What I do in my free time / Cristian Fernández

During the winter I cannot do many outdoor activities because of the weather, although I do other things.
I enjoy cycling but in Galicia the weather is rainy and I cannot do it very often, only at weekends, when I go to my village. I sometimes go out with my friends; we play football and basket, we go to the cinema and we usually have dinner together, I like going to “the wines” street. We also go out to the pubs at night and we have fun there, but we do not drink alcohol.

I love car racing and I sometimes go to a circuit in “Monterrey”. There, I drive a “four times” car and I spend the whole afternoon doing it; my cousins come with me because they are fond of it, too. I have got an uncle who lends me his quad and I really like doing it, but I do this only when I go to my village.

The activity in which I spend most of my free time is playing the bagpipe. I go to the school of music three days a week and I have to practise for about two hours. I started seven years ago and I really like it. I play in the “REAL BANDA”, we usually travel all over the world: we have gone to New York, Europe, Egypt…and this year we are probably going to Paris and London. I am interested in doing it because in the future this will help me if I do not find a good job.

In conclusion, I spend my free time doing and learning what I like. With the activities I do, I know places, I do exercise, I meet people and I am with my friends.

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by CRISTIAN FERNÁNDEZ NÚÑEZ, 1º BAC C

Leisure activities nowadays / Pablo Mosquera

I am going to try to explain what different types of leisure activities teenagers (like me) have nowadays. In my opinion, we have four kinds to fancy in our free time. Each has its pros and its cons; however, I find two of them much healthier than the other two:

● First of all we have the teens who spend their whole time in front of the computer screen, playing playstation, or watching TV program after program until dinner. This is such an unhealthy life that it could even develop into an overweight disease. Nevertheless, people will have a very specific talent at something.

● There are a few (in percentage) who have musical talent, and feel like playing an instrument everyday. I find it boring, but I cannot deny they can take advantage of that.

● Another group of people (where I must be included), prefer to practice a sport seriously. If you take it seriously, it will be difficult to hang out usually with friends and to pass examinations at an ordinary school.
I, for instance, despite having good marks, would get even better ones if I had not chosen this way to spend my free time.
This is the healthiest type of leisure life, although it is difficult, both physically and mentally, to keep on doing it for a long time.

● Finally, still remains the last group. Most of the teens just have fun, going to the malls and taking part of the so called “Big Bottle” during the crazy nights. That is the best way to enjoy their free time, but there is a high risk of taking drugs and drinking much alcohol.

To sum up, we have proven there are several types of leisure activities, and it is also proven that people can have benefits out of them, or put themselves into risky situations because of them. I think we should not change, and everybody can choose the best option for him/her.

by PABLO MOSQUERA PÉREZ, 1ºBACH C

Activities in the past and now / Sheila Fernández

The activities in the past and now are very different because the people have other way of thinking and the economy has changed too.
My grandparents enjoyed drinking “colacao” or eating biscuits because they were unusual in their houses.
However, currently, we are more capitalist, we don’t mind having indispensable things like a toilet or soap that didn’t exist in the past, in addition, people spend their free time in different ways.
In the past, the children have a lot of things to play with and most of them don’t play with them.
Teenagers used to go to the town’s parties, where they danced, drank, in short, they amused, but now the teenagers go to pubs to dance and know other people, but they don’t drink a lot there because it is very expensive, for this reason, they do a lot “BOTELLON”.
They buy in the supermarket or in a 24h Shop cubs, ice cubes and drinks because there, they are cheaper and then they go to the “Alameda” because now they can’t go anymore to the “Plaza de las Mercedes” because it’s forbidden.
Friendship is different too.
In the past, friends talked on the phone if they had, but now we talk in the internet, messenger, mobile phone etc.
In conclusion, times have changed and both, the way to spend our free time and people.

by Sheila Fernández Pérez, 1º BACH C

Leisure activities today / Paula Conde

When you are 16 and you are studying bachillerato, be sure that your free time will be pretty short or you won’t have it most of times. So your leisure activities can’t be long last or be settled far away because of the time.
While young people are not at school or doing endless homework go out with friends for a walk or a drink (just if you are very lucky enough and do not have homework or you have holidays you can go to the cinema or shopping). Some people go out at night and most of them get drunk or takes drugs (or even both), so they return home high.
To stop this is a challenge for the government, which thinks that it is disgusting and unhealthy for young people. And every year it spends huge amounts of money making advertising campaigns which seem to be useless.
First of all, banned things are more attractive; in the past teens drunk alcohol too, but now that is illegal, alcohol drinking has increased a lot. And secondly, young people who drink do it for different reasons: ones do it because they like the taste and drink just a little, others who do it just because they think that if they are drunk the world seems to be funnier, and the ones who drink because it is a way to get into a social group.
Knowing this, making teens know that alcohol is not the solution of their problems or the ticket to the popular life is maybe the best solution. Because everybody who drinks knows that alcohol is unhealthy, if you drink too much and people who gets drunk does not mind at all, so the campaigns telling the alcohol effects aren’t useful at all.
But, to be honest, the government can’t reach the objective without parents’ aid, who let their sons drink and go out at night when they are aged 13 or even younger

by Paula Conde 1ºc Bach

Leisure activities in the past and now / Sara Maslanka

The activities that young people used to do in the past are very different from the leisure ones in the present, although some of them haven´t changed.
In the past people spent more time out of their homes because they didn´t have so many games or computers, televisions and vidiogames as we have noow.
They spent a lot of time with their friends, and when they had money they used to go to the cinema on weekends.
Nowadays we hardly ever go to the cinema, beacause we are used to downloading the new films we want to see from the Internet.
People in the past were longer outise because they wanted to see and talk to their friends, but today we spend more time inside our houses, because we don´t need to go out to communicate with our friends. We just need to turn on our computer, or our movile phones and we can speak to anybody all over the world.

But there are things that haven´t changed at ll. Young people in the past liked to practise sport together, and so do young people in the present.
It´s a funny way of working out, and spending time with friends is something that was and still is ver ypopulat between young people.

In general all generations of young people like music. Music is very popular although the styles and music preferences have changed throughout the years.

I think that leisure activities may have changed from the past to the present days, but, in my opinion, young people in the past enjoyed, as much as we do now, their free time hobbies. It doesn´t matter if they have changed.
Mostly they have changed because of the new technologies, but they can be the same fun now as they were then.

Perhaps nowadays we are too dependent on technologies to communicate with others, but for young people now the inportant things in their lives are the same as they werein the past.

by Sara Maslanka Figueroa, 1º Bach C

What do you think about the leisure activities of Young people nowadays? / Brais Llorente

We use our free time for doing things that we the most like. We do these activities in totally voluntary way and can use them to rest or to amuse, the objective is that they generate satisfaction to us. We preferred to do it with our friends to share it with our family.

At present I believe that the most common activities between the young people are: listening to music, watching television, surfing the Internet, playing with the play station, going shopping, alternating in bars, cafes or pubs, going to the cinema and practicing sports, although normally the preferences vary according to the sex of the young person.

Our families would prefer us to spend our free time in another type of activities, like reading, activities in the open-air, visits to museums and expositions, attendance to cultural acts, but the reality is not that, we prefer funnier activities.

If we spent a suitable time in activities that we like, we are doing it in the correct way, there is no problem, the problem arises when we make an excess. Then we can fall in very dangerous problems like the excessive alcohol consumption, drug consumption, violence in the streets, promiscuity, no wished pregnancies, consumption, television, computer, video games abuse, studies problems…

Regarding the activities that we preferred, I suppose that some could be considered more beneficial than others. It’s obvious is better than we practice some sports that we are meeting people in a bar, but each activity must have its moment. Also we can think that it is more advisable to share the moments of leisure with friends, but sometimes, we preferred enjoying in private, the important thing is always to enjoy ourselves.

It also happens that certain young people see themselves “forced” to realize any type of activities because in their surroundings there are no other possibilities or she does not have means to do them. Unfortunately, in many cases, the young people must themselves devote to meet people in a bar and to play cards, because it is the only thing that there are (countryside for example).

Enjoying our free time is something fundamental for any person, if the activities that we do contribute to make us happiness, we will be fulfilling the objective. It is clear that we will have to take those activities with respect and responsibility to the others persons. Throughout the decades they have changed the enjoying forms, but there is something which hasn’t changed, and it is to share our time with our friends and it continues being our favorite activity.

by Brais Llorente Iglesias, 1ºBACH C

Good and bad aspects of the leisure activities of young people nowadays / José Piñón

Today, young people do a lot of different things in our free time: from doing sport or staying with friends to going to the cinema or surfing the internet. I’m going to analyse the good and bad aspects of these activities.
I think that all the leisure activities that we can do are positive. Some of them are really good and others can be also good, but with certain moderation. I have invented a classification of the different free time activities. We can divide them in sport, culture, technologies and friends.

All the sport activities (playing basketball, football, swimming, skiing…) are totally positive; because we do exercise, we relax, meet people and we forget all our problems for a moment.

As sport, culture activities are completely good. They are things like learning to play an instrument, reading a book, writing or even going to the cinema (depending on the film).

In the technology section, I include playing videogames, surfing the internet, watching TV, listening to music, phoning a friend... Playing videogames and surfing the internet can be something very funny and interesting. There are games which tell us incredible stories as a book or a film; but we should be careful with these activities, because they can make people introverted and we mustn’t stay too much time at home. The same happens with television. There are good and bad programmes, which can influence us negatively; so we must select and not to stay much time watching them. In general, we must moderate the use of this type of activities.

Finally, we have the things that we usually do with friends: going to the cinema, going out for dinner, going out at night… Probably, they are the activities that we like the most, and they really have a lot of benefits. However, nowadays there are some problems with young people and alcohol at nights that, on the other hand, have always existed. Some people drink a bit to become more extroverted and be more talkative. But others drink until they are completely drunk. I don’ t understand the second ones very well but I think that they drink a lot to become ‘silly’; and when they are ‘silly’, all for them is funny. For me, the idea of these people, the necessity to be ‘silly’ to have a good moment, is very sad. The consequences of this are seven or eight people with an alcohol poisoning in the hospital each weekend.
It’s difficult to solve the alcohol problem because we need to change the mind of a lot of people. But I think that the government should increase the control of the alcohol sales to young people because they are starting to drink very early. Boys and girls of twelve or thirteen are buying drinks without problems. And there is a law, but it isn’t respected.

In conclusion, sport and culture activities are completely positive. The rest of activities are even better but we must moderate the use of technologies and be careful with alcohol and drugs at night. If we put this advice in practise, we can have very good moments in our free time.

by José Piñón Vila, 1º BACH A