MY BLOG EXPERIENCE THIS SEMESTER.

We all have tons of things we want to say or express, but most of the time we don’t find the time or space to do so. It doesn’t have to be something deep and poetic… Sometimes it’s just words without a hidden meaning and we still feel the urge to share them with someone not even expecting an answer.

This blog and this class gave me both the time and the space to do so.

As I’ve said before, one of my biggest passions is writing and even so for the last year I haven’t been able to enjoy it as much as I would’ve like to. So having the instance to just sit and write this blogs has been refreshing.

Other positive thing I take from this experience is that it helped me to finally take a step forward into improve my English. Reading in this language is something that, by now, I’m used to… but writing was another whole new and frightening level for me. I had tried it before and stopped without been even a hundred words in. I guess I never felt prepared to keep going and it gave me anxiety to not be able to fully express myself. Here, I’m obligated to carry on with the blogs and after twelve of them I can see how much I’ve learnt. And now I also know I’m not going to stop after this class. Maybe I still don’t know the best way to say what I want to say, but practice will take me there.

From all the blogs I’ve written so far, three of them are the ones I’ve enjoyed the most.

The first one is called “WRITING”. The tittle is pretty self-explanatory so I won’t get into much detail; the reason why this blog is one of my favorites is because it was the very first one I wrote in this blog.

Then we have “THE PERKS OF BEING BORED” –again, the title explains itself–. That blog contains some of the thoughts I’d had for the longest time. You know when something finds its way into your head and won’t leave? Well, that’s what that blog is. Having the opportunity to express all I had to say about that topic was great.

Finally, we have “SHUT YOUR QUIZNAK!”. I remember being so angry while I wrote this blog and now, going back to read it, it’s just funny. This blog helped me to explode in a safe way. I literally threw up all the words that came to my mind without even minding if the made sense at all. The only thing that mattered was to get all that rage out of my system. Here I leave you a graphic description of me writing SYQ. 

Now, because not everything can be all sweets and rainbows, there was one blog that I both didn’t enjoy as much as the rest and that I had a hard time trying to write. “A SPECIAL MEAL” wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. It was just so… boring to write about it? And that’s probably because I haven’t had any big meals in my life? Or maybe I just don’t see them special? So stared cracking my head in search of something interesting to write about and still… nothing. The consequence of it? The shortest blog I’ve ever written.  

Well, we are coming to the end of this blog. But I can’t finish it before comenting with you a blog of one of my classmates I liked. For me what does the job is “A FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH” from Ceci’s blog. There are not many words, but she still is able to capture all the meaning her photo has in two paragraphes. I really enjoyed it!

Okay, I guess there’s not much more to say? If you made it this far in my blog, or if you just read only one of them, or the half of one… still, thanks for your time.

See you soon!

A CITY YOU WOULD LIKE TO VISIT

For how I see it, this is like when you go to an ice cream shop and the guy behind the counter asks you whether you want vanilla or chocolate flavor. I mean, you don’t pick between the two of them… you take both. Why only choose one when you have more options?

This is a rule that applies for many things in my life. I don’t have one favorite on anything, but a group of favorites. This is why I don’t have one city I would like to go, but many of them. So right now you are putting me in a difficult situation.

The ones that have been with me since I understood the world was a lot bigger than my house and backyard are the ones everyone have in mind: Paris, Roma, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, New York and London.

Then, while growing up, I started getting more into anime and manga so Tokyo (and other places from Japan) became an option. And now, because I’ve been introduced into K-pop since last moth Seoul is a strong choice. But giving the last two haven’t been with me for so long, I’ll go with something different.

The city (one of them) I’m dying to go to is Salisbury, England. The main reason is because of the setting that place puts you in, like if you were living in another era. I love that it puts you right into the history, I love that it has green places, and I love that is far away from Chile.

