“The Winter Is Coming”

      These days I have been worried about the winter, I heard a notice that a ‘bomb cyclone’ will make the Northern states of the US freezes this year (http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/09/us/cold-snap/index.html?hpt=hp_t1). So I was concerned about how to prepare to the winter.

      The first thing I did was search winter clothes on amazon.com. I searched for beanies for the winter, scarfs and earmuffs. And also looked for gloves that I can use to playing with the snow. To understand how to wear for the winter I had to make a research and learn about the layers of clothes that we should wear to go out when it is extremely cold. For example the layer of specifically underwear that we can call of second skin clothes, they are clothes made to avoid the heat loss and are very tight, so we use they and as the first layer. I also learned that is good to use clothes made of wool or something like this that leaves us with a hot temperature. Also I read that I must have a good wind coat, that the wind can’t affect me, something like a windbreaker.

     One thing that made me afraid is that I can’t wet my feet or hands because it can be very dangerous so I must buy some good gloves and boots. And also it is needed to protect our ears and face when the wind is so much cold.

     Also the thing that I am expecting so much is the snow, I think almost all Brazilians that are here have never seen snow in life. I think when starts to snow we will see a lot of “Brazilians children” playing outside in the snow. Making snowmen and having snowball fights.

Halloween

Halloween in the USA is awesome! All that costumes and decorated houses everywhere, it is an
amazing experience see all that, and participate wearing a costume too. The US culture of Halloween
night and parties are very famous in Brazil. After spend all my life watching Halloween and terror movies and seeing how the Halloween night is in the United States. I was so anxious to participate this event. I have two main topics that I have great expectations about it: Costumes and Decorations and Food.

Costumes and Decorations

The costumes at the parties are very nice and elaborated, and that seems amazing, see all the
diversity of ideas and the funniest costumes in the world. In Brazil it is very expensive to buy or rent a costume so we don’t have a lot of Halloween parties. I think is this way because of the culture, even having a few parties but isn’t like in the United States, isn’t so elaborated and decorated and with all
that amazing costumes, we don’t have Halloween parties like here, and the worst is that we don’t have any carved pumpkins.

Food

Also I was really anxious to taste all the Halloween foods and drinks. For example to taste some
kind of punch that I always saw in Halloween movies, a red drink that looks very delicious. I expect to eat some good thing this Halloween.

To finish, in Halloween time we can find a large of news about it, like offensive costumes about
something that happened that year and etc. When I was seeing thw news in the Internet I found this noctice horrible http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/29/police-say-ny-man-beheads-woman-before-jumping-in-front-train/. This is a kind of ironic but very serious, I was shocked, and I hope not to see more things like that to make the Halloween a bad thing.

The 2014 elections in Brazil

The elections in Brazil finished this weekend and the president Dilma Roussef won re-election (President Dilma Roussef wins re-election in Brazil) and will be on power for more 4 years continuing the domain of the Worker’s Party at the presidency of Brazil.

The election for the position of president this year in Brazil was a very tight competition and the final debates reached a point that the discussion assumed a very low level, which could be considered offensive to the population.

The government in Brazil is fraught with problems and corruption, the people hope for improvement but still difficult for the population to have a good option to vote at the elections. Considering that any of the two finalists could be the solution to end the corruption, because both have bad things in their political life and probably they are not really interested in just improve the country but also in make money and make their Parties more influents and powerful.

I think the really problem in Policy in Brazil is that the Government Parties are more interested in become more powerful than improve the country. Obviously, I can’t generalize, is not all the people that do not think about make improvements but those are just a few.

In Brazil when we think about Policy we immediately think about corruption and misuse of public funds. And with this thought came the bad images of the politicians involved with corruption and these kind of things. So the most of the politicians are on that positions not for help their cities, states, or the country, they are following political career for the money. And this culture of thinking like that have to be changed, so the people can, at the most, follow the political career to principally help to improve their country.

