Unusual sports in the universities of The United States

 We all know that sports are an important part of education in American universities, that's why there are a lot of scholarships for students that practice different kinds of sports. Based on that, I want to share with you some interesting information that I found about the sports culture in universities of the USA.
When we think of "American Sports" we only think of Baseball, Basketball, American Football and Hockey, but now we are going to learn about a few "new sports" that some universities think are important and therefore have decided to give scholarships to students that practice these sports.

1. League of Legends "athletes" :
For Robert Morris University of Illinois (RMUI) and University Pikeville of Kentucky, this videogame is in the category of “Electronic Sports” or eSports. 

2. Woodsman :

Sport in which all activities involve firewood. Athletes compete in: chopping wood, climbing trees, throwing axes and campfire building.

3. Rodeo :

Exhibition or contest in which cowboys show their skill at riding broncos, roping calves, wrestling steers, etc.

4. Snowshoe :    

Field sport that consists of running in the snow with special snowshoes. Athletes compete in different individual and team activities.

Universities have created special programs with the infrastructure that these “unusual sports” and athletes require. In the case of “League of Legends athletes”, for example, they have special rooms with all the implements needed to play the videogame.

This shows us how important it is to practice sports of any kind –not only the traditional ones– in order to have a healthy lifestyle and, in some cases, to be given significant opportunities.

                  A mysterious giant from the deep

Well,  maybe you have ever heard someone talking about the Loch Ness Monster before, and I bet that not all of you knew that this recognized myth actually comes from Scotland, I’m one of those that didn’t know that, so I decided to investigate a little bit more about it, so if we want to know more about this amazing mystery we have to situate in the Loch Ness, a deep and huge lake that is in the Highlands of Scotland, near to the city of Inverness, this is the habitat of the Loch Ness Monster but even a lot of persons have said that they’ve seen it, there’s no clean evidence of the existence of this weird creature.

Most of people describe It as a large and big in size, also people use different names to refer to the Loch Ness Monster like “Nessie” (the most common) and then others like “Niseag”, “Nissiteras rhombopteryx”, etc.

One of the earliest report of the monster was the Saint Columba’s “Life of St. Columba” in the 7th century , the story talks about a man that was swimming in the river while a water beast attacked him and Saint Columba saved him, although there’s a lot of theories about the Loch Ness Monster no one has ever had a real evidence of this creature, so it’s still a myth. In my opinion maybe it sounds like kind of crazy but it can  be an unknown animal or a dinosaur that survived from the extinction and also maybe one day if someone actually get real material of this mysterious “animal” or “monster” we’ll be able to say that Nessie actually exists.

And now I’ll leave you guys an interesting documentary so you can know more about Loch Ness Monster :

The Power of Māori Language

Today, Māori make up 14% of the population and their history, language and traditions are central to New Zealand’s identity. But this is the result of years of effort by Māori for not losing themselves. In fact, this culture almost disappears. Therefore, it’s quite surprising to find a native people that is so nationally and internationally recognized.

However, beyond recognition with the Maori worldwide, either by the All Blacks doing the Haka or the recognized tattoo on their face called Ta Moko, personally what struck me most was the fact that they got that their native language, Reo Māori, is considered an official language of New Zealand.

In 1980, the Māori become aware of that their language was seriously threatened and decided to do something about it. That led them to hold a meeting that resulted in the creation of Te Kohanga Reo (language nests). This was an immersion program for preschoolers in the language, culture and values of the Māori culture. And is an important fact that the language nests are considered the most successful models of education in the world and are exemplified in many places working on language revitalization.

It is a reality that almost half of world's languages are endangered, in fact experts say that many of these will not pass to the next generation. However, there are many linguicide who say it is not a catastrophe and actually reducing languages facilitate communication and may be able to help build nations, even facilitating globalization.

For me, it is extremely important to empower indigenous peoples. If we compare the accomplishments of New Zealand, a country that gives greater relevance and importance to Māori culture and have achieved inclusion; Chile is left behind by light years. Hopefully come a time when we can talk about our country as a multinational and multicultural one.

Maybe we should start letting handshakes aside and start greet with Hongi.

