Beauty through your tiptoes

As many of you may know, SouthAmerican countries are pretty known for being massive fans of football (soccer). Even though in my country it is our main sport, our biggest success has been being able to qualify to the World Cup itself.

Bad organization over time has put us behind other teams but this year the odds are on our side (hopefully).

I just wanted to tell you how important this is for us, imagine a Super Bowl and the whole country rooting for one team. Absolutely no one misses the match, and it really impacts the whole country when we win. Streets are collapsed and every single soccer team (Club soccer) unites, forgets its rivalry and unite to root for our small country.

“La tri” ‘s name comes from the three colors in our flag, tricolor. This small video shows almost everything you need to know about our team.

Hopefully “La tri” makes it big this year.

727.947 is the number of signatures collected in my country to prevent the government of drilling oil from one of the most diverse rainforest in the planet. The park holds a world record 150 amphibian species for places with comparable landscapes. It also is in the top for amphibian diversity compared to other sites sampled in the western Amazon, as well as birds and mammals.

It is home to an estimated 800 million barrels of crude oil – 20% of Ecuador’s reserves so there is  huge debate, the profit it would make vs the diversity it contains.

What would you support? I would definitely support the preservation of this national park, just look at it!

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flickr_-_ggallice_-_Oxbow_lake,_Yasuni.jpg

Since we were talking about Ecuador a bit, I felt like maybe I should share some traditions with you. April is here and back home this month is known by the start of the manufacturing of Año viejos. It’s exact definition is old year. Every New Years Eve, each family has a cardboard figure of everything you could imagine, ranging from superhero figures to cartoons or even politics and celebrities. This figures are the physical representation of the year that has just passed, and the tradition is to burn it away to make all the bad things of the passing year go away. This Año viejos are sold since the beginning of december so that everyone is prepared for New Years eve.

It may sound silly or exaggerated but they start manufacturing this figures with 8 months in advance because of the huge demand there is. Low income families sometimes rely on their profit of this figures for all year long and continue with this family business over generations. It is a tradition to go with your family to the streets to find merchants with their figures, its not a store or a market, just people on the streets earning money.

Here i’ll share with you some of my favorites.

All those lights you see on the coast line are big stacks of burning Año viejos

I have to admit, I had never realized how BEAUTIFUL my country was until I was away from it. The longest I’d been away from home before coming to college this winter was a month and a half when I went to an Eurotrip with my friends. But now I really miss home, don’t get me wrong, is not that I don’t like it here I love it and is my college experience I will forever remember, but there is really no place like home.

Ecuador is pretty much the size of Pennsylvania, but we are recognized for having so much diversity in so little space. Coastlines full of beaches, highlands, amazon river and rainforest and the Galapagos Islands all in one place. My beautiful country.

This month a new campaign has started #AllYouNeedIsEcuador placing the letters of this phrase all over the world for people to see. It is a clever way to foment tourism in my country and to get people to know about this peace of heaven in earth.

Give it a look, I promise you wont regret it and maybe someday you can visit me in my home country!

allyouneedisecuador.travel

For my Cultural Geography class we had to analyze how ads now a days were gendered and I found a perfect example, I actually think this company has made a good job since you think of them and instantly think of masculinity.

AXE  sells men’s fragranced deodorant.  It distinguishes it self from its competitors by making commercials always based around the idea of encouraging masculinity and sexism. The targeted audience is clearly single men looking for partners because why would a married man want to have girls falling over over him? As much as men may secretly want it, that would bring trouble wouldn’t it? So the intended audience is young men looking to have fun and have plenty of girls around them.

So what makes this ad gendered? The first thing that makes it gendered for males  is the scenery of a single man apartment, clothes on the chair deep blue walls and undone bedding. Fragrances have their own identity, soft and subtle for women and extravagant and elegant for men. AXE has a reputation of a masculine fragrance in every single one of their products so the single fact that is an AXE ad makes men interested in it and women pretty much look away since it is not aimed for them. The ad has an attitude that men have: picking up women, flirting around and have them falling for them. This attitude and behavior describes what characterizes people from one gender to another according to the gender definition.