Where You and I Would Love to Live

Today’s world have the issue of living in big cities. There are many bad things that makes people prefer to live in somewhere far from the city center, things like the bad road traffic because the large quantity of cars, the noisy also made for the cars and for the crowd too, also you have an exaggerated population for a small space to live. Often, the apartments are too small and can’t accommodate well a medium family, like a family with two to four children, it also don’t have a lot of advantages that a house on suburb have, like gardens, like the opportunity to have a pet like a big dog, like more privacy, and the biggest advantage is the large space.

The architect Moshe Safdie talks on a TED Talk about a very interesting idea for architecture to apartments now and in the future. He shows new apartments that proposes an apartment that have the advantages of a house, and that is amazing. These buildings are so beautiful, when you see they you want to live in one. Their design was made to make they attractive and making the city more beautiful. What is interesting is that you have all you need on their complex, including a really good recreation area.

I think these new apartments are really awesome and I would love to live in one of them. I hope to see at least one of them in my life, specially that one with the longest swimming pool of the world.  

Something New – Culture #1

Since I arrived in the United States I saw a lot of differences between here and Brazil, but the people are the ones that surprised me. Americans are, different than I expected, very friendly and helpful. They try to understand me because my English isn’t so good and they also speak slowly for me if I ask to, so I am very glad to have success to communicate.

One challenge that I have here is the food, it is so different from Brazil. However, I’m getting used to the food, even if have hamburgers or pizzas I try to take something more healthy. I miss the rice and beans from Brazil, the beans here are sweet.

Other thing that is different is the time, even if is two-hours difference from my city in Brazil, what surprised me most was the time to dinner. The Americans have dinner early the night, like 6:00 p.m. and in Brazil I was used to dinner at 8:30 – 9:00 p.m. Nevertheless, I am getting used to it too.

Yesterday I went to a nightclub and it was interesting, it`s a little different from Brazil. It was a lot of fun, almost all Brazilians were there. The biggest difference is the dance style, in Brazil the parties play a lot of styles of music in just one party, but here it was only one kind of music to dance.

                I can’t say all the differences between Brazil and America but these are some of the things that I thought about.

                

Prewriting

Why you have to do Prewriting?

I don’t have the habit of making Prewriting when I write a paper but from now on I will start to make it. I think the best advantage of Prewriting is that it will make easier to you write a good paper. To learn about the importance of Prewriting for who is writing I made a summary about an article on this subject.

Summary

Prewriting it is a very important step when you are writing a paper. According to Deanna Love, who is a very experienced person in tutoring students who need help in how to write a paper, in the article Case Study: Importance of Prewriting, she says that the Prewriting it is so helpful and you should not skip this stage when you are writing a paper because it brings a lot of advantages and will save time later. To create a good paper you must be concentrated on your thesis statement and stay organized about what you will discuss on it.  Another advice Deanna gave it is to search concepts and key words which will help you to have a brainstorm of ideas for your paper. When you spend more time prewriting you probably will have less difficulty writing later. Other important advice is to ask your professor or the librarian if you are having problems, don`t be afraid to do it. The last thing that Deanna calls attention is the Plagiarism, you must be careful with it because it is a very serious problem in a college.

The epidemic of the Ebola in West Africa is something that we have to worry about

The epidemic of Ebola Virus can become a very dangerous threat to all people around the world. The article Window to Stop Ebola Outbreak Is 'Closing Quickly,' Official Warms by Alexandra Sifferlin says that "Groups like Doctors Without Borders that are treating patients are overwhelmed by the high numbers of cases", so this epidemic can become a dangerous problem for everyone. We don't know the real power of the nature or if we will be capable to stop the epidemic if become bigger. The humanity already passed for this kind of threat, The Black Death. devastated about one-third of the Europe population and if the epidemic of Ebola don't be stopped now, the world can be a victim of a new Black Death, so we must have more concern about this problem and pay attention on how this proceed.