Castaway Story - Iñigo Artolozaga

I remember that moment as if it was yesterday. I, Iñigo, was travelling through the Pacific Ocean in a small fishing boat. Suddenly, lightning

started to strike. Unluckily for me, one lightning bolt collided with my boat, and destroyed it completely. I fainted and, when I woke up, I felt sand touching my lips. I soon realized that I had become a castaway.

There wasn´t anybody on the island. Apart from the beach where I had woken up, the island was filled with forest. My resources were limited, so I had to build a house out of palm wood and leaves, and my diet was basically made up of coconuts and monkey flesh.

I soon started to miss all the people that I knew, even the people that I hated. I talked to empty coconuts, as if they were my real friends.

When I wasn´t hunting for monkeys, whose meat I had got used to, I was collecting wood planks for a big project: an escape boat. 

One day, I thought it would be a good idea going further inside the forest, because I had nothing to lose. Suddenly, I came up into a clearing, with a little hill. I climbed it and I saw it. All that time I had lived in one of the uninhabited islands of the Hawaii archipelago. 

Iñigo Artolozaga

Colegio Base

School Experiment Goes Wrong. (article)

SCHOOL EXPERIMENT THAT BURNED BOY WAS FOCUS OF FEDERAL WARNING.

I was so shocked when I first read this article. It refers to an accident that took place in a Manhattan high school science lab: An experiment went wrong and it left a boy with life-threatening burns and two other students with minor burns. But this hasn't happened only once, there have been at least seven more similar accidents in the country with the very same experiment.

“The rainbow demonstration” it is called. A very common experiment in high schools in which you see a different color depending on the substance that you burn. I suppose children enjoy that combination of flashes and colors but if there have been students that have ended up injured, why do they keep on doing the same experiment? I can't understand why this continues to happen.

The United States Chemical Safety Board and other agencies are helping to make people aware of this by sharing videos that show the horrible consequences of this experiment going wrong. But I think they would do better either forbidding it or providing the highest safety measures.

Better prevent than regret.

Link to the original article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/nyregion/school-experiment-that-burned-boy-was-focus-of-federal-warning.html?_r=0

United States Chemical Safety Board's video:

http://www.csb.gov/videos/

NELSON MANDELA

ARTICLE REVIEW

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/world/africa/nelson-mandela_obit.html?_r=0

This article talks about a death that happened a while ago in South Africa. It was Nelson Mandela, the famous South African politician, whose life tragically came to an end. Jacob Zuma, the current president of South Africa, anounced his death the morning after.

Despite the fact that Mandela had announced that he wanted a quiet death, his last months had been quite the opposite. A crowd of news-hungry journalists tried to get in his hospital room in Pretoria every day. Mandela´s remains were buried in the town where he was raised, Qunu, as he had wished.

If something about Nelson Mandela makes South African black people consider him a hero, it is his achievements in life. He was radically against racial discrimination. So radically that he spent 27 years in prison because he started a revolution and refused to change his mind about racial discrimination. When he came out of jail, he became a candidate for being the president of South Africa. He won and spent his 5 years of presidency trying to make the country equal for black and white people.

In my opinion, Nelson Mandela is a person that we should admire a lot, because he gave his life for his country and for his people, and he succeeded with perseverance and hard work.