ENGLISH LANGUAGE CHALLENGES

When I entered university last year, I was very afraid to enter English classes, in fact, it still happens to me. I will be honest, and far from happy to learn a new language that is too important worldwide, it causes me stress, impotence and shame. Every time I had to read or speak in class, it was a bad time, because my base in the subject was bad, I studied in a little school where I didn’t know anything about English until eighth year, So in high school I had a bad time and I was afraid to repeat those moments in university.

Luckily, in the FAU the variability of topics that are addressed in the classes and the methods are more pleasurable, making me dare to participate in the classes. In fact, I appreciate this instance of blogs, thanks to it I can tell you my historical grudge with English, but with faculty professors, it has been diminished and more enjoyable.

The hardest aspects of English for me are listening and pronunciation, so I try to pay attention when I listen to songs, especially from US female singers, as I really like pop, or sometimes when I’m alone, either in the shower or in my room, I start singing them. In my day to day I don´t use much the English, only for the class, sometimes to play Duolingo and very few times, to understand an article of architecture that is not in Spanish.

 

A photograph I like

 

For many years I have been trying to enter photography, obviously despite everything I still feel amateur because it is only a hobby. What I like to photograph are landscapes, especially the beach, the mountains and the sunsets, I also like to photograph the stars, but it is complicated because normally the nights are cold and to get a good shot I must stay away from the lights. I need to be completely in the dark.

I have many pictures, more than 400 are saved on my smartphone as favorites, but among all of them, one of the photographs I like the most is one from La Laguna del Maule, this place is 3,000 meters high in the middle of the mountain range and the picture shows the lagoon in the middle of summer contrasting with the mountains that contain it.

I took the photograph on January 6th of last year and the truth is that I have others that I like more, but this is special because it was shared by the Instagram page MauleAdicto, which has two thousand followers and where all its publications are made by too good photographers, so for me I felt a great happiness.

 My future work

My future work I would like it to be in an architecture office, since I was a child I have been struck by the constructions and the design of buildings, especially those works that seem monumental with more than 100 meters of height.

I also like it because I feel like I can make a change, because I’ve had to see what the government’s housing is like, the poor quality of life that thousands of Chileans are given, where their homes besides small ones lack dignity, And by that I mean such minimal situations, as being able to have a housing that resists the climate, that has good thermal insulation and allows to overcome the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and on the other hand, the privacy of noise (this is something that I hate) It can’t be that when a person goes to the bathroom on a first floor they hear themselves in the neighbors' house.

Obviously to achieve this dream I will have to work with public offices, in fact, an important goal in my life is to achieve work in the MOP. But for that I will need a lot of design skills and mathematical calculations to understand the structures.

Finally, I think that what most motivates me to work as an architect, is the pride of seeing your works built, it is not like other professions where your achievements are spontaneous or only moments, in architecture your achievement is a project that will be alive for at least 50 years.

 

My favorite movie 

My favorite movie is one that I watched about 9 months ago, but I was very surprised and loved. In general, I like comedies, action movies, horror films and fantasy movies (I have to admit it, I like cartoons too), however this movie doesn't belong to any of these themes and in fact, it is quite particular because it is a Chilean romantic movie.

The film is called ¨Los Fuertes¨ and embodies the story of two men, an Architect from Santiago and a Fisherman from Valdivia. These men are known in a small town next to Valdivia, called Niebla which is very conservative and produces suspense in this love story because the moments when they are together are fortuitous and rare, but that is so well accomplished, because they had the fear that they will be discovered and the film produces in the viewer an eroticism in this situation.

This film was recently released in April in our country online, which I regret very much because the pandemic limited their earnings a lot, and where the leading actors are the handsome Samuel González and Antonio Altamirano.

 

Holidays

The best holidays I’ve had are certainly the study tour I went to in 2018, it was a very special trip because I did it with my classmates, we were 41 students and 4 dads, We rented a bus from a company in the city of Santa Cruz and undertook a 3-day trip to Camboriú, in Brazil.

In the long drive we sang, drank and watched many movies, although I hated not being able to take a shower in so many days. When we finally arrived at the place, it was beautiful, a modern city made for tourism, the beach was of white sand and warm waters, not like the icy beaches of Chile. We spent 6 days in Brazil and started the return trip, which took another 3 days.

On the way back to Chile, we stopped in Paraguay to visit Ciudad del Este, a border city with a huge commercial focus, I remember that perfumes, technology and alcohol were very cheap (you had to be careful of counterfeit things), another thing I loved about the trip were cigarettes, the packs were too cheap and had many varieties!

China

 I would like to visit China someday, since I was little, I have been fascinated by modern cities, with many skyscrapers and spectacular architecture.

The first time I got to know more about this country was when I heard about two big chinese cities, I was watching a national geographic program, where they named the city of Shanghai and the autonomous city of Hong Kong, which are two of the largest technology poles in the world, in addition of being too crowded.

I would like to work in an architecture firm, one that builds landmark, record-breaking monumental works. Also I would like to visit the Chinese wall, meet the terracotta warriors, the largest dam in the world and the highest bridge in the world, the latter fascinates me because it is 570 meters high, that is almost 2 times the height of the Great Tower Santiago!

However, one thing I don’t like about the country is their conservative view they have on various social issues that we have more advanced in the West, such as the population’s view of homosexuality.