EXTRANGE ANECDOTES BY SANTIAGO SALDARRIAGA

Throughout the history of humanity there have always been a lot of strange beings, facts and places that have frightened people of all cultures and nationalities; demons, mythical creatures, witches, the Bermudas triangle among others.

I´ve heard about some curious anecdotes that I would like to share and discuss. I remember my grandmother telling us the story of one friend of her, a lady who lived in the same town. People used to say she was a witch and no one liked her or even cared about her, however, my grandma preferred to know people personally and then make her own opinion about them. She allowed the lady to live in the ground floor of her house, rented of course, she discovered a nice gentle lady and they became friends; the ´´witch´´ always said to her that she would help and protect her when needed. Once, my grandfather was very ill and my grandmother had to go from the farm they were to the town in order to get some medicines, however, it was a rainy night and in the way she had to cross a very dangerous rocky mountain by horse. She started her journey, alone and scared because of the danger but when she started crossing the mountain, her friend, the witch, appeared and told her to be calmed because she would accompany and protect her during her travel.

In my opinion, it´s very difficult to believe that witches had ever existed but according to the time of the story and the cultural beliefs it would be very hard to find the truth. As the saying says, witches don’t exist, but there are some. I´d rather prefer to think that there are people who have special gifts and, according to the way they use them and to the fear the society feels about their abilities, they will always be judged as different and receive social marks or nick-names like, in this case, witches.

Also, one of my closer cousins experimented a situation that created a lot of doubts. Her family used to go visiting an uncle´s girlfriend´s family, a lot of people joined together on Saturdays to talk and have a mid-afternoon meal. At a moment, a man started to talk to her, they became friends and some time later he asked her to be his girlfriend. She didn’t like him as a partner so she made him apart, however he kept insisting for a lot of time, finally, things got cold and they stopped talking and seeing each other for a while. Two months later things started to went wrong for her, anything happened the way she wanted or needed and problems started to be an usual part of her life: relationships, job, business, etc. She and her family began to be worried and started looking for someone who was able to give them an explanation. They found someone who explained that she had been bewitched and that there must be an object which was affecting her energy and her life so they had to find it to destroy it and turn the situation over, they started to search but didn’t find anything. Some time after that, she remembered that the man had given her a pair of earrings and a necklace so she looked for them and destroyed them, it turned out that the man, in revenge for her denial, had bewitched her.

I don’t think that it really happened, but my cousin insisted that it was truth. From my point of view, you have to believe to get affected, I mean, if you accept the fact of being part of the situation you will get involved and eventually suffer the consequences. I don’t think a particular object can affect your life such as in a strong way but if you let the other´s comments, attitudes and feelings to be part of your life then you will begin to be affected, in the other hand, if you don’t pay attention and keep going, you will achieve your objectives no matter what.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 by Maribel Marín Pino

MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370

The flight 370 was an international flight that disappeared on Saturday March 8th 2014 and nowadays is the greatest mystery without explanation in the aviation history. When the nave was flying from Malaysia to China the authorities lost the communication with the flight. There are many hypotheses about the events that could have happened:

Hypothesis 1. The flight could have changed its itinerary when it was flying: The crew could have changed the itinerary, probably they may have received orders from strangers that had a particular interest in some passengers who were important researchers of AIDS illness.

Hypothesis 2. Some passengers might have kidnapped the flight: Some passengers could have fake identities and they had psychological problems in their medical histories. The authorities said this people were fugitives in USA and in past years were problems related with kidnappings, extortion and murders in different countries.

Hypothesis 3. The plane may have fallen in Vietnam: The Chinese authorities reported than they saw pieces of the plane in the see near to Vietnam cost, however, the rescue agencies never found the black boxes, bodies or pieces.

It seems to me the hypothesis 1 could explains better the events because the rescue agencies  never found parts of the plane and the authorities never received extortion calls. In China there are a lot of people interested in the research by money and the results that might change our future.

FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN COLOMBIA, A COMPLEX PROBLEM BY DANIEL FELIPE RIVERA

FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN COLOMBIA, A COMPLEX PROBLEM

No one can doubt that Colombia has had one of the longest conflicts in the world, since the sixties. The constant war between the right governments and the left guerrillas, which has left the population in middle. They have not taken in account the consequences lived by the most vulnerable people. Towns completely exterminated, widows, orphans, mutilated, violations, kidnappings, are some of the consequences produced by the war, for these reasons a huge amount of people have had to leave their hometown. Displaced have had to move to the main cities searching for opportunities. The displacement has been inherent to the Colombian war, and there are people that don't understand the real magnitude and the consequences for a developing country as Colombia.

