Durante este bimestre hubieron varios cambios en mi proyecto CAS. Hubieron muchos problemas en el grupo de animal rights, varias personas se salieron del grupo, y varios sentian que no haciamos nada que en realidad este ayudando. Yendo al albergue de perros claramente nos enseño a tener mas compasion con los animales, pero, yo personalmente, siento como si no hemos echo mucho. Debido a esto decidi ir algunos sabados a apoyar en el grupo de apoyo emocional, ellos van a Neoplasicas a hablar con los enfermos y tratar de alegrarles el dia, aun que no deje de apoyar en el grupo de animal rights.

De una manera o otro yo creo que al ir a neoplasicas yo senti que creábamos  un cambio mas directo en las personas, yo podia ver que cuando entrabamos algunos levantaban su cabeza y nos sonreian, sin si quiera conocernos, y cuando empezábamos a hablar podia ver como la gente empezaba a sonreir mas y se reia con nosotros. Esta experiencia me ayudo a ver mas alla de lo que tengo, a compartir historias de vida con personas que no crees que tienes algo en comun, pero en realidad esta persona y yo nos parecemos mas de lo que creia al principio. Es interesante ver como las personas, a pesar de pasar por un tiempo sumamente dificil, pueden sonreir y reirse, esto me enseño a que todo se puede superar con el tiempo, y no hay que frustrarse con todo lo que nos esta pasando.

Mas aun, yo creo que hubo un cambio a la primera vez que yo fui al hospital, ya que la primera vez que fui tenia mucho miedo porque no sabia que exactamente iba a decir, ya que el cancer es un tema muy delicado, no queria ofender a nadie, asi que la primera vez que entre entre con una pareja, no queria que la conversacion que iba a tener con una persona se vuelva incomoda, asi que tener una amiga ahi me dio un poco mas de seguridad. Hablar con una paciente te da otra manera de interpretar esta enfermedad, uno cree que ellos van a estar triste todo el dia, pero en realidad ellos todavia quieren reirse y ser feliz, y superar esto lo mas rapido posible.

Despues de la primera vez aprendi a ser un poco mas delicada con los temas que puedo conversar con las persona, tambien me ayudo a estar mas segura de mi misma, aunque a veces tal ves las conversaciones se volvianun poco incomodas, pero eso es algo inevitable ya que es la primera vez que hablo con esta persona, pero de otra manera tambien me ayudo a trabajar bien con otras personas que normalmente no trabajo en el colegio, cuando mi pareja no tenia nada mas que decir yo la ayudaba y traia mas temas de conversacion con la señora con la que estabamos conversando.

Yulin 2015

In recent news there has been a huge controversy surrounding the Yulin festival in China. This festival consists with the theft and cruel slaughter of dogs. Various celebrities such as Ricky Gervais and Ian Somerhalder have joined in on the campaign. I agree that this sort of festivals should stop, cruel massacre should never be acceptable, and they are slaughtering dogs, I say slaughter because there is no nicer way to put it, animals which are supposed to be man's best friends, but it's absolutely hypocritical on behalf of men to be standing up against this, but then immediately do it again, not with dogs, but cows, pigs and chicken.

I would like to clarify, I have been vegetarian since a little over two years ago, so I would like to be as unbiased as possible.

China has had a history of eating dogs for various years, yes, it's tradition, but it's a tradition that should be broken because they don't only kill "mans best friends" but they are stealing them from their owners, and killing an exaggerated amount of them, which should be unnecessary, they are purely doing it for the fun of it, however this is being disguised as making bad spirits go away. We can't absolutely stop a tradition that has been going on for decades, but we could change it. 

In recent years the consumption of dogs has decreased gradually, more and more people are keeping them for security or company, with only 8.2% of the population keeping them for consumption. I understand that change can't be made in one day, but we should hope that in the future, the next generation make things right, all we have to do is hope for the best. Ultimately, hopefully, this is a dying tradition.

