Living by myself

Next semester I am going to move out with a friend of mine to our own house. Even though when I came to America all my family stayed in Portugal, since then I have been living with friend’s a family. Although they are not blood related to me, I consider them to be so. I concern about me as much as my real family. That is why this is a huge deal for me; it is the first time I am going to be completely on my own. I feel a mix of emotions. Sometimes I feel really nervous because I know that if I mess up, I cannot really count on anyone to help me. Furthermore, although I have known my friend for over two years, I do not know many things about him such as if he cleans up after himself. Just because we get along very well every time we see each other, it does not mean it is going to work out when we live together. Last year in Portugal, my three closest friends and I spent a week in my holiday house and there was a lot of stress. Even though we had never argued before, during that week we argued many times. On the other hand I also feel very excited about getting my own place. I will have all the freedom that I want. I can go out and come back whenever I feel like and I can have people over all the time. It is going to be a new period in my life that requires a lot of responsibility but hopefully it will be a lot of fun at the same time.

Speaking in public

Communication with other people is something that happens very often in a person’s life. However, for some people, like me, speaking in public is one of the most frightening experiences in life. It is hard to explain why this happens and I often feel stupid when I think about it. For me, to pass a message to four, five people is completely fine. On the other hand, passing the message to 20, 30 people is a completely different story. I can feel the pressure and stress building up just for thinking about it. When it is time to talk in front of the public, I usually start trembling and I repeat myself a lot of times. The weirdest part is that when I was young I was a good public speaker and it did not intimidate me at all. It was when I got older, around ninth grade that this fear appeared. It is really annoying because people with this fear have to work way harder in school. For instance, I had a speech in the school which I put over 12 hours of work. Some people in my class did it in 1 hour and got a better grade than me.

Referee's mistakes in World Cup

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world but one problem is constantly related to it: referees’ mistakes. Even the smallest referee mistake can change the result of a game and create a lot of polemic. That is why in a competition with the importance of the World Cup, every controversial call of the referee should be revised and corrected at the moment. For us Europeans, the World Cup is probably the biggest competition in the world because not only involves all the world but it only happens once every four years. In my country, Portugal, you do not need to watch the game to know when Portugal scores. Every time there is a Portuguese goal, almost everyone in the country screams and there is a huge celebration. In the end of each game won by Portugal, people drive around the streets honking for hours depending on the importance of the game. The opposite happens when Portugal loses: the streets are quiet and lonely. Losing is already hard, but when it happens because of a referee mistake, it is even harder to deal with. For us, people that take soccer serious, this is the worst thing that can happen. It is a feeling of frustration indescribable that is really hard to accept. If controversial plays were revised, referee mistakes would be corrected. Consequently no one would have to experience that extremely awful feeling of getting eliminated unfairly; defeat is much easier to deal with when it happens naturally. Allowing referees to review plays would make World Cup much fairer and enjoyable to watch.

Stereotypes

I am from a different country and culture and due to my appearance and accent, I was stereotyped many times. I knew I would be stereotyped in America, especially because my favorite sport is basketball and not soccer. However I did not anticipated that the strength of stereotyping was so great. This all started when I made the basketball team in high school, which was fairly good. As I am Latino, short, and not strong, when I told my friends that I made the team none of them believed it. A few people believed me after I told them many times that I was not playing, and that I was really in the basketball team. However, most people only believed me when they saw me playing in the first game. There were a few people that even after watching me playing did not really believe it. I thought that could not get any worse, however, the worst was yet to come. One game day, I and some team members were in the school talking with some girls. As it was game day we had special clothes that only the basketball team members could wear. As it was getting close to the game time, a teacher approached our group and said that from that moment on only the basketball players could stay on the school. The teacher said you girls and you, pointing at me, have to leave. Only after checking with my team members she believed that I was in the basketball team. The opposite happened with the soccer team. I heard from many people that I was the best soccer player of the school, when I had never played soccer in America before. I did make the soccer team but I barely played because all the other people were way better than me.

