I know I haven’t posted in ages, but I can fairly blame it on my life. Moving from one country to another is apparently the third most shocking thing that can happen to you. The first is when someone close dies and the second when you (or your parents) divorce.

Peru was, with all its defects, a good place to live. I’m going to miss it. Sometimes I miss it already, and I’m not even in Washington yet. And when I say I’m going to miss it, I don’t just mean the city. I also mean everything it is and represents and all the people we met in it. I will miss going through Benavides and chuckling at the fact that there’s like 10 chifas in just one avenue, and I will miss awing at the Christmas lights in Alamaeda Monte Umbroso, but I will miss more the people who really made my time in Peru worthwhile.  They were the ones who gave it all sense.

Thankfully my family stays with me. Other than God, it’s one of the only things that have been stable wherever I go. I mean stable as in “there, with me”, because thinking again, family is one of the less stable things there is! Hopefully you got what I mean.

As I was saying, leaving people you love tears you apart. The whole “you never know what you have until you lose it” is true, but I think in this case it’s less true. I have the Internet, oh the wonderful Internet. MSN, Facebook, E-mail…it’s not like I’m REALLY losing something. I’m not. I won’t. These people are much too valuable to let go, just like that.

Lizzy tops the list. But I WILL see you again, and we’ll seriously stay in touch and it will be like no space is between us. I hope so, at least.

Ok, this is turning into a rant (and I haven’t even gotten into what I feel about going to Washington D.C. *shudder*), while I meant it to be a cheery New Year’s Eve post.

What do I mean with all of this? Sometimes life is mean to us. Actually, most of the time we have -some- problem we have to deal with. It’s never easy. Ever. But we need to have optimism. We need to be able to believe that however bad things are now, they can be better, and they will. So we have to believe in God.

(And if you don’t, at least try for some time and you will notice the difference. Seriously.)

This year will be freaking tough for my whole family. I can’t remember fearing so much the beginning of a year before. But it’s necessary to be optimist and believe that God will be with us. I know it will be OK, even if I am feeling really insecure.

Apart from believing in God, believe in yourself. We have so much inner power, we really do.

I told this to someone earlier today and I will put it here. Today, let’s shake all our fears and the terrible things from 2007 like dead skin and freshly start the new year.

And may it really be happy.

This seems way too urgent not to ignore. You may or may not know that right now, an international conference is occurring in Bali, to discuss climate change.

As it happens, the US, Canada and Japan have rejected mentions of emission cuts by 2020. We knew the US was being selfish, but the fact that more countries are following this trend is simply alarming.

Avaaz launched an emergency petition before the summit climax in 48 hours. So sign the petition here, and sign it quick!

YOUR name might be the one that makes the difference!

This is absolutely awesome, too bad WordPress doesn’t allow Flash widgets.
It’s perfect for those in need of Christmas cheer!

Click here and leave me a little present, anonymously if you want.
It’ll make my day!

Free Rice is a website that allows you to enhance your English vocabulary and feed a hungry person at the same time.

 The site asks you vocabulary questions, and for every answer you get right, 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN’s World Food Programme to be distributed in some of the poorest countries in the world. Now, 20 grains may not seem like a lot, but in two months and 4 days, 6,306,039,810 grains of rice have been gotten because of the number of people playing.

 This website has two aims:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free

2. Help end world hunger by providing free rice to truly needy people

Unsure that this is a hoax? You can cross-check it isn’t at the WFP website and the BBC.

Free Rice gets the rice from the sponsors who put ads in the site.
It helps one’s vocabulary too, since for every word you get right, you’ll advanced to a higher level with more difficult words, while if you get one wrong, you’ll go to an easier level.

But what are you still doing here? Free Rice is fun too, almost addictive, and it makes you (or, well, at least it makes me) knowledge thirsty.

Go to Free Rice and help improve someone’s life!

* Dedicated to Ryan, self proclaimed selfish yet wanting to help the world

From now on, every month I will post at least one way to help the world in super easy ways. The Internet is a great way to promote action towards great, noble causes. When a click can feed a person, all you know is you want more people to click.

And alas, this is why I have decided to officially post once a month (at the very least) about ways of helping people in poverty and need, or caring for the environment. On going green…but not with envy, in fact, much to the contrary. It worked so well with Aidgle, it’s worth repeating. And repeating.

I propose a toast…to a better world!

EDIT: I will actually list every post so that it’s all neatly organized!

