Ship of Fools

“J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles

Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur:

- Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles,

Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur?”

Le Bateau Ivre, Rimbaud

Spaceship Earth 2020 feels like a vast, shattered ship of fools adrift on the universal, viral flood.

The captains of industry, chasing wealth, lost sight of love, confused the means with the ends and sailed the Titanic to the brink of their flat earth.

And who needs jesters when we have venal clowns posing as leaders, fiddling on the decks, orange faces basking in the glow of the conflagration?

And the rest of us stand aghast, frozen witnesses to a slow motion shipwreck on the poisoned sea of stories.

We are drowning in a crisis not just physical but existential and spiritual – it makes me wonder, what is it that the Master Bug can teach us?

I say just for a moment we let go of our clumsy bodies, our little aches and pains, our personal stories, our precious pet theories and collective narratives - look where they have led us! 

Sinking, sinking, letting go of all that ballast, sinking to the vast, spacious rock bottom…

And interrogating the silence, with no attachment to even the possibility of answers…

“What really matters?”

“What is truly important, here and now?”

Or simply asking each of us our own question, the one that arises when we realize this breath might be our last…

…

If an answer comes, we can open fully to it. 

If none comes, we can be one with the silence, maybe that is itself an answer…

…

And then feeling the pull of the surface, rising like a bubble of air, one amongst many, all slowly rising, rising, crystalizing shared insights…

And what do we find but a million lightboats: climb aboard, we all have work to do! 

Every vessel’s sodden crew sets to, collecting the rains of blessing, planting seed-pearls tugged from the depths, incubating dreams to birth a new world. 

A shared purpose and co-created vision, mutual compassion born of suffering, irreverent humour… all these will help us keep an even keel.

A million little arks of light cannot fail. Not all will survive, but if when the floods recede the ones that do can find their common ground, just maybe, there will be hope for the future.

Things of quarantine

In this time when respect and values are so important, I must say that I have learned many things. Many people encourage us making videos with messages of reunions and hopeful, other people learn to draw or to paint, and they take out their most artistic profile.
In my case being a musician, I end with boredom and routine with music. Thanks to the fact that I’ve been quarantined with my saxophone, which makes afternoons more enjoyable, not just mine but my neighbors' afternoons as well. Or what about "radio patio" that we have in the neighborhood through the windows, to catch up with the situation we’re living in, and ask the neighbor for a song to put on speaker.
Everything we are living is going to change our lives and our way of thinking, nature continues its course even if humanity stops.Although we aren’t close to our loved ones and friends, we will see each other again and be able to socialize in person shortly. Many things that we did not value before confinement it seems that now we have realized its true worth.
Here are a few things I've been doing in my spare time during quarantine.

Have a good day and a lot of strength for everyone!

Adrián.

My-ndfulness

Since I started this academy year I had the chance to try Mindfulness. I didn't know what mindfulness was, but I tried it in our english classes. At first, I was really bad at doing it, because I couldn't understand it. Teacher showed us the way to do it and it's meaning. 

Mindfulness is a practice that lets you free your mind and listen to your body, it's good to chill, relax before sleep or correct a bad behaviour like addiction or fury.You have to sit in a straight posture, with your hands over your legs and focus on your breathing. Those are just the basic things and I didn't feel able to do them. Whenever I tried to focus in my breathing I started controlling it conscious despite the fact that I didn't want to do it. So I feel like suffocating, not much, but it gives pressure in my chest and that blurs my mind I believe. I kept trying it everytime we did this practice in the class.  It is me, myself and I, everybody is in silent, nothing disturbs the atmosphere of the class, so the only posible problem has to be inside me. Some days were better than others. Sometimes it was easy to chill, other times was impossible. Then, I realized that the success of the practice depended on my mood, in that case, the practice was useless. If I'm having a good day why would I do Mindfulness, I'm already O.K.. In the other hand, if I'm in a bad mood, feeling anxiety, it will not work, so why would I waste my time trying it. I believed in it, I'm not blind I saw results in other people, but this is not for me. That's was my position for a time. Time doesn't wait anyone and as time goes by, I keep having good and bad days. I dealt with my problems as always, running away until I forget what brought me there. It's hard, news these days  doesn't help much. But one day I was too nervous to sleep, I have had a lot of nights like that one so I know what I have to do, being distracted until I'm tired. I talked to a friend, and told her that I couldn't sleep. She sent me an audio that could help me, it was actually an audio to do Mindfulness. I had nothing to lose so I tried it but I was not convinced. It worked! I could sleep, I slept very well I have to admit. I couldn't have less faith in it but it worked. That made me think about me and the other people. When I felt lost something helped me, something that I didn't believe would work, this time was Mindfulness, but it can be anything. In this blog there is a lot of people talking about how cooking, dancing or drawing filled them with determination and helped them to pass hard times, maybe you are not even having a bad time, but you can try new things too. so this means there is a solution for everybody, don't lose your hope, keep trying new things, my situation may not be as hard as yours, but as long as you try you get closer to get better. I thought some of these practice were temporary solutions, I thought they would help you feel better in a certain moment but they didn't help in a long term. Doing Mindfulness just one time correctly didn't solve any of my problems, but it's a fact that proves my point. Now I believe that the fact that you are trying to use these techniques to feel better are the first step, you are sick of any situation and you want to change it. Believe or not, that's a huge step, so once you make it, don't give up and carry on. 