Animal extinction

Nowadays, the earth is in a terrible shape due to the men’s actions. Pollution, deforestation, and hunting are some of the irresponsible actions of people that are causing a huge negative impact on the earth. Some of the consequences of humans’ behavior such as pollution and deforestation can be fixed if we change our behavior. However, there are other consequences of our behavior that we will never be able to fix, for instance, the extinction of animals. Unfortunately, this is happening at an astonishing rate. According to WWF every twenty minutes, one specie is pushed to extinction. It is true that extinction is a natural thing that has been happening ever since the earth was formed. However, due to men’s actions, this phenomenon has been happening more often and way faster. The proof of the struggle of many species to survive over millions of years is being destroyed by humans. All this destruction is affecting us too. Even though the consequences of our behavior on us is not very clear compared to what happened and is happening to other species on earth, we are being really affected. Many species that served as our food supply disappeared or have been greatly reduced. Furthermore, due to deforestation and pollution the quality of the air has decreased a lot which has caused many people to get ill. If we do not change our behavior we will eventually end up as many other species, extinct.

Drink and drive

This weekend I received an email that changed the way I look at live. It was about drinking alcohol and driving. The email started with a girl saying “I went to the party mom”, which made conclude that it was a message from a girl to her mother. Through the email the girl remembers when her mother told her that she should not drink and she would feel proud and responsible, just like her mother said. The girl thanks her mother because when it was time to leave, she felt she would have a safe trip. The next paragraph starts with the girl saying “I did not expect this, I am lying down on the floor and I can hear a far away voice saying that the guy that caused the accident was drunk”. The girl said she could see her blood everywhere and she could hear the paramedics saying “the girl is going to die”. Following she described the pain that she felt and how desperate she was feeling because she could feel her heart slowing down. The girl’s message ends up by saying some words for each of her family members. This made me kind of confused because I was not really sure what that text really was. After the text it was written that those were the last words of a girl that died in a car accident in Portugal. That was when I realized that the worst part about drink and drive is not that you can hurt yourself, it is that you can hurt other people. What did the guy that caused the accident think when he woke up? What did he say to that girl’s family? Did he even face them? Any normal person, or at least me, in that boy’s shoes, would do anything to switch places with the girl but that is just not possible. He will have to live with the fact that he killed someone for the rest of his life.

To do right

I was raised as catholic and went to church every weekend. However, when I got older and after studying the origins of the earth, I started to question myself about what was really true. I was raised thinking god created everything but then I studied the Big Bang theory that explained the origin of the earth in a perfectly logical way. I got really confused so decided to create my own theory, mixing what I believed from both theory. I think the earth was created according to the Big Bang theory. According to the Big Bang theory, all the living things on earth came from a single cell that kept dividing and evolving until today. However, I also think that there is something not natural that humans cannot control. Maybe it is a powerful being like a God or maybe is the balance of the universe. I believe that if you always do the right thing, that "something", that I do not know what it is, will make up to you. By doing the right thing I mean help others or do your best in order to achieve your goals. So, if you help those in need, one day when you really need help, someone is going to help you. If you try your best in order to achieve your goals and it is not enough, someone is going to help you. Even though there are no proves that defend my way of thinking, during my life I experienced many situations that made me think like this. One situation that made me really believe in this theory was one day when I was at the beach. As background information, I always give rides to everyone as much as I can. The situation started by my mother telling me that day that she wanted me home at four o’clock because we had to go to a doctor’s appointment that if I missed I would have another year and pay a considerable amount of money. In the beach I let the time slip by, and at 4.10 my mother called me. I panicked because the next bus was in one hour so I started running around a village close to the beach trying to find a taxi. When I asked the time to a couple that was passing by, the man told me the time and asked where I was heading. I told him where I lived and explained the situation and coincidently, he lived really close to me and was about to go home. He gave ma ride and I made it to the doctors’ appointment in time.

The power of pets

Pets can have a big influence on their owners and people around them. It is true that this influence is not always positive because bad behaviors as tear a pillow apart or sharp the nails on the couch can produce negative reactions in their owners. However, pets can have a big positive influence on people too. Pets can cheer people up, helping them dealing with anxiety and sadness. For instance, every time I am sad I try to spend as much time as possible with my pets because it is a lot of fun and helps me forget about my problems and the reasons why I am sad. Many times, pets do weird things that are funny, for instance my cats play tag. They jump from tree to tree following each other which makes me laugh and cheers me up a lot. I also love to look at my aquarium whenever I feel stressed. To look at the fish swimming so peacefully relaxes me a lot and makes me realize that no matter how bad my situation looks, I still have a lot of good things in life that I am not looking at. For instance when my uncle died, I was really depressed and thought that my life was a bunch of problems. However, after staring at my aquarium for hours I got really calm and realized that instead of being sad I should be spending as much time as possible with my other family members.