October-

• Aidgle

• Save Burma Petition

• Blog Action Day 

December

• Free Rice

I’ve posted before that my IGCSE exams are over. They involved lots of preparation, and so I have lots of valuable resources that took me some time to discover and that could help others very much.

This is why I’ve decided to create this IGCSE Resources list. I want to share these links with the world! Of course, you’ll need more than this to get an A or A* on your IGCSE’s. I recommend you to grab syllabuses and create summaries, objective by objective. If you make them by hand, much better. That’s how one learns!

 Before we go to the link list, I’d like to add a not-so-fine-print. If you do think this list is useful, please leave a comment. So I know I am actually helping someone. Besides, I don’t have to do this. A little appreciation would be nice.

 And now…to the links!

ALL SUBJECTS:
http://www.cie.org.uk/qualifications/academic/middlesec/igcse/subjects  - Click your subject and download the available past paper, markscheme and examiner report.
http://www.cambridgestudents.org.uk/examtime  - Exam tips from Cambridge

HISTORY
http://www.activehistory.co.uk/igcse/paper_1a.htm  - All Paper 1 past paper questions, very useful to identify patterns and practice
http://www.crampuppy.com/1/IGCSE/history/complete-igcse-history-summary.shtml  - History summary, very brief and summarized but good if you already know the info. Other pages in this site have past paper questions, too.

GEOGRAPHY
http://www.geographyalltheway.com/igcse_geography.htm  - Very friendly, fun to use, with lots of exercises and pictures
http://www.cambridgestudents.org.uk/subjectpages/geography/igcsegeography/  - Geography past papers and resources

BIOLOGY
http://e-subjects.co.uk/mod/resource/index.php?id=55  – Fabulous link!
http://www.cambridgestudents.org.uk/subjectpages/biology/igcsebiology/  - Biology past papers, examiner tips, useful sites…particularly check the “model answers” bit!

CHEMISTRY
http://www.docbrown.info/page10/page10.htm  - Sometimes confusing to use, but if you search and search, you WILL eventually find the answers to the more obscure, horrible objectives.
http://www.cambridgestudents.org.uk/subjectpages/chemistry/igcsechemistry/  - Lots of chemistry resources, including past papers and model answers.

PHYSICS
http://physics.greengates.edu.mx/igcsenotes.htm – Equations and objective-by-objective tips. Great resource!
http://www.cambridgestudents.org.uk/subjectpages/physics/igscephysics/  - Once again, past papers and physics resources

For English LIT, there’s lots of sites out there with book analyses, and character and symbol insights…

For Spanish Lit there aren’t, so know your books and try doing some analysis yourself before the exam.

For French…it’s hard for me to say here, because my personal belief is that you either have it in you or you don’t. I had it in me, so it was all good. Still, review all your tenses and the “formule de politesse” used to close formal letters.

English and Spanish language…here it’s your writing skills that are tested, so no helpful site there. Practice, practice, practice. Check markschemes. Learn the strategies. And write!

Now you’ve got the base knowledge and a place to return to when in doubt. Work hard and use the resources well, young padawan.  

It will have been worth it when it ends!

CW.

Now the IGCSE examinations are finally over, I feel relieved and relaxed and a lot freer than before. The whole moving thing dawns on me more too, and makes it all the more hard. The intention of this post is to record what the IGCSE experience has been like. (For IGCSE resources, click here)

The IGCSE’s began on Oct 15, with the Spanish first language exam. The exam went ok, though I left with big doubts that made me truly uneasy, like having called someone a cretin in a letter and having given an introduction and a conclusion to my summary. It was a very boring exam, too.

Tuesday was the Spanish literature exam. I had prepared pretty well for it, but the questions can be hard sometimes, so I was panicking a bit. I suddenly felt I no longer had clear what had happened in Doña Barbara. As I was going in, though, I reminded myself something that Mr Andrews told us during his History revision sessions: don’t go in scared to the exam, take it as an intellectual challenge. You have no idea how much that worked. I instantly felt relieved of a lot of pressure, and knowing that I knew the books quite well helped too. When I went in, it was hard to choose what asterisk question to do, because I thought all the essay ones were easy. I chose an asterisk one for Doña Barbara, one on dramatic irony in El Sí de las Niñas and one on Impía, a poem I had done a project on. I was amazed and happy with myself that I could do well the question on Los Heraldos Negros, since Vallejo and his suicidal tendencies can be my weakness. It went well.