If I ever get the chance to go, I think the first thing I would like to do is get lost and not remember the way back to where I’m staying. And then just walk, and walk, and discover every little corner of this place. But, in order to do this, I would like to do it alone… Not because I don’t want my family with me, but because I feel would be a nice place to be just with me.

A SPECIAL MEAL

The first thing I remember about this meal is that there wasn’t enough space to sit comfortably. Shoulders brushing and hitting each other, legs fighting for a good spot, all of us struggling to move at all.

The food wasn’t that good either. We had prepared homemade pizza, which by the time we organized the meal seem to be a good idea. What we didn’t expect was that the person in charge of cooking the thing would be distracted by watching kitten videos on YouTube (in her defense, she’s a cat lover). So instead of a delicious pizza we ended up eating a hard-dark-brown pizza mass with liquid cheese and dehydrated tomatoes. I know, horrible.

Anyways, as you can already deduce, what made this meal special for me –and for everyone else, I hope– wasn’t the food or the place, but the situation. It was December of 2015, the last day of school, and as every other year at my school all classes had to organize a meal and have it in the playground. The called it “Community Breakfast”, and usually the only ones excited about it were the teachers. This year, however, we were too. It was our last Community Breakfast given that the next year we’d graduate from school on November.

For the first time in many years, my class behaved as a unit. Suddenly we were all okay with each other. Not bad feelings, or groups. Just III°C having a great time in this instance for the last time. We took a bunch of pictures, enjoyed live music from students of other years and had a lot of fun!

A FRIEND

I’ve always been a shy person. It’s not easy for me to connect with people given that most of the time when someone tries to get close to me I shut myself in. And not because I want to, but because I don’t know how to respond. A few years ago I used to panic every time a classmate would start to talk to me. It gave me anxiety the whole social aspect of life.

And of course, people weren’t patient enough to give me the time to process how to say “Hi” back. After all, it’s understandable.

So for a long time in my life I just had classmates and neighbors. It wasn’t a situation I liked, but deep down I knew I was living it because I had chosen it. Remember how a few blogs back I talked how I loved my comfort zone? Well, that love also brought consequences to me.

Being alone at home, with your room and all your stuff, it’s a lot easier than being alone at school, where everyone has a group. Breaks were the worst. Because it wasn’t only being alone (again, kind of by own choice) but also being ashamed of it. So, instead of staying in the classroom I always preferred go to the library. If anything good could’ve came out of this time was that it developed my love for reading. But that’s another story for another blog.

This kept happening up until my first year of high school. Until I met her. No, I’m not talking about my friend yet, that’ll come later. I’m talking about my new headmaster, Mrs. Berta. She was the strictest teacher I’ve known so far. She hated all that could eventually cause disorder in the class and fought against indiscipline. Not in a Dursley kind of way, but more in a I-want-the-best-for-you way. I will always remember the first thing she said to us when she walked through the door the first day: “If I find any of you chewing gum in class I myself will stick it in your hair”.

Before that year, anyone would sit wherever they wanted to. This, of course, caused trouble to teachers because of the typical group of friends who would sit in the back of the classroom and talk the entire time. Surely Mrs. Berta was not okay with this. She made a scheme detailing who would sit with who, and being deaf to all the protests, she made us write our names and stick them to the tables. She also told all our teachers that if the saw someone who wasn’t in their place all they had to do was talk to her, and that was a very dangerous thing to happen so everyone stood in their places for the rest of the year. This is how I met my friend. Or at least one of them.

The first thing you need to know about Antonia is that she likes to talk. Like, really likes to talk. And with Mrs. Berta’s new order, she had found herself sitting next to Alexander Lizana. Now, he was… something. He was the kind of person you didn’t talk to because you knew nothing good could come out of it. Really prideful and not funny at all, Alexander was also alone most of the time because he chose to. So when Antonia got tired of hearing about how much Alexander knew about history, and how his grades where almost the best of the class (Antonia’s were better), she decided to start talking to the next person close to her. Me.

