15th week- The Start of the Flu (En, Jpn, Es)

In this week I evaluated two blogs that were interesting because they offer me a new perspective of the class. I should also thank everyone that has been posting comments and visiting my blog.

On Wednesday we (I and 4 other people) went to Villada (an elementary school) to teach sixth graders how they can help the environment by recycling glass, paper and aluminum. The class that we had to teach had students that were attentive and participative so we cover all the material in no time and I think they really learned what they had to do to help the environment. I believe that these little steps will make us move toward a better world since these kids do not only learn about environmental care, but they also acknowledge that there are people who are working hard to build a better future.

On Friday we had to do Johari window to get to know ourselves but unfortunately schools were close due to a new Influenza virus. This virus seems to be very deadly therefore the Mexican government has cancelled all classes from schools in Mexico City. I hope the situation gets better soon.
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月曜日には友人の二つのブログをチェックしました。
このブログはとても面白いし新しいクラスの見方を見ましたし、たくさん経験あったし。
今まで、皆さん有難うございます、書いてくれて、よんでくれて　有難う。続けって下さい　＾＿＾
それでは、
水曜日には小学校に行きました。私たちの目的は小学校の学生には大自然を守らなきゃならない気分を作る手伝った。
大自然を守る為にリサイクルをしなきゃならないと言いました。　私たちのクラスには学生はすごく頭いいんだ、だから、一時間に全部教えました。
この服務はいいと思う、学生には大自然を守る方を習ったし、私たちは大自然を頑張る分かると思う、だからこそ未来には学生がんばるかも知れません。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
金曜日にはJohari窓をしなきゃならないけど新しいインフルエンザ病毒現れただから学校を行けませんでした。
この病毒はすごく悪いとおもう、この場合良いになる祈ります。。。

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En esta semana evalué dos blogs de mis compañeros que resultaron ser muy interesantes ya que me brindaron una nueva perspectiva de la clase. Por otra parte en esta entrada, déjenme agradecerles a las personas que hayan puesto comentarios y/o leído mi blog.

El miércoles yo y otras cuatro personas fuimos a la escuela villada a enseñarle a alumnos del sexto grado la importancia del reciclado y como pueden ayudar a la naturaleza reciclando los diferentes materiales tales como vidrio, papel y aluminio. Después de terminar el taller me quede sorprendido porque durante el transcurso del taller, los alumnos nos pusieron mucha atención y participaron mucho. Desde mi perspectiva pienso que esta ayuda que le estamos prestando a la sociedad es de gran ayuda porque estos niños no solamente están aprendiendo a cómo cuidar su medio ambiente sino que también ven nuestro esfuerzo por tratar de mejorar las condiciones de vida del mundo y esperemos que en un futuro hagan lo mismo.

El viernes teníamos que hacer la ventana de Johari pero desafortunadamente todas las actividades de las escuelas del estado de México estaban suspendidas por el nuevo virus de la fiebre porcina. Este virus parece que es muy maligno por lo que les recomiendo a todos que tomen las prevenciones necesarias. Esperemos que esta situación mejore en los próximos días.

Summary 3

In this period I have learned a lot of stuff
Some things that I like to share:
1. We must not only do our best, we need to know what to do and then do it.
2. The communication is the best way to transmit our knowledge so it is important that we develop this important skill.
3. If we want to change a behavior we must first find the source of the problem and then try to inspire change building a complete mental map of the problem and the solution. Verbal persuasion is the key for most of the problems.

So far I liked most of the activities that we have done in class, and I found many of the videos inspiring.
My team and I have gone one time to school to talk to the kids about the environment and how we are negatively affecting it. The last time that we went, the teacher was really glad that we did so; I think the kids learned something useful. From now on, we must try to give our best so one day the human race understands the problem.
A few days ago, I was reading news from 2007 that said that 45% of all the forest in the world has gone away. Isn’t this outrageous? The human race has stayed in earth for just a little bit of time, and we have finished with 45% of our forests?!!! What is the expectation? In the next let’s say 20 years would we only have 10% left? I think that we must do something fast, before is too late.
I think that this class is awesome since it makes us more “human” and I hope that you that are reading this blog find something useful in it.

14th week - Presentations

In this week my team and I gave the first presentation of solidarity. Our character was Alfonso Carmona a church father of the church “Señor de la Misericordia”. I think that we were a little bit nervous talking about him because we did not have enough information about him. The activity that my team though was good, at the beginning I tried to make a game like the one of the farming but after thinking for a while I decided not to do so, because it would take too much time ( I am glad that I didn’t do that game).

There are some important facts to point out
1. Next time that I am in a presentation, I most know more about the character
2. I most give myself more time to finish what I have to do and practice it.

An interesting fact is that throughout the course we have been doing different activities, and so far in the presentations every team made one o two activities for the class.
I think that the presentations of the other teams as well as ours were well done but nevertheless were not perfect thus everyone has a chance to do better next time ^^

13th week- Semana Santa

In this week I didn’t do too much really since it was spring break, or as we call it in Mexico “Semana Santa”.