I had the next two days free to do nothing, and then on Friday I had the writing on Spanish, in which I wrote about the benefits of máquinas expendedoras and then wrote a very heartfelt story in which my MC had to find someone they hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was full of feeling and romance (Note to life: when you have the time, throw some romance my way, dammit.) though the end came out a bit wrong because of the time pressure. Funnily enough, it was almost the same as the story I wrote for the English Mock. Anyway, all good.

Then we had French, the reading paper. Everyone thought it was really hard, but it’s FRENCH. Meaning, there’s no way it was hard.

Wednesday was a scary day….HISTORY PAPER 1 DAY. But we had English FLE Paper 2 just before, which went OK I think. We had to read a story on a shipwrecked family and write an article about it. But what you want to know about…HISTORY. History was the day after my birthday. I had studied, though. Everything except Stalin. The day before I decided that Stalin was too much and that either the Tsar or Lenin WOULD come up. Of course, by the next day I was already panicking. What if two questions on Stalin came up? So I panicked and panicked.When I went in, the first thing I did was check at the back part what had come up on Russia. I breathed again when I saw the Tsar (+ Stalin). Paper 1 went quite well, except for a really tricky 7 point one on Corfu that I think I handled ok and ‘to what extent one’ on the League of Nations that I couldn’t finish because of time. I took it as an intellectual challenge and that worked again too (now that was a piece of really good advice!)

Next day was French Listening. It was rather tricky at times, and I made the mistake of writing it all in pencil, which means I had to truly race myself to change all the answers to pen. I didn’t pay attention to some bits because of that.

English Literature next day was hard. All questions (save one on Caged Bird) were quite nasty. The asterisk one I answered on Macbeth was puro floro, I just had no idea what to put. And for Lord of the Flies, I chose to argue that we love Piggy despite his character imperfections. Still, hard!

On the next Monday (that’s Oct 29), we had the FLE Paper 3.  We had to write a story in which we lost ¨something vital¨, so I used the story I used in my Spanish Mock and lost my little brother in a supermarket. Tragic and with a super cheesy ending, but well written. The moment I left the exam though, doubts attacked me. After all, I had to lose ¨something¨ not someone. I hope they don’t penalize me (though I secretly know they probably will).

Tuesday was History Paper 2. Now that was quite tragic. SO much harder than the Mock exam we had. I even got so confused in one of the Sources, that I assumed the caption was wrong and pretty much changed the question (I assumed that because when I’d seen that Source earlier on during the year, it had a different caption). But I think I killed the whole thing with my last question. I left that exam feeling the A* I had wished for had just ran away from me and mocked me in the distance for my futile try. How depressing, really.

Wednesday. BIOLOGY PAPER 3. This was like confronting my fear. You might want to be reminded that I failed last year’s Bio exam and that it was my Practical Portfolio that saved my life. Biology is too.freaking.much. I didn’t finish on the night before, and decided to screw it and go to sleep, after all I’d get to school at 7.15 like every other day. I had enough time to finish reading everything and rereading it all once again. And guess what?? It went really well! I think it was the Science I did the best on. I had trouble with a question on reflexes and stuff, and there was one on the use of hormones for birth control that confused me a bit at first but later allowed me to display all the knowledge I had bottled up in my brain in the last hours. Fabulous.

The Biology multiple choice was on Friday, and I’ll be honest, I barely studied for it. I remembered it all quite well from the long answer one, anyway. Can’t remember that much about it, but that means it wasn’t tragic, so all good.

Monday was Physics multiple choice. I had to guess lots and lots, which does NOT make me happy. Multiple Choice exams are tricky exams, because they’re supposed to be so easy, so the grade boundary is high. I used logic to guess them, so they should be right (at least some!) but still, it was hard.

Next day was French writing and History Paper 4. Needless to say French was neglected by moi. Much to my regret I had to at least give Stalin some of my attention, though I was almost certain Lenin would come in. And it did! SOOO happy! (An as always, at the door, I began panicking because I knew so little on Stalin). I just regret not having finished the last question, though.  On the next to last question I kept stealing a minute, and then another minute, because I knew so much, and that was my mistake. Still, the paper went well overall. So happy! Oh and French went well too. I had to write about wanting to go to France and having a really bad day working somewhere (I picked a restaurant).

