School I have a critic about the current education system, don´t you think that kids shouldn´t spend almost all their childhood sitting at a desk at school? it´s like they were preparing them to be office workers. Kids must obey everything, be quiet or they qualify them like trouble makers, that it´s like being in the army. Kids should be more free, play with other kids, that way they learn, how they discover, they should have more fun learning. Teachers should guide them, teach them how to be good people, make them plays where they can learn the basic maths, read, science, etc. but not in the way they do today. Kids are getting bored today and it´s not their fault.

Movie Troy Today I saw a great movie with my niece and my mother, we saw Troy. We found it really good, a lot of action, great performances and the story is fascinating. I have always had doubts about the veracity of the story, but I think it is just mythology because the story comes from Homer´s book The Odyssey, just a novel. The movie tells the story of how greeks could enter to the city of Troy thanks to a giant wooden horse where soldiers were hidden and attacked the city from inside, also the movie shows a prominent fighter named Aquiles performed by Brad Pitt.

Have you ever tried meditation?? Hi, since a short time ago I´ve been practicing meditation by myself. I´ve read that meditation is really good for health, for concentration, release stress and many other good things. I decided to start because I just have a little free time during the week and meditation require I think from 10 minutes to any time you wish. I meditate in the morning before to go to my work, that way I start the day with a good mood. In the future I would like to read books about it, to know different kinds of styles and choose one.

Trying to come back Hi, a long time without writing something. I have been so busy with my job that I haven´t had time to be in italki and talk with teachers. Usually I work the whole day despite my schedule is just from 8:30 am to 18.30 pm and it`s because the company has a "culture" where if you leave the office at the right time, they think that you are not commited with the company or that you don´t have enough work to do, well anyway, I will try to give more time to this (learn english) and at least write every night in order to not forget what I have learned so far. greetings

Students would be more successful if they got cash for passing exams. Anybody could think that if you offer money to a child they would improve their scores immediately, but according to a report I have just read, it says that parents could be wasting their money because kids don´t show progress. If you want to motive them to learn, you could offer them something they like, for example a trip to somewhere, go to cinema or go to the theater. Finally what it is the most important for children is the way they are taught, so this involve directly to teachers and their ways to motive them to learn.

It is ok for oil companies to drill in the Artic Ocean? I know there are plenty of people and environmental groups that are against oil companies because of the pollution and the damage they do to the surroundings, but in my case I would let them work in the Artic just if they could improve the way they extract the oil and I would encourage them to enhance their technology. As far as I know, we just have oil reserves for a few years more and if we don´t find others way to create energy we are going to be forced to drill wherever we can, we will not have more choice, considering the growth rate of population as well.

Obsolete laws I think there are plenty of obsolete laws in chilean legislation that has not been updated yet. Citizens could be fined because of them. Even nowadays we could find them stupid or useless. For example there is a law that forbid to put planters on balconies of apartments (plants), but if you look the city you can find that almost every apartment has flowers in recipients (planters) on ther balconies. There are others that forbid to chew-gum in some public swimming pools and other that says that a person could be reported to the police if he/she is wearing a too provocative/seductive swimming suit.

Books are better than websites. Discuss I don´t agree, because in the website you can complement the text with many pictures, video files, audio files, etc. that might allow you to learn with more details. Also many websites has hyperlinks in the text that takes you to another page with more information about it, as Wikipedia does. Websites can save you time as well, for instance: an online dictionary where you can write the word that you are looking up instead of search page by page in a book. The disadvantages of websites are for example that some places don´t have internet or some people can´t afford internet price or electronic devices prices like tablets, smartphones, computers, etc.

Companies generally put the environment before profits. Do you agree? I don´t agree. Just in the last years companies and governments have been more concerned about environmental issues, this because the planet is already very contaminated. People always have been greedy, without environmental awareness. For instance, in my country was very famous a case where a forestry company contaminated an entire lake. The lake used to be beautiful, with a lot of animal life, you could see great variety of birds, but now is all dead, is very sad. When the owners were interviewed by television, they stated that the dead of the lake and animal life was the cost of development, the cost of the progress. Everybody hated them.