My English language challenges

I remember I had a few classes of English in elementary school, but it wasn’t until fifth grade when I had a real class of English. I a teacher I really hated on fifth grade, but happily she left the school that year and then we met Miss Claudia, she was my teacher since sixth grade to senior year in high school so everything I know about English I have to thanks her for teaching me. She was a sweetie and even when in sixth, seventh and eighth grade every year we started learning about the verb “to be” I really love her classes. I had to admit that I love English so I was a very good student, but my class mates didn’t pay much attention and some of them went out of high school with cero knowledge about English. Even know they have problems with English in their universities.

I truly thinks that isn’t the teacher’s fault that the students doesn’t want to learn English, I mean I didn’t take a course of English in an academy or something, I just enjoyed translating songs, watching movies and tv series, hearing English a lot so then I could  put in practice everything I learn in class. That was all and I ended up with the same level of English that some of my friends –who actually toke English classes outside high school– have. If you want to learn, you are going to learn, but students right now don’t appreciate their teachers or their classes. I see that in my brother he also has classes with Miss Claudia and he knows nothing about English, I have try to teach him thousands of times and he doesn’t learn. So when the students in Chile really want to learn English, just because they want and not because “they have to”, everything would be different.

The most difficult thing for me it’s to memorize the irregular verbs and their conjugations. But it’s just practice, I also have to pronounce my “v” and “b” ‘cause you know you have to open your mouth and use your tongue differently for that sounds.  I think this year I have improved my pronunciation, ‘cause that was my weakness point in high school. About my writing, well, now I just write everything without thinking “how I have to write this word?” all the time, and it’s really fun because to write in English you have to think in English. I think that’s my secret, sometime I like to think in English so I just keep practicing with my imagination.

An activity I like to do in my free time

Hello everyone! Today I’m going to talk about an activity I like to do in my free time. Well, as you must know one of my favorite’s activities it’s to watch tv series. I sound a little bit lazy saying this, so please don’t think that this it’s the only thing I do in my free time I also enjoy going to the gym, practicing pilates, yoga and cardio box. And every Saturday I volunteer in a camp making classes to children that have a difficult economic situation. But when I have to think of something I really enjoy doing on my own I have to say that it’s watch tv series and also some soup operas, I just love drama.

I watch series every time I can, so I don’t really have a schedule about it. I do it in my home obviously because I can connect my laptop to my television, I absolutely love that! I’m currently watching about thirteen tv series: How I Met Your Mother, Har Of Dixie, Pretty Little Liars, Modern Family, New Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Grey’s Anatomy, The Big Bang Theory, Glee, Awkward and The Originals, all from United States. Then it’s Heirs and Marry Stayed Out All Night both from South Korea. And finally I’m watching one soup opera the famous, Avenida Brasil.

Why I love watching tv series? Well, as I learned in several classes here at the university we need additional doses of emotions to recover what we have lost by reason. And the society plays itself in the story because every story it’s necessary a search of meaning. So I think I enjoy trying to find that meaning.

My favorite book ever

Hello! Today I’m going to talk about my favorite book. Without a doubt I can say that my favorite book ever is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I love Jane Austen! She is absolutely my favorite writer. Stories like Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey make me fall in love over and over again with delightful gentlemen like Mr. Tilney, Edmund, Mr. Knightley and the perfect Mr. Darcy.

I really like Pride and Prejudice because I love period novels and this story follows the life of a young woman, Elizabeth Bennet, as she deals with the issues of manners, morality, education and marriage in the early 19th century. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London. 

The story narrative opens with Mr. Bingley's (an aristocratic, charming and social young bachelor) arrival to Netherfield house in the neighborhood of Bennet family with his good friend the “proud and condescending” (but also handsome) Mr. Darcy. Mr. Bingley easily falls in love with Elizabeth elder sister the beautiful Jane. But, by contrast, Mr. Darcy despises Elizabeth, who overhears a joke and about it and she immediately starts to hate him.   

 “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine” Says Elizabeth. 

But what Elizabeth doesn't know yet is that she has completely enchanted Mr. Darcy and he loves her “most hardly”. 

I have to admit that even when all the girls always relate with the heroine’s point of view I absolutely love this book because I identify myself with Mr. Darcy. And this paragraph describes exactly my personality:

“I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever” Mr. Darcy.

Year 2013: Good and bad things

During the 2013 I learnt a lot of fun stuff. I had a class call “Production in Television” and we had to do a real television program, that was really hard but a lot of fun! I was the floor manager so I had to say to the public on the studio when they could applause or when the program was on air. I really enjoyed because I figured out that I love the audiovisual format. So now I really want to get an internship on that area or work in that area any time soon.