Wednesday was Chemistry Paper 3. That one was very hard. I suffered so much in that exam. Might have been the one I did worse in, of all. It was also the exam in which a dove flew in and then could not get out and kept throwing herself against the windows. At first everyone was laughing, but after a good fifteen minutes of throwing herself very strongly against windows, I wanted to put my hand up and beg some teacher to open the freaking windows. The poor dove! It was so sad. She was really hurting. And it didn’t help my concentration, either.

Thursday was Physics Paper 3 and Geo paper 1 day. Awful combination. I barely studied for either, I must admit. I had reached that point of no return in which you feel absolutely exhausted from so much effort studying for the mocks and stuff, and just don’t care that much anymore. Luckily I knew physics, but even after 3 hours of intense geography studying, I wasn’t ready for my IGCSE. (After the 3 intense hours of geography I began jumping around the library pretending to be a bird. My brain burned. I went in the exam with a burned brain). I invented 2/3 case studies, and they were both on India. I spent too long reading all the questions, and then had to finish one case study and one WHOLE question in 15 minutes. I rushed too much. It wasn’t a good exam.

Next monday was Paper 2 Geography. I was hoping to redeem myself for my mistakes in the first one. Did not happen. They wanted really specific info on Rivers, which I had completely ignored while studying (I decided to concentrate on Population and Settlement and Economic Development) and the map was really crappy.

Tuesday was Chemistry Paper 1. Strangely enough, I can’t remember very much about it. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great. I do hope it pulls up my disaster on Paper 3.

Wednesday was Geography Paper 4. Now here I did redeem myself (well sort of, because it’s worth 27.5% of the marks). I did really well on this one. I had studied all the Rivers thingy just before the exam and had it all fresh and secure in my head. It was quite easy. All good!

Thursday and Friday were the Additional Maths Internal Exams days. On the first one, I did REALLY well. I was so happy when I left it! I was also so happy when I opened it and saw that the questions were not past paper questions. It saved my life, and my average. The one on the next day was a lot harder and more intrincate. I finished at least 30 minutes earlier, like everyone else, and fooled around for long, doing origamis. In both exams every time I couldn’t do something I invented weird methods to get to weird answers. The things we do for working out points…!

And then yesterday was Historia del Perú. Needless to say that after the pre the whole studying mood (which was gone anyway)  was SUPER GONE and I hadn’t studied. Seriously. Also, the subject is so terribly boring that I could not bring myself to doing some work. I studied the morning of the exam, trying to gulp in as much of that useless knowledge as I could, as fast as I could. I surprised myself in the exam, though. There was HEAPS of stuff I had to invent and guess, but there was a lot of stuff that was still in my head. I did know some things! THere was a question on getting conclusions from a text, which might have gone well, and then on the essay one I couldn’t do any well, except for one on the role of political parties in the history of Peru in the twentieth century. I added lots of floro and some examples and I hope that saves me. Wasn’t good, but wasn’t as bad as I thought, either.

Did you really read all that? If you did, I’m amazed. Honestly amazed. Actually, if you did, please post a comment saying ¨This account of yours has left me flabbergasted.¨ and then something else. That would honestly be exceeding my expectations.

So…how were my IGCSE’s? Were the IGCSE’s hard? Some of them were. It all depends on how much you’ve studied really, or so you think, until you see a question that knocks you off your feet (or a whole exam, as in History Paper 2). Were the IGCSE’s worth it? I certainly hope so! I hope that on Jan 20 when my marks come from Cambridge, they’re all all letters I can be proud of displaying on a Curriculum or something. I did learn many techniques and skills, and also a lot of knowledge. It’s helped me realize my calling- and to know what my calling is not. Am I glad they’re over? Definetely! I’m exhausted of exams and studying and having exams and going unprepared to them, and simply having exams.

Alas, they’re over now, and I can barely believe it.
It’s like a cycle that’s coming to an end.

It comes to an end and I can’t stop it.

On November 07 I reached my 1,000 visits mark!
It’s actually quite exciting to see the number there… “Total views: 1,000″ … perhaps because I wasn’t really aiming for anything when this blog began it’s even better and more…exciting, I suppose!

But I think there’s somehting that makes this all the better. My Aidgle posts were the ones that brought me the most traffic- until today, my three posts on Aidgle have been visited no less and no more than 449 times. That’s quite a lot!

Now, I’ll do a flashback. It was the eve of one of my history mock exams and because of Facebook I stumbled across Aidgle. The idea was just so good I decided to sacrifice a few minutes (well, maybe more) of sleep, even if not that many people ever came to my blog. Still, it was my grain of sand. My contribution to a worthy cause.