People from field coming to the cities are the most obvious effect in forced displacements; normally, they come with one hand forward and the other backward. The poverty conditions are the reason the displaced begin to search for assistance, but in our society, this kind of assistance is very limited, so the only way is ask for money in the streets, or even saddest, stealing. Obtaining a place to settle is other issue, because normally the displaced just find places in the boundaries of the cities. Poverty belts are the specific name given to the displaced in the city’s boundaries, and are very common in Medellin and Bogotá. Normally the poverty belts don't have utilities, health posts, police stations, appropriate schools; we could say the poverty belts are abandoned by the state. Abandonment increases problems like violence, violations, drug addictions, murders, all kinds of illnesses, armed gangs, these factors not only affect the lowest layers, also the highest layers suffer consequences as insecurity and paradoxically displacements and uncontrolled expansion, that force the government to invest capital that maybe doesn't have.

I think the displacement is such that it could carry a complete country to the disaster, and the state has to solve the problem and the solution begins forgiving the differences between main beliefs, left and right, and leaving behind the insignificant wars. Attending the current displaced, creating study opportunities, jobs and other missing things are needed for our society.

THE BIGGEST MISTERY BY CATALINA MUÑOZ

DIANA CATALINA MUÑOZ PELAEZ

The project is to write about a mystery, famous or another thing that could be happening or had happened locally…. But really, this weekend I was thinking about the topic. On saturdary I watched a movie  by twice called in Spanish bajo la misma Estrella.  First, I though that was a sad movie, but this last time I tough that was a happy movie… why to change this thought?.... It is because talks about a topic nobody likes….. THE DEATH…..

This is the topic I choose, it is a local, and a world event that we can´t avoid, it is a mystery, and it happens eventhough to famous people.

We can see the death from different points of view,  for example I searched in google about death in Medellin, but the informations is not about death, it´s about murderers, killing people, suicides, model deaths, Pablo Escobar and some tragic policemen kills.  On the other hand they never mentioned anything good about this. Why death could be something good?.

Almost everybody always think something bad about it, think that it´s the worst they could live, what is more, believe it ´s the end of the life. For this reason I Would like to tell my humble opinion about it, I could be wrong and be saying lies, but it really does not stress me, it´s just a method to live.

Have you ever considered we are not alone in the Planet, in the World, in the Galaxy?, I think not, and that is the reason we are here….. the humanity is in a level that we can´t stand with another specie of life… Why? Because we are violent, agresive, selfish. Furthermore, we are able to kill and destroy if things are not as we like. The Earth is called the jail of humans, it is because we can not be out of it. We have to live here, share what we have, what we are and learn to be better. Death is like to stop a clock, while it is running we are trying to do things conscious or unconscious.

To know and realize if something is better, we have to stop and compare…. That ´s the death,  the clock stops and depending of our results our next life will be different (better or worse) you choose… the idea is  one day be out of earth, live in peace.  Therefore   it´s a homework that takes lot of lives, while  death always appears  new lives come again to pass the exam.

One way to evaluate your acts is the way you die… a violent death? A peaceful death? Just think about the persons have died and  how have they been.

Life is just a period, the death is just an event…. 

IS MY MOTHER IN LAW A PSYCHIC by Ana Isabel Arenas P.

IS MY MOTHER IN LAW A PSYCHIC? OR DOES SHE PRETEND TO BE?

Since I have met my husband´s family, I have heard many stories about every kind of scary topics, but one of them that have captured my attention the most, is that supposedly my mother in law has the ability to guess when somebody is going to die. Yes, it might sound spooky; however for many of their relatives and friends, this has been real.

Although, I have been a skeptical person the most part of my life in many things, I have been trying to listen to these stories with an open mind and making an effort to find a logical explanation for them. For that reason in the next paragraphs I will let you know every case in order that you decided what to believe and what not.

The first unusual situation occurred during a vacation trip to the coast in 1988. All my husband´s family had traveled there, and his grandmother with her husband stayed at Medellín. They were all very close. However, due to their age they couldn’t go to this place in the coast. At that time, there weren´t mobiles and it was not easy to have other people news when you were traveling. One night, they were talking in the living room and my mother in law saw like a tiny shadow of a person close to her who seemed to be her mother in law who was in Medellin. She recognized one of her clothes. She felt that something could have been happening and the next day they went to a small town nearby to call to Medellin. Surprisingly, they were told that she had died during the night and furthermore, that she was wearing the dress my mother in law had seen in the shadow. Isn’t it scary?

