Les miserables: way of living

 I learned some things about the way of living on that period. The basic on nutrition was the bread that later was changed for the potato. Half of the wage of a common worker was spent on food. On the case of livings we have a big variety. There were rich and poor neighbourhoods. The biggest problems of the houses was that they were very old and many families lived there causing an unhealthy way of living. If we look to the diseases we find that the tisis, an illness caused by poverty, killed to the 20% of the population. All this and the fact that they started working as a child show us that although there were many changes on the products people´s life didn´t improve until later.

Les miserables: work

 On the film I could see a big variety of work. At the beginning there were a lot of girls working on a textile factory while a man was looking that they make her job. Althought this was a very repetitive work it was the best for that women because if they were fired, they had to work as whores or sell parts from their bodies like their hair or teeth. This were very unfaired works and they had to be with rich people that could do with them whatever they wanted.
 On the other side there were big business owners that had a lot of privileges, for example, the law protect them. They didn´t work the same hours that their workers and they earned a lot of money.

Les miserables: people

 Before I went to the IR I saw the film called Les Miserables. On this film I was surprised because of the people and their behaviour. For example, at the beginning there´s a young woman that is fired because she had a little girl and she gave her money. I think that this isn´t a reason to fire a person and the ones who said her secret were her colleagues. I discovered that this was a sexist society because if a woman had a baby, the man didn´t responsabilyze and only the girl had to care it. This is also caused because they thought that women were the ones that had to care the children while the man was working and this is sexist.

Ludwig van Beethoven

 When you think about romanticism music you always think in Beethoven. He was the most important musician on that times. He is characterized by the changes of melodies that gave to the composition an abrupt rhythm to which people wasn´t used to. It was a big change if we compare it to the previous music that was mathematically organized. He also invented a lot of new structures. This is related to the IR because it was a period of big changes that are also shown on the music.

Lord Byron´s meeting

 I met Byron on the year 1812, a date in which he had just published his first songs that narrate his trip to Europe. This was the year in which he became famous. The meeting was as I wanted. I could ask him aspects of the life of a writer. I wanted to know this because I thought that the life of a writer is very different depending on the period when you are. He was the son of a sailor and when his father died, his mother started to be very distant althought they weren´t very close. He also had a malformation on his foot that didin´t allow him to walk very good. Althought this he could walk normally.

Lord Byron

 I´ve always loved literature and of course, I wanted to know more about a writer from Romanticism. The author I found was Lord Byron, one of the most important ones during this period. His work is related to the period because he inspired a lot of Victorian authors that wanted to imitate his heroes that had a great talent and passion. One of the poems I read is "She walks in beauty", this is poem that talks about the girl that he love but the poem that better describes this period because at the beginning he talks about his dream in which he thinks that the Sun switches off and their is no light anymore. Later we know that he is talking about the big fire that suffered London. The poem is called "Darkness".

App

I have looked for some apps to becoming aware of the environment. Obviously, on that times this didn´t existed but fortunately nowadays yes. One of my favorite ones is one that shows you the quantity of water that you are wasting and it tells you how to manage it better. It has helped me a lot because after I saw the effects of the pollution I don´t want to contaminate anymore.

The lethal effects of London fogs

 Before I went, I looked some information of the contamination on that times. Here I found that on 1952, the pollution killed 12000 people in London. There was a lot of contamination because of the factories. It was the first time on the history that the Earth was polluted. People didn´t know the effects and the were very big. For example, they had a constant fog that didm´t allow them to see very well on the streets or they could´t breath very well.

Comparing to now...

 I have had the lucky of living in two different periods, so I know 2 different ways of living. There are many things that have changed. For example, nowadays we have become aware of the pollution so we don´t contaminate as much as before, times were anybody was awared. Many things have improved along history. Unfortunately, we still having children working on factories on poor countries. The difference is that we are trying to change this and we see that it´s not correct to do that to those children and on the Industrial Revolution times didn´t think like that. Of course everything changes with time, what we have to do now is to still improving society.

Environment

 When I went to the Industrial Revolution, one of the most amazing events that surprised me was the environment. As I said before, if you looked on a mountain, the only thing that you could see was a lot of chimneys and fogs that didn´t allow you to see any building or street. This was the first time that people started to contaminate and it was a very big change that has continued until nowadays. The streets were most of the workers lived were narrow and dark because they were near the factories. On the other side, the owner´s streets were big with buildings that had more than one floor.
 Pollution was one of the biggest problems on that times and this problem was also reflected on the life of the common people.

My dialogue

 On my trip, I met a worker and a chip worker, this is the dialogue we had:

 Me Hi I have just arrived in London and I would like to know a little bit more about the way people live here. Can you tell me something about your lifestyle?
 Worker Hi, nice to meet you. We are workers on this factory.
 Me How many hours do you work?
 Child We enter here at 7:00 in the morning and we go out at 20:00, but we have a rest a midday for eating. We work everyday with few exceptions like Christmas were we can go before 20:00
 Me And what type of work do you do?
 Worker: I work on the construction of cars, so I have a repetitive work on the conveyor belt. Sometimes my arms hurts because of doing always the same movement.
 Child: I also work on the conveyor belt, but, when something blocks the belt I am the one that has to enter because I am little and few people fit there so I also have to do that.
 Me: Do you have free time?
 Child: I can play with other children when I finish the work but sometimes I am very tired and I only want to arrive to home so I don´t play many days. Of course, on Sunday I can be with them and we pass it very well playing.
 Worker: When I return to my home, I like to be with my wife and spend time with my sons. They are the reason for this work, if not, I would have changed the job and looked for anything else, but I have some obligations and I want hem to be happy.
 Me: When you finish working, how is your life at home?
 Child: When I arrive at home I give my parents the money that I have earn that day and later my family and me have a dinner all together and we say how it has been our day, Then I am too tired so I go to sleep until the next day.
 Worker: I have a dinner like him and then I play with my sons until we go to sleep.

The saddest episode

 When you are on a travel, you always want to enjoy it but, unfortunately, I saw a sad episode during my trip to the Industrial Revolution. I met a boy, he was a little child of approximately 8 years old, but his age wash´t an impediment for him to work on a factory. He told me that he was the son of two workers, so as you may be thinking, his family was poor. He had a younger sister of 6 years old and he was working for her because he didn´t want her to work in a factory like he was obligated to do. He didn´t have a special treatment because he was young, he had to work the same as the older employers, the same hours, the same labour conditions, everything was the same.

 This has been the saddest episode I saw, and this helped me to think that nowadays, children on poor countries are passing thorugh the same that this child working on factories owned by big companies. We have to change this and this has opened my way of thinking.