Eyes of the Cosmic Whale
“…leaving the heavens naked, glistening blue-black, like the belly of some cosmic whale…”Archive for Future
May the new year really be happy!
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.
IGCSE Resources: to students, by a student
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.
My IGCSE’s in a nutshell
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Tough world and uncertainty scares.
I’ve been thinking about the future so much, and yet it’s still blurry and confusing. And somehow, yesterday I worked out what bothers me so much. I’m scared. Allow me to explain, though.
Let’s go step by step. The calling I’m following right now is that of international relations. That’s because I’d like to work in the UN and defend human rights. But now let’s be realistic. Even assuming I manage to choose the right university, settle in easily and get a diploma, how many chances do I have of actually doing that? The answer is: not many. And what else comes to mind when one thinks of international relations? Politics. And politics are a complicated, complicated thing.
It’s politics when people in Puno stone the mayor to death. It’s politics when Sarkozy leaves a meeting with Putin drunk, only to give a conference in that state. It’s politics when schoolchildren have to question the legitimacy of Woodrow Wilson’s actions, or Truman, or Stalin. And even if I probably won’t get to be president or whatever, but still, politics are a complicated, complicated thing. And very often I wonder if I have the personality (and the stomach) to deal with being a politician. And very often I wonder if it’s not the right thing for me. Politics are interesting, but to be the politics…it scares me.
And when people ask me what I like doing, it’s writing. Of course, there’s a million things I enjoy doing, but I suppose writing is high on the top 10 list. And yet writing is also scary. Writing for your food? To pay for your rent, your bills, your clothes? It sounds risky. And, it’s a very corrupt media. Once I saw a movie, an Agatha Christie sort of thing. It was a mistery set in a small town in the UK, and it was about a writing festival. Between the publishers, editors, ghostwriters and writers, they all ended up killing each other. But then there, I’d like someone to name one uncorrupted media. Journalism is complicated too.
And it doesn’t help not to know where I’ll be living. Because the whole “where I’ll study” complicates things more. You would think having the whole world ahead of you is an advantage, but it only makes things a lot harder. There are two main scenarios, though. Will I be able to go somewhere else, somewhere far away, where I’ll be alone and exposed to so much of the world’s hardship and without anyone I love with me? Will I be able to cope with all of it? Or, on the other hand, will I choose someplace relatively mediocre because I’m unable to leave the safety of home’s nest? Where will we be? Oh, where, where, where?
But I tell myself, I also have two years to overcome what needs to be overcome and to work out and organize my jumbled up thoughts. I have two years still for God to tell me where He wants me to be.
Because truth be told, right now I’m uncertain about so much, I need His answer.
It’s good to have this whole thing, in a way, out of me.
“If I get it all down on paper, it’s no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to”. Three cheers to Anna Nalick’s musical wisdom!
And now, with a lighter mood, the joy of the calm , awesome music Grey’s Anatomy’s soundrack is made of and the duties of writing and correcting for the Journalism Interhouse, all lying next to me, I sign off.
Start the week with a smile! It always makes a change, always C:
