Christmas

My Christmas has been great! At Christmas Eve, all my family gathered at my house, full of decorations, and we had a lovely dinner. After that, we sang Christmas carols, and they gave me so much presents, it was great! I have to confess that being able to see the relatives I love and spend such a great time with them makes Christmas one of my favorite holidays of all year!
Hah. As if.
I couldn't feel less "Christmasy" in all my life. Every year is worse than the other, because it's all the same and it is becoming too monotonous for me to handle. Almost all my family (not all of them, because it's pretty clear that some of them can't stand each other enough to reunite for a family dinner) gathers at Christmas Eve at my house, which is less decorated every year that passes since my mother is tired of decorating it and I don't feel the "Christmas spirit" enough to do it. So this year, with the absence of the Christmas carols and the dim light of the Christmas tree, which was the only decoration we bothered to put, we prepared the table. And through all the evening, all my relatives told me the same stupid comments that I am so tired to hear, like "do you have boyfriend yet?", "how are your studies?", "oh, look, how weird, Alazne with her laptop, hahah", "why don't you go out more?", "have you lost weight?", "you should eat healthier, you know", "why are you always checking your mobile?", etc.
When we sat at the table for dinner, I have to admit that I felt more at ease when I avoided my family by chatting with my friends through whatsapp or simply reading. And I don't really care that was bad form, I can't stand my relatives because they still treat me like a kid, but when it's convenient for them, they treat me like an equal. So no, I don't see worth my time trying to pay attention to them at dinner. Also, you could think that at least I have the presents because, you know, it's Christmas. Wrong. With this goddamn crisis no one has a spare coin to waste for presents, so...
But well, not everything was that bad. One of the things that I absolutely admire of my mother is that we barely have something to eat the rest of the year, but when we have a family reunion I don't know how she does it to make enough food to eat for the rest of the month. God bless her pure heart. My aunt, who works at a bakery, couldn't come to the dinner, but she brought a lovely marzipan cake:

So the dinner we had was rather quite nice. Another thing I love about this time of the year is that I am able to make presents. I LOVE making presents. Therefore I convinced my brother a few days before, when we were still in Murcia, to go buy something nice for our mother. We went to a market next to the University that had lots of interesting things. One of the stands sold pretty glasses and could engrave in them anything you wanted, so we finally decided to buy a red (my mom's favorite colour) glass with my mom's name engraved in it. When we gave it to her, she gave us a big hug and a lot of kisses, while saying sorry because she wasn't able to buy us anything. 

But I didn't care at all. Because that glow in her eyes and that smile on her face was the best present I could ever had. Merry Christmas everybody!

Practice 4

Task: Write a short Problem/Solution essay (around 250 words) about any issue you consider worth analysing.

DISCRIMINATION

Society has always discriminated lots of different groups through history, and that is a fact. Although we may think that nowadays there's almost no discrimination in our world compared to the past, that is a wrong way of thinking.
There's still hate in every corner of our society represented as homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny... And all of those people have found poor reasons to explain why do they hate those parts of society. For example, homophobic people say that homosexuality is a sin because "the Bible says it's Adam and Eve", and nothing else. Also, xenophobic people believe that white people are superior, as well as misogynists think that all women are stupid or simple sexual objects.
All these problems can be solved if all of us cooperate and take action to make the world a better place and to eliminate discrimination. The most important thing to do is to educate our children, because they are the future. Therefore, we must show them respect and teach them that everyone has the same rights, even though their cultutre or their beliefs are different from you. Other things you can do is to speak up whenever you see an injustice. Don't shut your mouth and look away, defend the victim no matter what. You can become an example for other people.
In conclusion: we can pretend that there aren't any problems in our society anymore, but if you really care, you will take action and change things.