Gay Adoption

 Every day we get surprise for the changes in our society that make us think sometimes the world is getting crazy; however, some of those changes are consequences of what we do at home and how we face life. One of the most controversial topics to talk about is the gay adoption because many people have many reasons against of it, mostly the reliogious community. On the other hand, many other people have reasons in pro of this, as personally I do. I think every human being is free to live life in the way we think is better for us if we don't affect anyone else.

In this special case, many people think gays are not a good example of a citizen at any place on the world, even worst that they are not a good image for a child who is growing up close to them. Well, I think that if we respect their rights as citizens and they keep rising children with love, education and a home where they have whatever they need, they deserve to be parents.  Every day we can see at the news how many "mothers" or "fathers" abandonate or kill children because they dont want them, because the don't have the facilities to rise them, or because they are inmerse in drugs and alcohol. For myself, parents are not who make you, parents are the people who give you happiness and love, and many gays have this for many foster children who need it.

Mi Sangre Fundation

Juanes is a Colombian singer, Juan Esteban Aristizabal, who started singing with some friends in the city where he was born, Medellin. With the time they started a band that sang Spanish Rock and became famous in our country. The name of the band was Ekhymosis. They were together for many years, but once they decided to disolve the group.  After this, Juanes became a soloist and his career grew up fast. Now he is a excelent and famous artist know all over the world, winner of 17 Grammy awards and a social leader, know for his big philanthropy sense and proximity to the social and humanitarian conflicts in the world, especially in Colombia.

As many people know, my country lives a ongoing war between the guerrillas and the militia, but not only them suffer the consequences: hundreds of innocent people die every day victims of the violence, but many others had to face the violence with a trace on them for their whole lives; children and adults every day fall down as victims of landmineslosing their lives or loosing a tip body, such as a leg or arm.

All this situation motivated Juanes to stablish a foundation in 2006, where he could help people affected by this violence in any way, and is here when Fundacion Mi Sangre (Por los hijos de tus hijos), or  My Blood Foundation (For the cildren of your children) in English, born to contribute to children to be the main characters at peace making.

This foundation works as a link between the local community and the national and international community investing economic and technical resources for social investment. Its outstanding work is based on to identify, formulate, manage and monitor high impact projects, and their rigor and transparency in resources management.  To visit his website and check it out go to http://www.fundacionmisangre.org/ .

Freedom Parade

Everybody know that Colombia has having big narcos who have broken our image of a good country for the whole world.  All of us also know we have "guerrilla" or militia groups that go against of the government and have their own rules. They were suppoused to protect the people from the unfair treatment from the government; however, they have been hurting innocent people more than the militia they were suppoused to fight against.

Those groups have killed, raped and kidnapped thousand of people, and worst, they ask money to save or return individuos to their families.  Many countries may think people don't fight against of them, but they are very strong and powerful. Nevertheles, people and government have taken the control of the situation eliminating the biggest head that lead this big team, made of many others groups lead by little people that follow the big leaders.

Before to come back to the United States in July, 2008, there was in Colombia a special parade that make us feel proud of where we live. The parade was thought for the people that was tired of this criminals and want kidnapped people to return home with their wives, children, husbands, parents... That day, July 20, was our independence day, and we decided to march for the independence or freedom of those groups.

My two sisters were in this country and they couldn't go with me, but I found a good company in my peruvian friend, Andres, who went to meet me personally to Colombia after almost five years chatting online, and before I returned to the USA. I also went with some cousins and friends to protest for a good cause. That was an historical day where the country had the biggest demonstration of love for colombians and the rejection of militian groups that whant to hurt innocent people.

July 20, 2008, was one of the days that I firmly felt proud of being a Colombian Citizen!!

The Carriers' Parade

The carriers' parade - or the "silleteros" parade - is a main event of a big festival in Medellin, Colombia. In this parade we can see young and old people showing the artistic vein they have inside, even thought they never visited a school to learned about this. Their schools have been the farms were they live and rise their families, in most of the cases in basic conditions.

Long time ago, the parade was prepared to show the beauty of the flowers, the colors, and the happiness they bring to people, so the person in charge decided to invite some carriers to show their "little" art on it, but this was a common tas theiy everyday have done to sell flowers and decorate the churchs. The carriers use to "carry" their art in their backs, no matter how old the person can be.

 Nowadays, the parade pretend to show the honor we feel to have this kind of artist on our country, in our community.   The flowers use to make the floral arrangements include any kind of flower that we can find on our land, and let me tell you they are a lot and amazing...