But I was still shy. Whenever she tried to start a conversation I would take it to a dead end, not even pretending to. I was so sure it would go just as the other times someone tried to talk to me. Then again, Antonia really likes to talk, and she’s not afraid to talk to new people. So she kept trying to have a conversation that lasted more than one minute with me, and in all that time I got use to her. Not that she made me the most social person there is to find on Earth, but without noticing she gave me the space I needed to react.

As the weeks went by, it got easier for me to keep up with the small talks. I learned that she loved anime and that I loved it too. I also learned about her life, and that even when she seemed happy all the time, harsh things had happened to her. I learned that she didn’t like to cry in front of people, not even in front of me. I learned how much of a dork she was. I learned I was one too.

And because of her, I meet my other good friend, Daniela. She was our new classmate that same year, and Antonia had been talking a lot to her (shocking, I know). She introduced us. Daniela was also a dork. I think that, between other things, was what made us connect. And also the fact that in the breaks we would play “Rock, paper, scissors, truth”. With the passage of a few months we knew a lot about each other. But it wasn’t scary for me at all, because I trusted them.

Up until this day we are in touch. In fact, this weekend we are going to meet to… I don’t know what we will do yet… I think we’ll improvise something.

Anyways, that’s how I met my two best friends!

SHUT YOUR QUIZNAK!

To my studio headmaster for inspiring this blog. Thank you so much!

I believe there are two types of person in this world. The ones that implode, and the ones that explode. I myself am a little of both.

The reason why I’m starting like this the blog is because the other day I lived an explode situation, but I had to keep my mouth shut. So this free post is the perfect place to say all I didn’t and also talk about a topic I’m interested in.

Do you know that awful feeling when you get mad at something and the second you decide to show it everyone around you is saying “It’s not such a big deal!” or “Calm down!”? And while that doesn’t help and just puts you more on edge, you know it is not a big deal, that what made you angry in the first place was something so small, so tiny… but still powerful enough? How I see it, it doesn’t matter what the size of the trigger is but where the provocation is aiming. If it hits the right target, then you’ll be getting yourself into an explode situation.

So the other day we had to present a model. Once we put everything in order, the teachers asked us to leave the room so they could correct what we had brought. A group went to Parque San Borja, but a friend and I decided to instead go to the library because she had to read some text for a class and I just wasn’t feeling like being social at all that day. She took what she had to read, I grabbed my book and we were off to the library. One hour passed until we headed back to the classroom.

Before I continue with the story, I’ll put nicknames to the two professors who participate. The first one will be Paul and the second will be Mrs. Dizzi.

I was walking through the chairs, minding my own business when one of my teachers —Paul— came to me to ask me what I was reading. I showed him the cover of the book in which you could read “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”. The moment his eyes landed on the title his entire facial expression changed from neutral to a grimace that could easily be read as a “Really? You are reading that?” He was judging me in front of my face and wasn’t even being sneaky about it. It was literally as if he had just eaten a lemon. 

Before I could say something to him my headmaster —Mrs. Dizzi— saw us talking and asked what was happening. Paul said “She is reading Harry Potter”

Now, I’ll admit that I was expecting more support from Mrs. Dizzy. After all, and because of her age, she was there when the Harry Potter fever expanded twenty years ago. Or maybe indifference at all. But no. What she responded could be translated as: “Aw, you little girl. Aren’t those books for kids?”

In that moment I could feel the rage building up in my chest. It took all my self-control not to tell her to shut her quiznak (sorry not sorry for the VLD reference). I mean, if you are going to say things like that save us the time and just stay quiet. The worst part was that she didn’t have an argument, but she still said it as if she was right.

“But why you think is a book for kids?”

“Because it is”

I mean… no! You can’t judge me for free without at least a reason behind. Maybe with you reading this, you are not getting the full experience, but I swear she was not far from telling me some bullshit as “Don’t you think you are a little too old to be reading kid’s books?”