In my free time I like to tweet all the time and watch TV series, but the first half of this year my favorite program Gossip Girl ended, so that was really sad. The challenge was to find new series to watch and searching over here and over there I ended up watching a lot of Korean Dramas, and I have to say that I’m obsess with them. Besides of watching a thousand of TV series, in my free time I also practiced pilates, yoga and cardio box. I went to the gym tree or four times a week so I also ran a little bit. I tried to live a healthy lifestyle because I have hypothyroidism and insulin resistance, so that means I always have to control my weight which is the real challenge of my life. But I’m super fine in everything so that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, the first half of this year I had one of the most amazing experience I ever have. I traveled to Paraguay as a volunteer to build emergency houses –the ones we know as “mediaguas”– for families who live in camp. I worked for the sweetest and strongest families I had ever met. They treated us with love and kind and really made me feel like home, even when they talk in another language: Guaraní. I have to admit that they teach me a lot of words but I only remember two: Mba’éichapa that means “Hello, how are you?” and rohayhu that means “I love you”.

As much as I miss Paraguay when I was there I couldn’t take a shower in ten days so when a got home, where I live with my mother Olga and my little brother Luis, they send me directly to the bathroom. But if you ask me if I would do it again, I would say “Hell yes!”

I could say that it has been an amazing year so far. 

A journey I would like to make

Hello, today I’m going to talk about a journey I would like to make.

If I think about a place I really would like to visit I immediately would said South Korea. But giving it a second thought I have to admit that a journey I would really love to make is travel all across Chile, from the north to the austral zone.

I always wanted to meet all the natural treasures that our country has. I really know very little of Chile. Well, I know what I learned in my history class back in high school, but I only had visited tree regions of Chile, well not even de whole regions just some cities in it. I know the Metropolitan region because I was born and live my whole life here. I had visited many times the sixth region because that’s where my father is from. And I also have visit the fifth region because I always go to the beach there for my summer vacations.

I would start taking a plane to Iquique and then I would go all across the Great North, the Atacama Desert and the Altiplano, visiting the former offices of Humberstone, San Pedro de Atacama, the salars, the lagoons and the geysers. Then I would go to the Near North to the Elqui Valley where I would eat papayas, I would visit the pisco companies and taste all the piscos I can. I also would go to the astronomical observatory in Mount Tololo and to Vicuña where Gabriela Mistral was born, etcetera.

Then when I’ll arrive to fifth region I would go directly to the Easter Island by plane obviously. My dream is to visit the Easter Island and get to know the moais, the volcanoes, and their culture basically.

And I would continuing traveling to the South enjoying of the nature, eating all the typical plates that every zone has, and making the more memories as I can.

To this journey I would love to go with my high school friends or my university friends. But I think that my high school friends would probably be more exciting about it because we have talk about it many times and we all have the same dream. So I hope to do it one day. 

Why I love Korean Dramas a.k.a. Doramas

It’s been almost a year since I start watching Korean Dramas, best knowing as “Doramas”. For those who don’t know what is a Dorama and you may think that is like a soap opera in another language, let me tell you that it’s quite different.  A k-drama –for short– is a televised drama in a miniseries format, produced in –obviously– South Korea, but you can also call Dorama any other Asian production, whether it’s from Japan, China, or even Thailand and Philippines.

The first k-drama I ever watched was Boys over Flowers and yes, I have to admit that I started watch it because our local channel Mega was showing it and accidentally the first chapter I watch was the last one! And I have no idea but that time, I figurate out when the words “The End” came, well, at the end of the chapter. But even when I knew how the k-drama was going to end I absolutely fell in love with the story anyway: love, high school, rich boy who loves a poor girl meanwhile the best friend gets in the middle, an evil mothers who is against the lovely couple, etc. PERFECT!

I have so many favorite Doramas, all of them from Korea (South), but if you want to start watching some of them let me recommend you ones of my favorites like: Love Rain, The Good Guy and Gu Family Book. 

How green am I?

I really try to be a green person, but the truth is that I don’t really think I’m one. I can’ say that I learn about taking care of the environment in the school or in high school, of course that I did all that stuff you do in the Technology class, like make a gift for the mother’s day with empty plastic bottles and all that, but nobody told me that when I eat meet or use my deodorant I was hurting the planet.

I think nowadays people learn about environmentally friendly practices from the Internet. The mass media have contributing a lot, now you can’t say that you don’t have the information necessary to be more green, the people isn't more green today cause is too expensive or just because they don’t have the time.

In family ­–for example– we don’t have a car, but we use the public transportation or we just walk when we can. I don’t even have a bike.  The only things we recycle in my house are the garbage bags, we never buy garbage bags. We use the bags we get when we go to the supermarket.

The thing I actually do and I’m very proud of –even when I keep it to myself– is that I love to use Natura products, I love that them are eco-friendly and you can eve use their shampoo in a river and you won’t be contaminating! And also I like the fact that they products are not tested in animals. I’m not a vegetarian, but when you can chose what kind of make up you can buy I think this thins matters.

I follow some eco-organizations in Facebook and Twitter, but I don’t really have ever joined or supported them really. Why? Well, I don’t know, time? Maybe money… Anything. But I think, more, I hope that someday I will do it.