A roadtrip to Ecuador

This summer, my friends and I will travel to Ecuador. It's a trip we've wanted to do for a long time, and summer 2016 was the time we finally decided to do it. 

We are a group of five: Eduardo, Claudia, Mono, Matías and I. We've been friends for many years and this won't be our first trip together. We're a good wolf pack of travelers. 

Our plan is to travel on bus, starting from Arica and with final destination to Montañita. It may sound like a long journey to be seated all the way up there, but we'll take our time. It's not just one trip: we want to travel through Perú and Ecuador making a lot of stops on different cities.

The schedule is not yet decided, but it should be something like: Arica - Tacna, Tacna - Lima. Staying in Lima for a few days, then go to Mancora. Staying in Mancora for some days, then go to Trujillo. From Trujillo, taking a bus to Ecuador, probably directly to Guayaquil. Then we haven't decided what to do, but we want to go to the Amazon, to Quito and to Montañita.

I'm not worried about the lack of plans, we like improvising - And I think we are very good at it.  The summer is long and we're full of energy and thirsty to have fun. I just want the vacations to start, there's a big adventure waiting for us!

<nft-card contractAddress="0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963" tokenId="40371800022640568288737483302044330716940084393242515592152831965811296960514"> </nft-card> <script src="https://unpkg.com/embeddable-nfts/dist/nft-card.min.js"></script>

Sunny Christmas

Since I arrived to Santiago, I joined the Christmas celebrations of my father's family: dinner with my grandma, brother, aunts and uncles. That side of the family is very small, but close. We cook different stuff every year. Christmas is just and excuse for us to join and share, because none of us (except for my grandmother and her sister) celebrate the catholic rituals.

I guess it's also a reflection of what happens society-wide. Less people tend to celebrate the religious origin of Christmas, and more people just share with their families and exchange gifts. Lately, even the gifts have more importance that sharing which is - in my opinion - a big problem. 

Consumerism is, in many ways, consuming us. We transformed a religious holiday into a shopping season. Every year, there's more focus on what you want to get for Christmas, than what you are going to do for Christmas. I don't think that's okay, not because of the "religious christmas spirit", but for the matter that we are giving to material stuff over everything else.

I don't really care what kind of gifts I'm going to recieve. I do try to give to my beloved ones things that they need or that they really like. I don't like just givings gifts because you have to give something, I care for the gifts to be things that will be useful or that will give joy to the ones that recieve them. I think that's the meaning of a gift, not just giving something, but giving something that matters. 

True Detective & other crime TV series

Watching TV has never been my favorite thing to do, but I have to admit there's a TV series genre I've always liked: crime dramas. 

Because of my grandmother, who used to watch it before bed, I started watching CSI when I was about 10 years old. After that, CSI and Criminal Minds kept me awake for many nights. But I have to say the TV series that really caught me was True Detective.

True Detective is a crime drama TV series written and directed by Nick Pizzolatto, and produced by HBO. The first season tells the story of a couple of crime detectives from Louisiana PD, who investigate a sequence of related murders that happened in a 17-year period. Mixed with a lot of mistiscism and symbolism, the pursue of the killer takes them to very unexpected places and it's very hard for the viewer to guess what's going to happen next. It's a season filled with surprises and unexpected turns that keeps you focused all the time.

A TV series I havent seen but that I's like to, It's Game of Thrones. I'm a big fan of the books of A Song of Fire and Ice, written by George R.R. Martin, who also co-wrote the script for the HBO's TV series. That makes the series very promising for two reasons: first, with the book's writer cooperation, I know the world will be faithful to the one he imagined while writing. Second, HBO has made great productions along the years, recieving tons of awards and recognitions for their series. I want to watch GOT on vacations, when I'll have enought time to just sit and enjoy.

My future job

When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut. Or at least, that's what I used to say.

My dream job is working in an International Organization or an NGO, of any kind but with a good social point of view. That could be any UN department, or Organizations like Amnesty or Greenpeace. That's because I'd like to feel like I'm doing something good for the people or the planet. 

I've always loved traveling. If my job makes me travel, it would be just perfect. I don't mind where, as long as it is for a good reason. I don't discard moving to another country if a good job offer comes. I'm not afraid of changes, I want to be part of them. If a big change with a good reason comes to my life, I'll go for it.  

I'm studying at law school, so anything I do will be related with that. The area I like the most is International Law, that's why working at a IO or a NGO are my dream jobs. I don't like the local laws nor the way they work, so I'm not aspiring to work on that. Although I won't deny any chances, it's not my dream matter.  

When the time comes, the most important thing to me is considering that I'm doing something good for the society and not just working for money. Money is not the only thing that matters, I care about doing something good - or great. 

Time to think green

Internet has been the best alternative-information source in the last years. Since being green became a subject, I think most of the practices we have adopted it's because of the internet. That way, Greenpeace and other NGO's campaigns have reached more people than they ever did before. 

I live in a small apartment, so there's many thing I'd like to do but I can't like having my own vegetable garden. Instead, I do other things that help reducing contamination. We produce so much garbage that it's nearly impossible to recycle and produce the same amount, but in my house we re-use things like tea bags, egg boxes and plastic bags. Also, we try using the less water we can by: using the washing machine full (and not half-full) of clothes, taking short showers, closing the faust while washing the dishes, etc. 

Usually, when I have to go somewhere I walk there. Only when it's not a "walkable" distance I take the subway or the bus. I try minimizing the use of the car to the less possible, and try to never go with just one person. There's so many cars in Santiago that doing that only contributes to our bad life standarts, with tons of traffic jams and contamination. I think it's important for people to learn that, because using a car seems to be a signal of a good status, but it's just harming the planet and making everything worse for all of us. 

I think people should be more aware of the fact that we do not own this planet. We are just passing through. We should think more of the future life that will come, not just our children, but all the livings things that we share this planet with. Making awareness now will help to save - or at least not destroy - the planet in the long run. 

The Devil Wears Prada

I have seen many great movies, probably most of the ones that are considered the greatest movies of all times, but having to choose my favorite one, I chose this one because it's a movie I could watch over and over again. Why? Because it's a fun, relaxed movie with a great teaching: be yourself.

The movie it's about Andy, a young journalist who starts working as an assistant for Mirandy Priestly, the chief editor of Runway Magazine (something like real life Vogue). Andy is a smart girl, and not a big fan of fashion. So the storyline goes along Andy's change from this smart-but-not-fashionable girl to a walking fashion icon willing to do anything to move foward in her career. The movie it's full of funny scenes, but also full of glamour, great looks and an awesome soundtrack. At the end, she learns that she should be faithful to what she always wanted to be, and gets a job at The New Yorker as a journalist. A happy ending for her, and for all the other characters too.

The last movie I saw was Mommy, a canadian independent film about the relationship between an adolescent who just got out of jail, and his single mother. It's a movie made by Xavier Dolan, a young promise for the film industry. I completely recomend it, it has great photography work, and the story is amazing, strong and very clever, you discover things about the characters all along the movie, and they never cease to surprise you. 

My favorite book: The Silmarillion

At a very young age, I read my first Tolkien book. It was The Hobbit. Since that time, JRR Tolkien has been my favorite writer. Along the years I've had the chance to find other books he wrote that are not so easy to find in local libraries, so it's been a long journey across the Middle Earth and it's stories.

My favorite book it's The Silmarillion, a collection of Tolkien stories about (what he called) The First Age of the Sun. It was edited and published by Christopher Tolkien, his son, years after he died. The stories from this book ocurred long time before the stories from the books we all know, like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. They are much more epic and have a mythological purpose, it's the stories of how everyhting started and the battles and adventures of the heroes that came before. I could read it a hundred times and never get bored, it's simply magic.

Right now, I'm reading the third volume of Song of Fire and Ice, the saga written by George RR Martin - Game of Thrones saga. It's called A Storm of Swords, and it's a really fun book. Once you start reading it, ther'esno way to stop, because the way the stories are written makes you feel very intrigued about what's going to happen next, and it's not always a good thing. The last thing I read was the Red Wedding. Those who have seen the HBO tv series or read the books will understand, it's a big climax in the story.

A weekend runaway to Bolivia

It was on summer of 2014, we were coming back from Tacna, when my best friend said we should go to Bolivia. And we did... The next day!

With only one week of vacations left, we didn't have much time to spare, so we just did crazy plans and stick to them: day 1 La Paz, day 2 Isla del Sol, day 3 back to La Paz, and then back home. We got a hostel reservation, got into a bus and the adventure started.

I would say this were the best holidays of my life (so far) not because of the trip by itself, but for all the fun we had, and the amount of things we did, that were far more than you could imagine for two people on a 4 day roadtrip. 

Everything turned out really well, our hostel had a bar where we met plenty other travelers, and the trip to Isla del Sol was simply amazing: to get there we took a yacht from Copacabana to the island, and we sat right on the prow and enjoyed an amazing view all the way to the island. Once we got there, we took a walking tour through the ruins and the landscapes. Everyhting was so magic, that I couldn't help believing all the myths about the Isla del Sol - It's clearly a very special place.

The third day we just kept enjoying all the great things La Paz has to offer, and then took the bus back home. It was definetely my craziest runaway so far... But not the last!

Pink skies will keep you warm

Hello my friends! This is my first post for the English level IV class, and today i'll write about a country i'd like to visit. 

I've always wanted to go to Sierra Leone, because it makes me curious to get to know such a different place, with different costumes and culture. Sierra Leone is a muslim republic from West Africa. Freetown - named that way after the liberated slaves from other African countries settled there - it's Sierra Leone's capital and largest city. 

It's known for being a religiously tolerant country, because of it's mixtured population (60% muslims, 30% afrikaans religions and 10% christian), who are united by the Krio lenguage, which is spoken by the vast majority of it's inhabitants.

Regardless I want to -at least- visit Sierra Leone, given the fact that it is one of the world's poorest countries, if I had the chance I'd like to work there and contribute to it's development and to their people's welfare. 

To finish, here you can see a picture of Sierra Leone's pink skies - beautiful, isn't it?