Eric in Santiago English 4 Blog

 Again, I can't write my blog post the same way you would because I am not a student anymore. I can only write about something related but a bit different from my past. I may have mentioned that I have a bachelor's degree in one area and a master's degree in another. My master's degree is in Linguistics, but my bachelor's degree is in International Relations with a focus on Central Europe. What is that? It is a multidisciplinary degree that mixes Political Science, History, Economics, Geography, Language and Cultural Studies. A lot of people who study that can become diplomats or analysts, or people working in big banks, organization, NGOs or more. I even had a course to learn how to analyze satellite images. I got this degree after four years in 1988. Unfortunately, by the end of my studies, I was rather sure I didn't want to work in this area. I found most of the people I was around to be too agressively ambitious, to be very political in a bad way--a sort of ...

 Traveling to the future is very speculative, fantastical, and basically science fiction, but, of course, I think it would be amazing. A lot about the future scares me, but if I could go into the future, I'd like to see a place and time like this: I imagine our world about 300 or 400 years into the future--depending how well we develop our technology. First of all, our world would be much cleaner and more pristine, and in the process of returning to a much more natural state. Most of the world would be a kind of gigantic national park. Perhaps, some people would live here and there leading a simple life without devastating the environment. Where would everyone be? Where would all our industrial and agricultural production be? That would be in a kind of ring orbiting the planet. There would be a ring--maybe 20 kilometers wide orbiting the planet. It would be one solid ring, so it would be thousands of kilometers long. It would orbit the planet about 200 kilometers above the surface....

 I already have a job, and at this stage of my life, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to change it. I'm happy with being an English teacher (EFL to be specific). If my life had been different, and I had studied something else... Well, I almost decided to major in Geology, and I wanted to specialize in Paleontology. If I had studied Geology and Paleontology, I would have become a paleontologist. I am really fascinated by the geological history of the planet Earth; I always enjoyed science in school--especially Biology and Geology. I am fascinated by the fossil history of our planet and how life developed. There are so many different stages of life on Earth that are amazing: the Cambrian Period with really strange sea creatures. The Permian period with various reptiles, pre-mammals, and pre-dinosaurs on land. By the way, most of them were wiped out in a big extinction event at the end of this period--around 90% of life forms on Earth were extinguished. Of coure the dinosaurs of ...

 This post is a free topic, which means that we can write about anything we want--as long as the post is clearly dedicated to a topic. I'm going to write about something that has interested me for some time, and is actually getting more interesting for me as I get older: having a good diet or good eating habits. I'm lucky that I grew up with parents who had generally good food habits. We didn't eat a lot of junk food, just occasionally a hamburger or pizza or something. Also, my mom hated sweets so we never really had any at home even though I loved them, and when I was a kid I really loved visiting friends because I wanted to eat their cookies or chocolates...hahaha. Nowadays, I can be grateful that I grew up eating regular meals with salads, some meat--basically regular food. The reason I say regular food is that I think it's best, or for me it's best, to try to eat mostly basic foods. Foods that exist more or less naturally without a lot of processing. Generally ...

 I have been an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) since 1992 when I got my Master's degree in Linguistics. Once I got that degree, I started teaching EFL--which I still do, as you know. However, once I had the experience to teach another language: German. I was working at an institute back in the early 90s, and the German teacher (this institute taught English, German and French) got sick or had to go on a trip--I don't remember. As an emergency solution, I took over that German teacher's class for a month. I was given the post because my mother tongue is German (my mother was German, and I grew up bilingually) actually speaking German better than English until I went to school. I had the methodological skills from English which I could apply to teaching any language really. It was a great experience because I got to teach something different while at the same time being able to use my teacher skills. The goals were basically the same as an EFL class: encourage the studen...

 I recently went on this vacation, and got back just a few days ago. I don't really know if it's the best ever, but it certainly was very special, and very good. It was my first vacation after 1,5 years of going NOWHERE because of the pandemic and all the quarantines and bad conditions for traveling. I went to San Pedro de Atacama for 5 days with a friend. We flew to Calama and then took a transfer to San Pedro. I had been there 22 years ago, but only briefly. This time was much better. San Pedro is a really amazing and beautiful place. It's a town at 2,500 meters on a high plateau in the Andes and Atacama Desert. It has an amazing atmosphere and a lot to see and do nearby. We went to a place called Baltinache where you can bathe in a salt lake, which has amazing turqoise colors surrounded by white salt. We also went to a place called Puripobre because the Puritama Hot Springs were closed. Puripobre is another little oasis where you can swim surrounded by cactuses in a cany...