Pretty interesting how even products have genders isn’t it?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/28/axe-deodorant-ad-banned-angels_n_1064150.html

Last weekend I went to Florida for three days. My parents where going there from Ecuador for vacations and they surprised me with a ticket so I could see them since I don’t have a chance to visit them like most most people do on spring break on easter. I was so excited to see them but everything got better when they gave me a one-day pass to one of the best music festivals for EDM there is. ULTRA! I was so excited to see all of my favorite DJs all in one place. There were so many types of people, music and dancing and I can really say it just made my weekend better.

The main stage was amazing! it made you feel like you were on a 3D movie and really captured every single beat of the song and transformed it into lights and fireworks. Here is a picture so you can all appreciate it. If you like EDM, You should really give it a try

Sources: http://doandroidsdance.com/features/ultra-music-festival-2014-sets/

Well it’s that time. The time that many students have been anticipating for months now. The week long break from homework, exams, constant cold weather, and early mornings. This break is more commonly referred to as Spring Break. For some, this is their first spring break in their college career while for others, it’s the last spring break that they’ll ever have. Some students will be headed back home to see their families, friends and beloved pets. But others have chosen to travel with some of their closest friends to destinations such as Florida, California, and other tropical islands. Warm weather, spending time with friends, and not worrying about anything school related will be refreshing. But for international students, traveling somewhere by plane is not such a simple task.

If you are an international student and you’re planning on leaving the United States and traveling somewhere like Cancun, Dominican Republic and other islands, you should remember to visit the international office first. If you leave the United States and you don’t have a signature on your I-20 form, you will not be able to enter back into the United States to continue your college education. This means that you will inevitably miss class, exams and important lectures and have to face a long process to get back into the country. So plan ahead and remember to be safe wherever you’re planning to go on this beautiful spring break!

Source: http://campussolutionsinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/spring-break.jpg

So I come from a small South American country called Ecuador. Last Sunday, elections for new mayor were held in every state of my country. Rafael Correa is our actual president, and a lot of people don’t like him anymore because of his support to Venezuela’s actual president Nicolas Maduro, the man who the people blame for all the atrocities happening right now over there.

That must not be something good, supporting this kind of behavior of a countries’ police force and is not even the first time. Correa has stated on various instances his support on these goverments like Venezuela and Cuba in which terrible quality life is provided for its people because of its political systems.

But all the support he used to have is appearing to banish. His political party had a candidate in every big city for mayor, and he really thought he would win, cause that is what has happened in the last 7 years. But the result were different, His party lost in every single one of Ecuador’s big cities giving hope to all citizens of people finally realizing that we could end up like Venezuela or Cuba if this escalates.

Thats a good question, Im not a newspaper kind of person so how do I know whats happening out there? I love social media I think that is the best way to keep us all connected and my main source of news of what is happening around the world is Twitter.

Twitter is really simple actually, for those who have never used it before it may seem as the most non-user friendly website ever. At first you just don’t get it. But after days of exploring around you’ll see what twitter is all about which to me is Thoughts. Yes! thats it,  just thoughts from people from around the globe. Thoughts compressed into 180 characters not words C h a r a c t e r s.

You may be wondering, how could you learn about whats going on in the world in just 180 characters but that is what is all about. You read a story, you find it interesting and then the little seed of curiousness is implanted in you. You decide how you follow that story later; Google, Newspapers, Friends they all work.

You might wonder, that’s not good, reading only what you find interesting but the question wasn’t what is the BEST way of getting your news or the most effective one. It was how do you get your news and that is what I do. I love updating my feed and getting up to date info of the world in real time. You could give it a try, maybe you will get stuck into the twitter world like I did.

Image source: http://thenickyblog.com/all-about-twitter/page/3

Being an international student, it was difficult for me to follow along with President Obama’s speech. I don’t have a vast amount of background knowledge about him. However, after reading some of the political critics, I have come to conclude that President Obama should be focusing more on making his own decisions for the country rather than looking to congress for every situation.

Having such power, much like the past presidents, allows him to make decisions for the country because ultimately, the fate of the country is in his hands. He needs to use his executive power more effectively.

But you know, thats just my opinion. I just got here so I don’t really know what has happened before.

Header image: http://sssdpa.com/dance-classes/

Voila!