The tradition is passed to every generation by the family members to preserve the "Nation's Cultural Heritage".  Many people every year, colombians and foreigns, assist to this parade to admire the arrangements and to show artists their work worth enough to keep people waiting many ours for them on the streets.

Paranormal Activity?

 As I said before, I use to go to parks to walk with my boyfriend.  We started to visit those places since we started dating, and presently we like to go at least once in one or two weeks.  We like to release the stress from the whole week.  The day of halloween's eve we decided to go to the Cranbury Park, which is the one that we mostly visit. That day was still clear at 6:15, so we decided to take some photos to send home in our countries about autum and the amazing colors of this season.

While we were walking we heard something that passed behind of us, but even worst my boyfriend felt that someone touched him in his back. I thought he was jocking, but he was not.  We avoid the topic in that moment. When we got close to the castle, we noticed some "spots of light" on the photos although there were no lights toward that side; we were against of them. I tried some more photos, but only at the front of the castle we had this problem.

We started thinking in presences close to us after remember we heard about that before.  All this happened in almost 15 or 20 minutes, time very short for our regular walks, but we only wanted to leave the place at that moment. We could see that some of the spots look like they get closer in pics that are consecutives.

People that saw the photos later told us they feel something strange while they see the pics and that we shouldn't go there anymore at that time, suppously the time where the line of the paranormal world and our have a point of conection.  They also say that they can see faces on the spots that look to us. Well, if anyone think or know something about this, please I would be glad to hear about it....Is it or not paranormal? Who knows?

Hurricane Katrina

 We know that Hurricane Katrina was one of the five deadliest on the world and the costliest for United States. This was in the category five, the highest, and killed more than 1800 people only in New Orleans, Louisiana, the most devastated place by the hurricane.  A friend of mine sent me some pictures about this storm before to touch the land and they are amazing.

However, if we can see the disaster it left, we can't say it is amazing, we can say it was shocking.  People lost their belongings, they lost their style of living, but worst they lost their families, and many of them their lives. After five years we can see that people in New Orleans couldn't improve their conditions, maybe because they had to start a new life in another place, but basically because the government doesn't have enough profit to help them to rebuild their communities and lives.

Now the place looks bleak, abandonated.  I hope in a short time they can start a new project to recover the zone and bring happiness, life and good conditions for this place and their people. Now, if you like how amazing the pictures look, maybe we can think how furious and terrorific it looked for people in that moment.

December lighting in Cali

In almost every city in my country, people usually hang lights on the houses, buildings, and trees to express the hapiness for christmas time every December. Every family star preparing lights since November, in order to get houses ready since the first day of December, or at least the day we celebrate the Virgin Mary's day, on December 8... Well, we are a very religious country!

Nevertheless, many people thought it was not enough to light the houses, so people started lighting the whole neighborhoods to win a prize for the best one. Besides this, many companies decided to do it also, trying to continue with the feeling of a great time. But now, not only families, neighborhoods, or companies are doing this; now the government decided to contribute to the activity lighting the main government buildings, parks, rivers, and historical places in the cities.

For example, the pictures you can see in this post are taken in my city, Cali, in the main river and in a special park that are very important for us because they pass by the main street, which is right in the middle of the city, dividing it since north to south.

At night time, the city looks really amazing and people use and love to walk around of it taking pictures, eating snacks, or having good time with their children. I love it, but mostly I miss it :-(

Learning On-line

Everywhere we can see people studying online, by themselves, in their computers. But, is it as good as the presential class? Are you motivated in the same way? Well, I tink it depends on us. We can go to a classroom every single day but if we don't pay attention to the explanations, or we prefer to listen to music on an ipod while the class is running, what can we learn in that way? On the other hand, if we use to go online to check our homework, be sure we finish and hand-in those to the teacher, and study for the tests, surely we can get much more information than in the class with no attention.

For many people is better to study at the peace of their most comfortable place at home, in the most comfortable cloth they have.  For example, when I was working in Colombia, I was a teacher and I had to use a web plataform for online learning for my students, I also was controlling the whole application and instructing the rest of the teachers to use it in their classes, for being the computer science engineer of the same corporation.

It is hard to control it, and mostly, understand it as a teacher. Likewise, for some students those applications give hardships to the learning process; however, for some other students, those applications are the best tools they have to learn with no teachers surrounding them.  For children, this kind of applications can make easy the way they learn at home with their parents before and after go to school.