I went to Monterrey the whole week. I had some fun visiting family and I liked to walk at night, stare at the stars, chat with family members and go to the movies. Too bad the break is over, and now we must go back to school -_-;;

I remembered that we had to try to write our dreams for “Johari window” and so I did. Overall I told myself to re-remember my dreams first and then write them, and I had a grasp of a couple of dreams so I wrote them down.

Next week we must return to school, see ya everyone in school ^^

12th Week- War

The people that went for community service to “a roof for my country” have returned.
We learned from them that.
1. They worked in teamwork to help this people and they seem to be very united.
2. The people seem to be happy and they helped in the construction.
3. They were really kind and offer them food.
4. They show lots of gratitude.

I think that this project is a really good idea since these people who did not have a house before now have one and their life condition will dramatically increase. As for my peers, they were trying to give their best to build these houses and I think that they learned a lot from this experience.

The other activity that we did was the construction of the tallest tower
The class was divided into 3 teams who had the following instructions in a card
*Build the biggest tower with plastic cups and u cannot share this card
And the specific instructions were
1. Do not use violence
2. Nothing
3. You can steal and destroy


I was in the second team and at the beginning of the game we notice that the third team was unfair. When I saw this behavior I immediately started to help the first team out and told my teammates to do the same. They didn’t do the same for quite some time until they finally understood that we had the same porpoise and that we must share resources.
Good things that I noted
1. The violence that was presented was not too severe
2. At the end we had a union with the first team
Bad things
1. Violence was presented
2. There was not a global good negotiation
3. The union of our team with the other team did not happen until almost the very end
Some interesting stuff
1. As some countries do, we started to build human and object barriers so our “enemies” had a hard time going through.

If the union would have been faster, perhaps I could of have a chance to look at the whole picture and then make a smarter move. The things that block me from doing so is that I thought of the third team as my “enemy” and the union of both teams did not happen fast enough. Therefore I never had a chance to look at the “whole” picture.

11th week- The Artistic Week

This week we did a painting. I was given the instructions to tell my partner to draw a painting by using purely geometric shapes. My partner could not look at my painting and I couldn’t look at my partners painting. I think that overall we did a good job because we finished in time and the drawing was not too far away from the original but I feel that my partner did not feel the same way. I must admit that the communication was not outstanding but good communication occurs when both parties communicate well. I think that we must not feel bad when we do our best to do something, if the outcome is not what he hope for then we can learn from that experience and grow stronger.

The second part had to do with orange negotiations. Basically in this game two people wanted to have at least 10 tons of oranges but a farmer only had 15 tons. They needed this amount of food in their business. In my team we didn’t want to talk about what did we needed them for since we were supposed to be rivals and instead try to fool each other by giving imprecise data. At the end we didn’t figure out that we wanted the oranges for different purposes and that we could both have what we wanted. I learn from this experience that we must pay more attention of what we need the stuff for and if a problem arises we must try to solve our needs first.

10th week

This week was outstanding. My friend Sokwhan came from Laramie Wyoming Colorado to visit me and my brother during his spring break. I really enjoyed the time he stayed since we played a lot of games and went to many places like “Ixtapan de la sal”. The only thing that I hope is that he enjoyed it too since we didn’t have vacations thus we came to school three out of the seven days.
Now, as for the class...

This week we played the game of Farming. The class got divided into five teams and we had to simulate farming for our town. The only risk of this game is that if a team didn’t farm enough food for two periods then they would disappear. The farming that we did could either be during a dry or humid year depending on luck. During the playtime there could be some natural disasters and some outside help.
I won’t tell all the details of the game but the best solution of the game (probability wise) counting all the restrictions is
7 of Yucca, 1 of wheat and 2 of beans every year.
Except if you knew the weather was going to be humid in which you would plant
7 of Beet, 1 corn and 2 potatoes.
And the teams should always try to get 251 or 501 and help other team to get to a production of 501. Note: 501 is the most stable position out of all. E.g. if a team gets 351, that team should gain 200 or give 100 to maximize the production of everyone.
Ok, I think I went a little too far into optimization ^^,
I notice one important behavior though. All the teams were helping each other so that no one dies and the team that had advantage knowing in advance that they will always have humid years helped other teams.

This week we also watched Live 8. I really felt impress by their work. We are talking about famous artist working together to improve the conditions in Africa throughout the world. I didn’t even know that such an event existed in the first place and after watching part of the video I notice that a lot of people are trying to improve Africans life condition. I think that we should do similar events in México and try to change the culture to a giving culture.

9th week

During this period we evaluated ourselves as a team and as a group. Overall I think that we did a good job since we tried our best.
By evaluating we
1. “Saw” the perspective of our peers in various activities throughout the month.
2. Found some very interesting experiences and new ideas.
3. Build up more trust.
4. Find the ideas that the whole class might share and which ones are personal.
I must say that although I haven’t done everything that I had projected since the beginning of the class period, I might have changed just a little bit.
I hope the class keeps going as it is. Out of all the humanities classes (like 7 so far), this is the only one that is worthy. Thanks you Luis Gerardo, teammates, everyone else in the class and you for reading this post.