Hongi, a traditional Māori greeting in New Zealand

"American patriotism"

When we watch a movie, a music video, imagines of Google or even when we read traveler experiences in The U.S we can see the “American patriotism”.  Clear examples of this lover for your country are the Independence Day of The United State, respect of their military and even artists dressed in costumes decorated with the colors of the American flag

This is just a funny paradox because the “American patriotism” is just a disguise of an “American nationalism”, we must not confuse these two words, because a patriot is one who admires the culture of their country, respect and defends, but also understand that his nation has so many faults as virtues, belief that his nation can always improve and he sees peoples from the other countries as equals. But a nationalist loves and believes that his country is superior to others, just think of the virtues and justifies all the mistakes of your country.

Also the American nationalism is only sub-culture, because they don’t respect other American races, just they love their corresponding culture, for example an white American believes only the part of White American is the best in the world, this same happens to Black American, Latin American, etc.

So, while this nationalist thinking prevails, which is hidden under this "love" for the nation, racism and intolerance American will not disappear and continue this abuse The US to other countries and among themselves.

South Africa's Education. Can we talk about inclusion?

The education system in South Africa  it’s administered by the provinces, and The National Departament of Education limits to demarcate the general educational policy, setting limits or ‘’Standards’’ that the public, the subsidized, and the private entities should achieved. As well as the higher education as Universities.

Sudafrica’s education;  the free, the quality and access to everyone for it, as the same way that in our country,  has been a very touched topic, although it has been more than 20 years since Nelson Mandela became the President in 1994 there are many shortcomings in the reforms that the government  made, even if the inclusión it’s one of the pillars of them –inclusion as an anti-racial segregation proyect, not as we see in our context- .

Since the abolition of the apartheid that secreted the population in White, Indian/Asian and black people, the last one group with fewer privileges , still a long way to go because we can still see differences between these groups, as the academic levels of the people that integrate it. The government assigned 20% of the fiscal Budget for Education Issues, but it’s not enough, the ‘’free’’ education it’s just until 9° grade –of 12°- thenceforward the family has to contribute with money to the education of the kids. Being the native families and indeed the poorest the hardest hit.

 So, here a question that arises me, What happen with the families that can’t pay for it? What happen with the education of these kids? Does have them  to start a worker life at 14-15 years old?  Is it a real ‘’Inclusive’’ education?

Everyone's A Little Bit Racist

When my group and I were studying Australia and New Zealand, we came across a rather shocking piece of information about Australia:

• 1 in 5 people has been target of racial discrimination (around 4.6 million people nation wide).
• 7 in 10 teenagers have experienced racism.
• 3 in 4 indigenous australians regularly experience racism.

But when we read about the aussies we find that they are mostly kind, and caring for one another (and this is usually true), but according to research done by the University of West Sydney this is because they have a culture of denial towards racism with sentences like "this does not happen here" "no one discriminates by race in this country" (we can relate to this in Chile, a lot) and the problem with the denial of this acts is that perpetuates racist behaviour, on the other hand speaking up reduces it since it's perpetrators understand that their views are in the minority, making them less likely to engage in prejudice and stereotyping behaviour, so don't deny it, speak up when you see racism near you.

And now on the lighter side of things, I'll leave a short song so you can comment it and discuss:

LET US PLAY IN SCOTLAND?

I have to admit it, when I was researching for the map of Scotland exposition, a lot of stereotypical ideas filled my mind like skirts and plenty of whisky, gaiters and read heads everywhere. It was hard to me not making prejudices along my investigation. When we were finding out new facts and information for the map, I read how wrong I was, so I had to use growth mindset.

When you think about video games you firstly think in the United States, but when you start to research famous video games companies, it is tremendously surprising! Scotland has them too. In fact, one of most famous and critics acclaimed games series and franchise, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), was developed in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Rockstar North Studios.

            One of my favourite video game, GTA, was Scottish. The first expression I said: I cannot believe it! Then I started to find which another video games were from Scotland and some of them are: Minecraft and Celtic Warriors. Also I found out that Glasgow has been one of the most recurrent host of video games festivals, which are popular and crowdie.

            Another fact I read was the inspiration of a big amount of video games for locations, such beautiful castles, deepest woods, high mountains and lakes like mirrors. All the landscapes are recreated in video games like Role Player Games (RPG), epic adventures, hack-and-slays and more. Also I cannot forget about the traditions, old weapons like swords and axes and traditional costumes.

            So, Scotland has an enormous potential for video games industries, it is an inspiration source for creating them and here you can be surrounded for creative people who share the same interests like me.