Listen, Mrs. Dizzi. First of all, all those twelve-year-old kids who read HP when it first came out are now thirty-two years old and guess what? They still read the series! And even if they didn’t, in what universe is your business what I do and don’t read?

I know a lot of people are right now thinking: “Geez, you are being such a Drama Queen about this!” But I’m not. It actually makes me really angry when someone criticizes you for something you like!

And this happens with everything. The moment you like something different people will make sure to find a way to make you uncomfortable about it as if you shouldn’t because almost anyone else does.

So next time you come to me to ask me about what I’m reading and I tell them any random book title, I really hope if you get any comment you feel you need to say, you’ll just eat it up because I’m not interested at all in hearing you. Period.

MOVIDIC TO PORT!

There are many ways I could’ve started this post. “Let me tell about the time I went to…”, “It was a sunny day when I…”, “On my last holiday my parents and I…”. Those are only a few examples of an infinite list. 

Now, the reason why I refuse using any of this lines is that I believe the bad luck that has kept me company since I was 0 years old has another use aside making my life miserable; it also gives me the opportunity of telling good stories. Interesting for some and made up for others, but still good.

So, instead of saying “Let me tell you about the time I went to Isla Damas” I will say “Let me tell you about the time a whale's tail almost sinks the boat where I was"

It happened in that moment when you think: “This day was amazing and nothing can ruin it”. But before we get to that part, let’s put some context to all this.

It was 2015 and summer was about to be over. By the time it would happen I would be starting my last year at school, which meant by next January I would be worried picking a career and getting into college. With that in mind, my parents decided now was the time to go to a unique place. And since we were staying at Serena, there were options. After almost a week considering all of them, we decided we’d go to Isla Damas. We thought it’d be fun and beautiful to see. Once we actually reached the place, it definitely didn’t disappoint.

We were almost an hour and a half surrounded only by sea. There was no land to be found in the horizon, although that could be explained by the thick fog around the boat. We couldn’t see past our noses! Although this didn’t seem to bother the “captain”. He kept making his way to Isla Damas, oblivious of the silent panic among the passengers.

After long minutes of wiggling movement and my mother’s grip strangling my hand, we finally reached port. And the moment I stood out of the boat and took in what I had in front of me I knew the travel had been worth it.

Isla Damas is like a little paradise within Chile. A place you would hope to find in Center America or Europe. White sand and turquoise water were welcoming us. There were no many people, so it wasn’t difficult to find a free spot. Sadly, because of the bad weather, we couldn’t go into the water, but being there just sitting with the salty air refreshing our faces was enough. We also learned about the history of the island and what had given it its name. Apparently, and according to what the captain of the boat had told us, if you saw the island’s mountains from the distance, you would be able to make out the profile of three ladies.

After an hour of being there, enjoying ourselves we were told we had to leave because other people were arriving at the island. This was a method to not overcrowd the place. So we took all our stuff, took some last pictures and went back to the boat.

The trip back to the continent wasn’t better than the one we took to get to Isla Damas. If it could’ve been possible, the fog had gone thicker and the temperature had dropped. My dad and I tried to remain calm for my mother’s sake. She looked like fainting at any second. The same despise I feel for highs she feels for water of any kind. So being in the middle of the sea, in this small boat with no coast near wasn’t exactly her cup of tea.

Now, if it would’ve been any other day or if the weather would’ve been any different, we definitely could’ve seen it coming. But again, with the fog and everything even have a clear view of our noses was a hard thing to do, let alone an animal under the ocean. Anyway, by the time one of us spotted the creature, it was too late. This huge tail had appeared out of nowhere. We didn’t have time to let out a scream when SPLASH! it had submerged to the water in two seconds time, rubbing the side of the bout.

Then the Captain broke into laugh saying: “You’re lucky! That almost never happens” Just a side look at the rest of the passenger and you would be able to tell no one shared that opinion.

Long story short, we were back at the continent with no more delays. My mom didn’t let go of my arm until we were far away from the sea and made me promise her almost a hundred times I would never try something like that ever again.

