Learning English at University is a good experience because it allows us to keep practicing this language, something very important if we consider there are not many chances to do it if you are not directly involved with it.

 English is something that employers ask for you as an applicant for jobs increasingly in this everyday more globalized world. But it’s not only important for this. I like learning English for others reasons too, more important, like watching series without having to read the subtitles or to understand songs.

The English blog really helps to practice that language because it requires me to search for words I didn’t know or popular expressions that are not easy to translate.

Good things of blogging in the English class are practicing the language (like I said before), expressing our ideas in English and knowing about classmates too. I think a bad thing is you have to write in few words topics that demands more explanations.

I know I have to improve my English because I used to talk stuttering, something totally related to my insecurity with the language. So, I’ll have to focus specially on my speaking and listening skills.

If I could change something about the use of the blogs in this class, maybe I’d change the moment when you have to comment others entries because sometimes I don’t know what to say about what I am reading but that’s a problem of my boring head.

Outside the English class I don’t use so much English, but I used to watch a lot of series and hear music in English so I try to understand what people say in this language without drawing on subtitles or lyrics.

Sincerely, this year has been one of the worst in several respects. There has been stressing and terrible facts that I don’t wish they happened in my life.

                First of all, I started the year too worried about my mom and the possibility that she could have breast cancer. The only chance that my mom could have this stupid disease was a shock for me and it makes me think about a lot of sad things of the day my mother passed away. She had to come to Santiago to Fundación Arturo López Perez, one of the best of the country about cancer, to make a biopsy and to know what doctors saw in one of her breasts. Happily, the analysis of the tissue of biopsy doesn’t show anything bad and she is healthy.

                Other terrible thing: In March, a few weeks after I arrived to Santiago from Copiapó to start University, there was a disaster in my city. Unusual weather phenomenon makes rains like few times before in the history of Región de Atacama happened. I had the luck to be in touch with my family all the time and most of them were not affected by the flood but friends and a cousin lost a lot of things.

                And the worst thing it happened to me this year is the unexpected death of a love one who suffers a heart attack. She was about two weeks fighting for her life after a surgery, but she couldn’t survive and left us. It has been one of the saddest things I’ve had to live and I think it’s something I never will able to get over, but I don’t really want to get it over.

                Like someone said, there is no reason to be bitter.

      I really hope next year could be better.

         I do really love summertime, but not because I can travel to amazing places and live unbelievable adventures like tv shows or like people use to post in their social networks. December is one of my favorite months because is the moment when everything starting to end and hopes about holidays comes to reality. January is the month I love most than any other because I love the heat. I love to be in bed knocked out by the 35 degrees.

The reason because I love summer is that I can stay in my city with family and friends, hanging around with them and visiting places such as beaches or valley near of Copiapó.

           This season is the one I wait for because is the moment when I can read a lot of books and write whenever I want without being worried about university works or wasting time assisting to classes I don’t like. My family usually gives me many books of my favorite authors in Christmas, which ones I spend all January reading. Once I end those books I search for others in the web to upload them to my tablet so I keep myself entertained all the time between books and tv series.

         You can see I’m not a person who likes moving and sporting so much, so in this season I use to gain weight (more than others. I don’t have a season when I lose weight :( ). But it’s the moment to reload energy for the rest of the year, I need to do absolutely nothing.

This theme is one of my favorites topics because watching series is like the 95% the way I use to waste my life and I love it as much as donuts and chocolate (not, I’m not Homer, sorry).

Can I cry?

            I’m trying to remember what tv serie I watched for the first time and I don’t remember (maybe Doctor Quinn, Bewitched or I Dream Of Jeannie –I really really loved the last one), but if I think about the most important in my teen years was Sabrina, The Teeange Witch. I remember I loved every single thing in this show: the house where she lived with her aunts, her workplaces, the characters (what kind of monster could not have fall in love with Harvey?) and the most bitter and loveable cat in the tv world, Salem. I’ll never be able to forget you, Sabrina <3.