One of the other happenings was 44 years ago. My mother in law was still in her bed at 7 am and her husband was gone to work. At one moment she felt that a hand touched her face and she heard a soft voice saying: “Goodbye”. She in her interior though about her father. Despite her confusion, she called her father´s house and she was told that he had gone out to his work. She was relieved. He was well. Ten minutes later her sister called to inform that their father had had a heart attack and had just died. She was petrified. She was the only one who knew what she was feeling because of the advice that she had perceived in the morning when she was still in bed.

The third story happened twelve years ago. My mother in law was in her bedroom again, and she saw a shadow of a person with plenty of hair and expressive green eyes in her door´s bedroom. She recognized that person. He was her sister´s ex-husband. They called to his house and they were told that he had been very sick during the last months. He passed away died the next day………

After your have read this stories, you are tempted to think that perhaps, she could have been making up all of them to capture your attention, but when you talk with her relatives involved, they confirm to you, that she had those events. Not only that she had them, but also, that she told the facts to some of them before they had been confirmed. Moreover, I would like to believe her, so in that case she could have the ability to feel those energies and not just pretending to tell a scary story. Could be probable that she were a psychic?.......

At the end, if we believe that we all are rational human beings, and that we are made of a body and a soul or spirit, therefore at the moment of our dying, our spirit has the need to visit the people the person loved or met in his or her life. Is in that moment that the soul feel free to begin the trip to the unknown (which for the Catholics is the Lord House), and to leave the material body and this could be an explanation of what my mother in law has lived in these experiences. In that case it is probable she was a psychic!!!

                                                                                   

Drug Trafficking in Colombia By Carlos Alberto Betancur Hernandez

In the 1980s Pablo Escobar created a criminal empire that took the city of Medellin as its epicenter, in the middle of 1981 he had an ilegal finantial relationship with his partners the Ochoa Brothers, and in the other hand a global vision of the drug trafficking, that allowed him to open new air and marine routes.

He soon had control of 80 percent of drugs entering the country, as well as business on the streets of Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Chicago.

The demand for cocaine was the strengthening of the Medellín cartel and the nightmare for Colombia.

With his power, Escobar came to the Congress and the country started to know his own barbaric assaults on April 30, 1984, with the assassination of Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. Since then the killings and terrorist attacks didn't stop.

Pablo Escobar bought the consciences of military, police, politicians, businessmen, judges, prosecutors and journalists, but also He ended with the lives of tens of them.

El patron, in English the boss, as they called him with respect for their subordinates, created a terrorist model that remains today, recruiting Young people from the popular neighborhoods of Medellin.

For 31 years, the national police, with the support of the armed forces, the Prosecutor's Office and other institutions, have led the fight against drug trafficking; the Operations focused on the Medellín cartel, battle which ended on December 2, 1993, when Pablo Escobar fell down. Later Cali (1995), coast (1997), Bogotá and then north of the Valley (2008). But any drug that came into the hands of traffickers was grown in areas controlled by the Farc and the AUC.

The war has not been won, despite having topped hundreds of battles. Now there are new challenges and the crime was transformed and adapted to police strategies. Today, the information and domestic consumption are the challenges that the struggle of the police should concentrate.

Maybe everything would have been different if the man did not like to obtain easy and fast money.

Peer Correction by Juan Manuel Montoya

Read two of your classmates’ texts and help them check the following: 

• Sentence structure
• Subject-verb agreement

The verb corresponds to the subject → My friends was ^were students at the time.

• Capitalization

Use CAPITAL letters at the beginning of sentences, questions, days of the week, months of the year, and proper names (people and places) → They went to Cinemark at 8:00 on Sunday.

• Punctuation

Use periods at the end of sentences (never use commas) → I had left the house when you arrived.

Use commas to separate three or more items in a list → I used to watch sitcoms, soap operas, and cartoons.

Don’t use a comma for two items → I used to watch documentaries and cartoons.

Use commas to separate a depending clause from an independent clause → When I was a child, I moved there.

• Tense appropriacy

Your classmates use different tenses appropriately with corresponding time phrases.

• Coherence

Your classmate’s text is well organized and easy to read and understand.

• Spelling and other aspects

Check the spelling of words and other aspects that you consider important.

Share your corrections with your classmates. You can ask the teacher if you have any doubts about the texts.