So yeah. That’s the story about how we met this beautiful Landmark at Chile and got traumatized on the same day! 

A HOLIDAY

One of the best holidays I’ve had so far started with me having a panic attack. I know how that sounds, but believe me. This story does make sense once you hear all of it.

Now, to put some context before anything, you need to know two things about me.

One, I’m a big chicken when it comes to try new things. I love my comfort zone. It keeps me warm and safe and sound. Why on earth would I want to leave it? I know what people say about “trying new things” and “getting life experiences”. But to be fair, my sense of adventure (even though I would like to think otherwise) is none; or maybe it’s there, but it’s been asleep for the past eighteen years and I have no problems with it staying that way.

Second thing you need to know about me: I despise highs. It’s not just fear, or respect, but hate. Of course I can deal with common highs as in two-floor-distance-from-the-ground highs, even three-floors sometimes. I mean, I’m not that of a chicken, you know? My problem comes with four floors and more. Again, I know what people say about the beautiful views you can get, and the feeling of freedom, and the postcards, and blah, blah, blah. But here is my deal; how can you be focusing in all those “wonderful” things when you are in a constantly danger of a free fall? Once a friend told me: “Well, you won’t pass from the ground” and that’s the entire point! If I fall, I know there’s something awaiting for me in the bottom. Something cold, and hard. Something that will hurt. I could die! And no, I’m not being dramatic. It can happen, it has happened.

Anyways, after this quick Monica 101, you are probably guessing most part of the story. Just imagine how I felt when my parents told me we were going to Valdivia in a freaking plane! It was like it they would’ve thrown me out of my beloved comfort zone, chosen one of my biggest fears, mixed it all together and put it in a card that read “Happy Holiday!” Well, it didn’t just felt like that, it was exactly that! Except for the card part, that was a metaphor, but the rest was true.

So we packed all the things we will be needing (while I was still trying to convince my dad that a car trip of seven hours couldn’t be that bad and failing at the same time), got ourselves into my uncle’s van and drove all the way to the airport. By that time all the hopes of changing my parent’s mind where lost, buried, and burned. Luckily, up until the moment my uncle parked, I was feeling fine. Not spectacular, but fine.

Then I got out of the van.

That’s how this story starts. Yep, that’s the panic attack. Told you it made sense, although it really didn’t? Even I can see how stupid it was to be all shaky and crying in front of so many people from so many places. I mean, I hadn’t even seen a plane taking off or anything. It would’ve made much more sense for the panic attack to come once I was actually inside the plane, not out! Funny thing, I didn’t feel scared for the rest of the trip. Definitely nervous, but it was a level I could handle. I even sat next to the window!

The next hours came and went. I got some reading done, took a bunch of pictures and slept a little. This situation did not change my relationship with highs. I still hate them. But it taught me there’s some of it I can work with.

Ok! So, after this long, long intro (sorry not sorry) I can finally talk to you about my holiday.

Being in Valdivia for me was like being in an entire different world all together, and I’m not exaggerating. I think this impact on me was because I’ve lived my entire life in Santiago and a have the vivid image of concrete when I think of it. The image of smog, of River Mapocho being almost dry. So when I get to this place, whit green all over it, with this huge and beautiful central river, I’m most definitely stunned. Even the people were great! If you asked someone “Where is X Street?” they didn’t look at you like if you were going to rob them or something. They replied you politely “This is here, and that is there”.

Other reason why I enjoyed being there so much was because of the different backgrounds you could find. You had forest on one side, beach on the other and the city in between, like a perfect popurri of everything.  We met the historical Fort Niebla, and bought a tour to the islands Corral and Mancera. If I’m remembering correctly, we stayed for two weeks, so we had enough time to do everything we wanted.

And yeah… that’s my favorite holiday so far.

PS: I know I wrote a lot of words, but in my defense the instructions said “At least 250 words”… they didn’t include the maximum and I tend to take instructions literally… so yeah…