As to why I think it's hypocritical, it's basically because we are only defending dogs because they are cute, why don't we make a big deal about killing cows and chicken, just because they are not as "cute" as dogs does it mean that we can kill them. These are animals, just like them, they breathe, eat reproduce, etc. so why should we kill cows too. We say we protect animals, but everyday people unconsiously are eating slaughtered animals, because nearly all of the meat that you buy from the supermarket comes from a factory farm.

So I would like to end by just asking a question why would slaughtering dogs be any different than cows, they are killed nearly the same way?

Friday, May 29th

On the morning of friday the 29th we got to present a power point to some of the classes of the lower grades of upper school, I got Form II. I went in with all of the confidence that I could build up in order to do a great presentation and inform the students of the ways they could help, but it went the wrong way.

I know that there are many people that don't really care about animals, they prefer to center themselves around the problems that are surrounding human beings and ignore those who can't really complain because they do not have a voice, just like animals. I think that we have to act as the voice for these creatures that are being mistreated by humans, and they can't complain in any way.

When I tried to do my presentation the tutor of this class asked me why was I doing this project, why invest so much time and money on creatures that, in a way, are inferior to human beings. That we should help people instead of animals because they are more important. Well let me just say that that is not the case. This made me realize that there are various people that don't really care about the well being of anyone but themselves, that humans are the driving force of the universe, that the world revolves around them, but can we really change the perception they have?

I believe that by working with animals we are going to become much more sensible human beings, we are going to be caring to the environment we are living, and ultimately this will make us much better persons because we will be able to get along with anyone or anything with much more harmony.

Voz Animal

On saturday May 16th a me and 6 more girls from the our took a trip to the animal shelter "Voz Animal" were we volunteered for the day.

When we arrived I noticed that there were much more animals than I had expected.
At first it was really intimidating to be surrounded by so many dogs, which were really excited to meet new people, they were running, jumping and tackling us, they didn't let us move, but after a while they settled down it was surprising to see so many animals that calmed.

Personally I love dogs, so this was a wonderful way to begin our service. We got to play with them, and take them for a walk.



A lot of the animals that were in the shelter were rescued from terrible living conditions, it was also surprising to see that after seeing some of the pictures of these dogs in facebook posts and in the website, it was really exciting to finally get to meet them, it was like meeting a celebrity. One of the most touching parts was that we got to see the improvements of various animals, because in pictures we saw the terrible condition they arrived.

Us going to the shelter made me realize that we can all make a someones day better, in this case these dogs, by only making a little effort and spending time with them. I look forward to going back soon.

My first CAS meeting.

On Friday the 17th of April I had my first CAS meeting. At first I only thought that we were going to discuss our goals for the project, but out of the blue a we were lucky to have the first visit of a trained dog to our school. The dog was brought to the school by an organization, bocalan, that trains dogs in order for them to help children with disabilities, either physical or mental.

When we first discussed the idea of helping this organization we didn't really think that it had anything to do with animal rights, we thought that it was more directed towards people that had disabilities, but after talking to the dog trainee we discovered that we could relate this with our project.

Here, in Peru, there is a lot of prejudice towards disabled people, there are various times when they are not accepted into public transportation, or there are times when they are not even let into public establishments, and if you add a assistance dog to this equation, then there will be more problems. Not only because there is not a culture of respect towards animas in Perù, but because sometimes people without even knowing can cause confusion in the dog.

We took all of this in consideration and we concluded that this may be one of the options that we may develop, we could do this by creating awareness first in the school through posters and talks, because one of our fellow classmates is going to start bringing an assistance dog to school.

Furthermore at the last part of the meeting we discussed some of the interviews that we wanted to have, we got an appointment to interview a veterinary in La Molina and we started to brainstorm some questions for out interview to the meat supplier of the refectory, APC, of our school.

Overall it was a great meeting and it made me look forward to what we are going to accomplish when the project is over,