised and educated in a culture that takes feminism for granted is difficult to avoid to notice how a certain work of art make us feel in relation to gender representations. 
In terms of gender roles, modern dance is often heavily rooted in classical traditions and rules, which it may or may not undermine or try to break out of. 
Femininity is represented as something that could be thrown, caught, pushed, pulled, bent, and lifted at will. Masculinity, while at times made ambiguous or mysterious, was presented as domineering and controlling, stripping the feminine of all agency.

Photography: In this picture we can observe the role of women in rural societies, they ar in charge of the "domestic" work, it's their responsibility to serve their families, provide them with food, take care of the kids.

Cinematography: We selected "Grease" as an example of a movie where gender roles are very different from one another. While Sandy is telling the girls how romantic her summer was because she met a charmming guy, Dany is telling their friends how hot this girl was and how masculine he was around her.

In the painting we can see a man covering a woman's mouth. This represents the now a days gender bias. The man is taking control over the woman by not letting her express her feelings or opinion toward something. As we mentioned before this could be seen as normal for the society but that is the big problem, it is not normal neither acceptable.

In the literature aspect we decided to choose an hindu book which explains the gender roles in that culture and how is the man and woman considered. We can say that in this culture there is discrimination, the man has an upper social level that the woman. This may be different in other culture so the interesting part is how this status can change depending on the culture.

The song is called "Boys Don´t Cry" and it´s played by The Cure. It is a popular song that talks about a very common gender stereotype about men. It is socially unacceptable for a men to cry in public just because it is not considered manly and that is the kind of gender stereotype that we would like to make disappear.

The sculptures shown are from an artist named Linda Stein and are armor-like because she wants to promote female empowerment by eliminating the stereotype that men are stronger than women. These sculptures are actually wearable for women to go to the street feeling free of this stereotype.

Draw my life

Making this video was kind of hard because I usually don't talk much about myself, it's not something I think I would like but it ended up being a really great idea to do it because it made me remember parts of my life that I didn't and also I had to talk about a topic I do remember but is very private and it felt good facing the problem after a really long time. I would have loved to talk a lot more about my childhood and my dreams but I would never end. I've had a lot of trouble in my life but if I had the chance I wouldn't change anything because it makes me the person I am right now, and I truly am starting to love and accept myself.  Here's the link to my "Draw my life video", hope you like it:

Week i

This week we had the "semana i" at Tec de Monterrey and because I'm from first semester my job was to sell a product and all our earnings will be donated to a social cause. My product were candles that were decorated for halloween and "día de muertos". We also decorated some of them with a lath that had dog footprint because we decided that our earnings would be donated to "Botas".

"Botas" collects street dogs and they take care of them until they can be adopted by a family.

As a resume of the week, for me it was relaxing because I could sleep a little bit more than I usually do. It was also fun to sell a product and to see what others were selling. I made two videos at the end of the week. The first one shows the evidence of the week and the second one talks about our exerience as a team during this week. I'm leaving they links for both of them if you want to watch them.

Just to conclude, I personally felt that there's still a lot of work to do in the organization of the event because it wasn't well organized at all, but I guess it will be improving with the time.

Evidence Video:

Reflection Video:

Interview cultural shock

Reflection: For foreign people is nice coming to Mexico because they consider us a very welcoming country and people is nice to them. They love our food and they find spanish language kind of hard to learn. They mentioned that mexican time is something that they are not used to because for example, if we say a party will start at eight, nobody is going to be there at eight, they will probably start arriving at 8:30 or 9. Also the kissing when saying hello or goodbye is something they have to get used to but in general everythings good.

Comic

This comic was based on the cultural shock experience. I based the story on a video I found where a french guy explained that one of the most difficult things for him to learn and understand while living here in México was "ahorita" and I found it interesting, and later I realize that this local expressions are probably the most difficult things to learn and in this class we are starting to deal with this information so I guess is going to be very usefull. 

My core memories.

This is the presentation of my core memories and it is about things I've lived and all those experiences that makes me who I am right now.

Here you'll find information about my passions, hobbies, values and more. Enjoy (:

About me.

My name is Diana and I'm 18 years old.

I just started my major and I'm really excited because I like learning new things. I've always considered myself a hardworking, specially because I always finish what I start even if I'm not good at it. 

For example, two years ago I started playing volleyball because it was something I wanted to do for a really long time, so when I had the chance I took it. 

I have to admit that I wasn't bad at it, I was terrible. I was really trying hard to do it right but it just didn't worked and it ended up being difficult for me, but the idea of stop trying never crossed my mind. I've kept playing and even my coach has noticed how much I've improved.

One of the reasons I also liked going to that class is because I made friends there and we had a blast everytime. For some reason, it was so easy for me to talk to them. I'm usually really shy when it comes  to meeting new people, but once I feel confident I'm always smiling and trying to make people laugh and that's how I felt when I was playing, confident.

The most important thing for me is my family. People usually thing that I don't care a lot about others because  I'm not used to show my feeling, but I do care and a lot. I care about my family, my friends, and everybody I meet and I always will, I just don't let it show. I don't know why, I guess it's just a strange idea of mine that it's better like that. 

When I was little I wanted to be a professional singer, dancer and actress. My gold dream was to be in a musical theater production, because I would sing, act and dance at the same time. Later I realized I had stagefright but I kept singing in the shower and taking dancing and acting classes as a hoby.

Today I love speaking on the radio, writting stories, songs, poems and all kinds of stuff. I'm currently doing the behind the scenes of a movie that's coming out next year.  I would love to be able to film my own movie in some years but right now I'm happy with what I do. 

That's it for this time. I hope it helps you to get to know me better. 

Diana Vargas.

Reflection

Are the topic usefull for your daily life? Why/Why not?

I think they are because they help improve our grammar and amplify our vocabulary and at least, for me, that is way useful. When learning english is important not only to understand it, we also have to speak and write english and not only the basic. 

In the future I'd like to live for a while in the United States and for me it's important to get as much english knowledge as possible because imagine I'm talking with somebody and they he uses an idiom I don't know so I can't understand what he is trying to say. 

I consider that my english level is good and it never stops to amaze me how I've improved my english and I think that you can never learn enough so I'll take whatever comes. 

Evidence