Almost 500 views later, I’m amazed at what taking that time did. My grain of sand did make a difference, even if it was a relatively small one. The moral of the story? (No, not to keep writing about Aidgle XD!) Never think “oh, I won’t make a difference”. Never think that just because you don’t have a popular blog, or because your single signature in a votation or a petition is just one it won’t change the status quo. It takes so little to make a big change, and we lose nothing in the process.

It’s always, always worth a try. So try!

Thank you to all who did check Aidgle, thank you to those who keep coming, thank you just for being here now. Every little view in my blog means a lot and is truly appreciated! 

Now let’s go for the 5,000 landmark!

<3 CW

Nanowrimo is fast approaching and I’m enjoying every second of the preparation.
The cons is that I’m spending less time studying and focusing in my IGCSE’s.
The pros is that I’m having so much fun, it’s hard to put it into words.

The brainstorming in the last few days has been neverending. Today, while in the library, the character on mine who is a conspiracy theorist suddenly became an avian flu conspiracy theorist. And then I could just see him, in the Biblioteca Nacional (which I’ll have to visit, since it’ll be a recurring setting), flicking through old archives and suddenly screaming out loud “I knew it! It’s all because of the chicken exports!”. And then I saw Marlene, telling her mom to stop buying chicken, and her mom asking why, and she saying “I’ve got this half Swiss friend that told me. The embassy keeps sending them stuff”, and of course her mom would be like wtf? (And she doesn’t even know he’s like 50!)Naughty Marlene would have to fake knowing him from the public speaking classes, because the truth sounds way surreal.

The truth is way surreal. Their truth. This truth.
And you don’t think it’s so much of a big deal, but as all those thoughts occurred to me on my way to the toilet, I was grinning as if I had just fallen in love. Later when I asked mom if she still kept those letters from the Swiss Embassy warning about the spread of the avian flu, she didn’t understand. She was sooo confused with me smiling like an idiot, as if I had just found out hugely important news. Even myself –a more conscious part of myself- was soo confused.

Writing freaking beats drugs and stuff. Writing is my drug. My anti drug, actually.

And I mean it, literally. Because while I create the intricate lives of my beloved MC’s, I forget about the world. All my worries slip away. And I mean short term dilemmas (such as what to do with the pre) and long term dilemmas, which are a lot more troubling. The problem? That when I have conscious, real-thinking moments, it all comes back crashing.

So now I understand alcoholics and drug addicts. No wonder they’re depressed (and I mean emotionally, not the depression of the Central Nervous System).

Meanwhile, I’m happy. Here right next to me I have a box of Baci’s I got for my birthday. They call me. It’s a pretty big 300g box. The smell of chocolate crawls into my nose and makes me crave for a taste. When I opened the box, I was slightly disappointed. From the size of the box, I had expected more than 21 bombons.

Au revoir mes chères.
Baci calls me.
So does Macbeth, Lord of the Flies and Songs of Ourselves, which I have terribly neglected.
It’s 11:11, and for the first time I’ve made a wish.

Au revoir.

Oh yes. This year, I’m going to try Nanowrimo. I say “try” because there’s a million impediments. For a start, the IGCSE exams. They’ve already started and I can barely believe it. The ones I’ve had so far haven’t been so hard, but then there they were Spanish and French and those are easy subjects. The ones that scare me are those that are coming up…history and sciences. Yikes.

The IGCSE’s finish on November 16th. So let’s say I don’t write anything until the 16th- I still have half a month to go. Today I realized I’ll also have the retiro de confirmación and stuff…but I hope it works out. I hope I get to write. Which is the whole point. Man, I’m going to have so much fun!

Today I reached a point in which I can say: Nanowrimo, here I come! I’ve got a plot and it’s slowly piecing up. Well, it’s not a complete plot, either, but the ideas come in the form of patches and patch by patch, I hope I’ll be able to make the quilt.

 So far I’ve got 4/5 main characters and most of the plot. I need a twist and I need the end. But it’s working out.

My plot in one sentence:  a failed psychologist decides to try and help people by putting motivational quotes on the back of a fake dollar in the street.

It sounds…weird like that (it’s hard to put it in one sentence, there’s so much I’d like to say about it). But it’s going to work. I’m going to make it work. I hope so.

I’ll keep you updated .

And now, ahoy, I’ll do more Paper 1 History questions.

C: