its the final countdown

i did well on today's exercises, but i had already done most of them back when i messed up class' instructions in november. I made a mistake in the first listening exercise, because i didn't really get the difference in pronunciation between three and tree, and i also got some reading comprehension questions wrong because i didn't pay much attention to the text. My forte is definitely vocabulary, and maybe even those text-with-gaps kinda exercises.

Also im pretty confident in my speaking skills, even though i realize i have an accent and take weird pauses in between words. I can still get my point across if i want to, so it's ok.

did someone say nerd

Im not really reading any book at the moment, because usually when i pick one up i tend to keep going until it's finished, and that's just not very doable while in university. I read a lot of short things online, like articles or essays on many topics, but nothing that might take up more than 30 minutes.

I guess the only thing i read constantly are comics, more specifically webcomics. I love illustration and design and there are many artists whose works i've followed for years. Right now the comics i'm following that update most frequently would be Prague Race, Shoot Around, Witchy, and Knights Errant, by Petra Nordlund, Suspu, Ariel Ries and Jenn Doyle respectively. These four comics are pretty different from one another, the first being about a group of friends that crosses over to a weird fantasy world, the second about a team of female basketball players and their coach caught in the zombie apocalypse, the third about a young witch that hates the system she's forced to be a part of, and the fourth about a soldier and his prisoner plotting against the margrave of their province. Since the authors make these on their own there's about one to three pages uploaded a week, so it doesn't take much time to keep up with the stories, but i'm usually finding new comics to read and i don't let go until i complete them, so actually i still end up using a lot of my free time on that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

all around me are familiar faces worn out places

There are many places i like in this city, but none that i feel particularly strong about. I mean, i love many places, like plaza de maipú, plaza de armas, the eurocentro, rosas street, balmaceda arte joven, the la moneda cultural center, the diana games from merced, etc. but it's not as if any of those is my favorite place, i mean, some of those i don't even frequent. What i like about places in general is when they have distinct athmopsheres, like when you can tell it's a lived-in place, where people don't only work or sleep, but enjoy. This is something that usually happens in places that work as hubs for people in their free time, because you can see what they do for leisure and how they interact with the environment, and even after the people are gone you can still feel like, the pulsations of the place? i don't know. On the other hand, I also like places that are derelict, and have been reclaimed by everyone and no one. Near my current home there are many places like this: empty lots, abandoned buisness, half-demolished stores (recently a completely burnt one!) and half-built streets full of rubble,  and all of these spaces have been tagged and painted by street artists, or used by kid skater gangs and the like. I feel like it might sound like i live in a wasteland, but it's not like that, because despite that all my neighbourhood is always brimming with people, because it's a really commercial area. I guess that's what i like about those places, that even when everything moves so fast and there is so much people, the "abandoned" places remain calm, but not  lonely because they are full of reminders of the people who do reclaim them.

(i answered only about 2 questions, sorry teach :'))

´・ᴗ・`

there are a lot of things that make me happy, but speaking of today, i guess what made me the happiest was the lunch at the arts' canteen. today the menu was grilled porkchops with brown rice and mushrooms, and a side dish of chilean salad with purple onion and potatoes, with panqueques with jam for dessert. it was so good.... i lied in the ground for about 20 minutes afterwards thinking just about how great that lunch was. plus the weather was really nice while under shadow so it was all nice. it made me happy because i was famished and even if i hadn't been, food tends to have that effect on me when it tastes good (nice weather also has that effect although i usually prefer cooler days). maybe it's like an instinctual response to being fed? i don't know, but a nice flavor always makes me happy. in this case tho, i'm also happy because the arts' canteen has a pretty good money-to-food ratio.like, i got all that stuff for 2 lucas (plus a beverage and bread) and it was all tasty, while on the icei canteen it's slightly more expensive and way less savory. I think i found out about the canteen's quality about 2 or 3 months ago, and i haven't looked back.  some other lunches from that canteen that have made me really happy are: beef cazuela, grilled zucchini, stuffed potatoes with tomaticán and the always present mote con huesillo for dessert. i suppose happiness is in the small things.

a link within a link

I did pretty well on the assigned exercices, i don't think i had any trouble with them.

However what i did mess up were the class instructions, because i had headphones on when Teach told us we didn't need to do ALL the exercices in the links :') In my defense, I had put on my headphones at the beginning of the activity because the class was kinda noisy and it distracted me.

Some of the other exercices were kinda tricky tho, because the reading material wasn't too engaging and some questions were purposefully misleading. 

shes beauty shes grace

After much thought about the people i admire i've chosen an artist whose field might not seem that deep or revolutionary, but it actually is. Not in the convoluted way of academia or fundamentally politic works, but in how it relates to their intended audience, and it how it shapes the worldviews of children (should we like it or not). This author in particular promotes equality, kindness and self-expression through her art, she's Rebecca Sugar, the first woman to ever create and direct an animated show on tv (namely on cartoon network). Her show is called Steven Universe, and it currently has 2 seasons and has another one already in the making, and since it's premiere in 2013 the show has constantly broken many unspoken rules of mainstream child's media. It was the first kid's show to include an openly lesbian couple who actually get to kiss on screen, the first on CN to portray a boy wearing a dress without making him the butt of a joke, it has the most non-white characters of any american kid-aimed show on tv right now, and it features the most diverse cast of female characters I can think of in children's media. All of this comes from the efforts of Rebecca, who has said on multiple occasions that she strives to be as authentic as possible with her show, and to make something she had needed as a kid. 

I believe mainstream media tends to be so toxic, and so formative in today's society that an artist who strives to make something a little more genuine and kind is a huge deal. I first learnes about rebecca from her work in another CN show, Adventure Time, where she story boarded and composed songs for some of the best episodes of the series. I was a fan of her episodes because they always stood out because of how heartfelt they seemed. When she left the AT crew in 2012 I was eager to see what her next project would be and she did not disappoint. 

this is a short film she made while still a student!

shower me in gifts, thanks

ok so this is just creepy because just the other day i had been thinking like "what if we had to write about the best present we've received in the english blog". I literally sat in my bed thinking what would i write if the question ever came up and now im like ???? ?? ? ? ? the good part is i already have my answer but ??????????????

At the time, my conclusion was that the best present i had ever received was one from about three years ago on my birthday. I was still at high school at the time, and since im a June child my birthday fell right in the peak of the student mobilization. The school was in strike at the time, and that particular day there was an assembly, then votes, then the public counting of the votes. Everything was a little chaotic, and since i was part of the student council I didn't really got to hang with my friends much, but one of them showed up at the assembly and gave me a cute tote bag with a medium sized cardboard box inside of it, which was decorated with a puffy ribbon made out of newspaper and the face of piñera glued into it. Right from the start everything about the gist was great, but she told me not to open it right there, because she doesn't like to see people reacting to her presents. So i waited until the day relaxed a little, and when i was having lunch with the rest of the student council i opened the box, and the fist thing i saw was a HUGE pair of like, anime eyes. She had gotten me a little mamegotchi plushie, which is the main mascot you can get when playing with tamagotchis, and at the time it was a really nice gesture because even tho i didn't talk much about my love for them, i drew a lot of those little guys in class, and apparently she had noticed and found the toy while thrifting in bandera! But it wasn't the only thing, and when i pulled out the plushie there was a tupperware under it, so i lifted it as well and realized it was full of little pink butts (i love butts as a concept), which was great. Turned out they were cookies, so i found myself with a handful of butter-flavored edible pink butts. Finally, i pulled out a square of paper form the box, but before i could even register what it was, something glued to the bottom of it caught my attention. It was like, a bust of Willy sabor from the doña carne ads, but the face had been folded over itself, so his eyes were directly above his big, grinning mouth, and his catchphrase "Su vecina mas rica" had been replaced with "Feliz cumpleanos feñita". I've always hated everything about willy sabor as a character so obviously my friend's gesture was completely sweet and heartwarming.

Right now, the mamegotchi rests atop of my shelf with an assortment of marine themed plushies, the paper rectangle turned out to be a drawing that's now taped into my dresser, the willy sabor cutout is pinned to my cork board, and the cookies are in their rightful place among the fallen.