The benefits of Basketball

I played basketball for 13 years, I started when I was 6 but unfortunately I had to stop last year because I needed to dedicate myself to college completely. During High School, it is not very hard to play basketball while making good grades. However, college is a different matter, the amount of work that college requires, makes it almost impossible to make good grades while playing sports. As almost all sports, to play basketball has great benefits for one's health. In order to keep up with the practices and play in the games, one has to give it all every practice. Consequentially, working hard every practice produces greats results for one's health. Moreover, basketball has other kind of positive results that are not always visible for those who do not play it. In order to play good basketball and win, a team has to work together. All the players, have to not only work towards the same goal but work together to achieve it. Every player has to completely trust his/her teammates and be able to help them every time they need. Basicly, everyone has to have each other backs because one game one person my be playing bad and need a lot of help from the teammates. However, in the next game that person might have an amazing game and help all the team. That is why teammates have to be there for the other teammates' good and specially bad moments. When this happens, your team almost feels like your family. To look around during the practice and see that everyone is working as hard as they can in order to achieve the same goal as you, gives you an amazing feeling that cannot be explained.
In conclusion, everyone that has enough free time should play basketball because it will benefit you in many ways. Basketball has great benefits for one's health because a lot of physical exercise. Furthermore, basketball teaches you something that will help you through all your life. To play basketball teaches you that with teamwork you are able to achieve many thing, that you would not be able to achieve working by yourself. Through basketball, people learn not only to work with other people but to trust others. This is not only a very important thing in life, but a very hard thing to learn and through basketball you can learn it. That is why if you are lucky enough to have time in your life to play basketball in a team, you should do it because you would surely benefit a lot from it.

Volunteer Work

Two years ago I moved to America as an exchange student and before moving back to Portugal I applied to Georgia Perimeter College and got accepted; I have been living in America since then. United States and Portugal are two really different cultures in many things but one aspect caught my attention: the value that people give to volunteer work. In Portugal, the words "volunteer work" are only a words that only a few people actually know the meaning. In America the concept "volunteer work" is actually part of the society's mentality. A huge number of people do volunteer work everyday, all in order to achieve self accomplishment. Furthermore, others big institutions like Universities are beginning to put a certain amount of hours of volunteer work as a requisite to be accepted in the University.
It was due to academic reasons that I stated to do volunteer work. I do volunteer work for an institution called Canine Assistant, which trains dogs to help handicap people in wheelchairs. At first I was only doing it because I knew it would help me in my academic future. However, after a few afternoons of volunteer work, my mind changed completely. Not only I started to have a lot of fun but I started to feel good and specially happy because I am helping people that need it. I also started to get motivation from looking at those people that have very busy lives and still work as hard as they can to help as much as possible. I feel that I am a much different person now than I was before coming to America, more open-minded and more aware of what is really important in life. I think that the American mentality about volunteer work, is the correct mentality because it influences people to try volunteer work. Most people that try volunteer work and experience that feeling of accomplishment that it gives you, keep doing volunteer work for the rest of their lives. Hopefully one day, this mentality of doing volunteer work will get to Portugal, which would be an amazing thing because everyone would benefit from it.

Living in a Foreign Country

To leave the country where I was born and move to America was probably the best and the most tough experience in my life. I came to United States two years ago as an exchange student, which means I started to live with a family that I have never met before. The greatest obstacle that I faced was probably the language barrier because it made really hard all the aspects in the adaptation to America. I could not make friends because nobody could understand me and I could not understand anyone. So, without friends and far away from all my family I felt very lonely. The classes were really hard because not only I had to study extra hard to make up for my lack of fluency in English but I misunderstood countless information from the teachers like the date of the testes, or the topic of the paper for homework. Adding this to the fact that I had to adapt to a new culture, made the situation the biggest obstacle in my life. However, after that adaptation to the culture was done and I got more fluent in English, the decision of coming to United States turned up to be the best decision in my life. I fell like I grew up a lot and became more responsible, ambitious and dedicated. I started to pursue and work hard to get what I want instead of letting the things that I want pass by. Even though it was tough at the beginning, all the things that I got from moving to United States make the experience completely worth it. So, if you have the chance to move to another country do not let it pass by, do everything you can to grab that change. Even though in the short-run it will be though, in the long-run it will be completely worth it.