Murphy, the sick person <3

            When I grew up I started to watch Nip/Tuck, one of the most sick and dramatic shows I’ve ever seen (others similar shows are Glee, American Horror Story or Scream Queens, all of them created by the same person, Ryan Murphy. Does he have a problem?). I always hoped that McNamara and Troy fell in love with each other but it only happened in a dream one of them had. Nip/Tuck caught my attention (beside its sickness) because it’s a representation of how stupid and empty can be american society at the same time we can find emotional scenes among characters. 

            I can’t end this post if I don’t mention others shows that have marked my life like Six Feet Under, Black Mirror, Breaking Bad,  Brothers and Sisters, Friends or Orange Is The New Black (there will be a lot that I forget now but it’s not because they are bad or boring u.u).

Me

                I’ve tried to transform myself in a green person but I’ve never been able to reach this way of life fully. It’s a debt I have with the world. Although, I try to treat well the environment with little things like not throwing things in the streets and reusing plastic bottles, even when I read that is disgusting because the bacteria grow inside of them.

                Last year, I lived with a friend who likes recycling. It was the time I was greener person in all my life. Sometimes it was tiring, but I knew it was a good thing so I kept trying, but now I don’t live with her, I don’t do many green things.

Copiapó River

                Despite, there is something that I try to keep save more than anything and that is water. I’m from Copiapo, a dry area where keeping safe water is part of the culture (although there is some people who don’t understand it yet). When I arrived to Santiago I realize that here there is not a special concern about waste of water. I always see how the water slips In parks and median strips for hours and hours. If this would happen in my city it would be like a crime and there were a lot of people trying to find the person responsible or the water tap to stop the horror.

Food

I try to think about my favorite food but I’m unable to choose. Although, I’m sure of one thing, and that is I’m a big fan of food cooked by my mom and my sister-in-law.  They live in my house of Copiapó and when I go they always wait for me with delicious dishes like Paella, Risotto, Gnocchi, Ravioli, stew or “carne a la olla”. Some of them are not too difficult to cook but others, like Gnocchi or Risotto are more complicated. I love all of them.

Me

Maybe I could say that my favorite food is lasagna. Almost all my friends are vegetarian or vegan, so I’m a lucky person because I’ve been able to eat lasagna in many versions that they cooked: with real meat (with my carnivorous family), vege meat or just with vegetables (with friends). But, if I think a little more, pizza comes to my mind too and I don’t know what my very favorite food is, it’s frustrating.

It could be easier to choose what food I hate: I hate eating pork. I don’t like this meat. how it tastes and looks is disagreeable. I think I hate it because when I was a child I remember I was eating pork and there in my dish was a big piece of grease and I don’t know how this disgusting thing arrives to my mouth. I vomited. 

My passion

                It’s not easy to me talking about my passion, because I’m not a very passionate person. Despite, there is some things that I really love to do, like read books, write stories, watch tv series or listen music. But I’m going to choose two of them and the most important to me is writing and reading.

                Literature is important to me because it allows me to know many worlds, styles, thoughts, etc, without moving out of my desk. It doesn’t mean that I love every book in the universe or that I think everyone in the planet has to love books because it’s the only way we’re going to be smarter and wiser. I hate those people who think reading makes them better than others that watch tv or something.

              

  I’ve went to some workshops about literature. The first I went was about poetry, then I apply to one of iniciation in narrative. Others workshops I’ve been are about stories, microstories and authors. Currently I belong to a workshop about gay literature where we read and talk about writers and poets like Beatriz Preciado, Néstor Perlongher, Pedro Lemebel, Severo Sarduy, Mauricio Wacquez, José Donoso and others. All of them known by rule-breaking works. When I write, they are my influences.

                Sadly, university and studies don’t let me to dedicate all the time I’d like to my passion, but I hope things change sometime.