I wanted to give my opinion about Mindfulness, because it's something that we all in this class have in common, we all tried it. And I had to write something encouraging at the end because I felt it was too dark and I don't want to look depressed because I am not JAJAJAJA.

B Y E 

Peace, love, unity and having fun

the main idea of ​​hip hop is based on mutual respect. it is not a community but it is a big family with different individual thoughts but with a great feeling of unity. It has its origin as a way to evade gang violence and express itself in an artistic way.
The artistic ways are: Hip Hop, Graffiti, DiscJocking and Rapping.







I'm going to talk about hip hop, my way of escaping many problems and the way that I can express myself to others. Since I have memories I´ve been dancing everyday and everytime. I feel good dancing because I think I can show everybody who really I am. It's nice to feel free even if everything inside of me is chaos.

When I was eighteen, I take my firts dance class in a summer dance camp, I learnt a lot of dance styles and the comunity feeling. I had found something that made me really happy.

All eyes on beat - 1/4/2017

After that I started going to classes siously and train as a dancer.
I met a lot of people, incredible people who were like a second family. We shared many emotions that we only transmitted by dancing.
Being able to dance makes you free, to meet people, places and many cultures simultaneously, since the dance of each person is a unique universe.

One summer day my dance teacher called me and asked if I wanted to dance in a group. I accepted without problem, but then I was more happy because it was not for fun, but for work.

Batemento - 4/6/2017

I worked doing what I liked and at the same time visiting different places in Galicia.

"Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music brings."
                       -Charles Baudelaire

ERASMUS

My Erasmus in Helsinki

Last semester I had the best experience of my life. I went on an Erasmus exchange to Finland, Helsinki. I decided to go there because of the education system.  I think that it was the best choice I could ever make because it is a country that had nothing to do with Spain. In other to this, it would be a new experience in all the possible ways.

Also, I think it was the perfect city for me. Because even though is a capital and it has every facility an everything you could wish, It is really small and essay to handle. Whatsmore, it is really secure, calm and it doest practically have any delinquency.
Here you can see some pictures of the beautiful city of Helsinki:

Helsinki Cathedral, Clara A. Biosca

Orthodox Helsinki Cathedral, Clara A. Biosca

In this blog entry, I decided to talk about diferent points of my Erasmus.

FOOD

To star , I wanna talk a little bit about food and eating in Finland. At the beginning, it was a bit confusing to buy it because in many supermarkets the ingredients or the name were only in Finnish, Swedish and Deutsch. Lucky me, one of the cheapest supermarkets was Lidl and even though ingredients were only in those languages, we have Lidl in Spain so products were similar and also, I eat really basic stuff like fruit vegetables which were easy to buy.

The food was really expensive in Finland, well everything was, but as students, we had a lot of benefits and discounts. For example, we had cafeterias that called unicafes and you could eat plenty for only 2.60 and it was delicious.

The most typical foods in Finland were salmon soup, rice pie, reindeer and potatoes, also there was a very famous drink that was called gloogi that could have alcohol or not.

Rice pie

Salmon soup

TRAVEL

• Traveling in Helsinki, as I said before it is a small city so you can go everywhere walking or cycling in the summer. But for the rest of the year, it is really cold and everything is frozen so they have really good transport lines such as tram, bus or underground

Tram, Clara A. Biosca

• Travelling around finland

Suomelina is a small island that belongs to helsinki. It has a lot of history and we used to go there almoust every week, it was like our place.

Porvoo is a tiny villige in finland and is very cute and  cozy.

Tampere, is a big city near helsinki and it was all snowed when we went.

Tampere Cathedral, Clara A. Biosca

Lapland was a must in Finland I needed to visit santa claus village, it was amazing, we also went on a snow mobile and we enjoyed the beauty of the north pole.

• Some of my trips during the Erasmus

Saint petersburg is just the most beautiful place I have ever visit.

Talin was a fairy tale.

In Stockholm I was only a few hours but I felt in love with the city an with its underground stations.

SCHOOLS IN FINLAND

The other must of my Erasmus was to visit a Finnish school, it was amazing. I went to two different schools and both had in common the autonomy that they give to the students, also they had less ratio than Spain, the good use of technologies, and many things more, I learned a lot.

In short, it was an incredible experience and I am very thankful for everything that Erasmus has given me. I have learned a lot, I made Incredibles friends that are like family and I miss it so much. 

But all the good things come to an end to let space to new experiences!

My Erasmus Experience

Hi everyone!!

I´m going to talk you about my Erasmus in Rome.

Last year I had the greatest opportunity of my life, but unfortunately it was only one semester.

I went there on September 21^st with a classmate and we went without an apartment. We wanted to look for one once there, to see where our university was and what the best places to live were. Thank god we did this before moving to Rome because we were looking for rooms in one of the worst places in Rome.

At first we didn´t find any apartment with at least two separate free bedrooms so for a month we had to share a room. We had 3 more people at home, two Italian boys and a Chinese girl. That month we didn´t spend a lot of time at home because we weren´t comfortable there, and one of the Italian guys was rude.

On October 13th someone very kind stole my phone in a club and for the record I wasnt drunk… so I have no pics of the beginning of this month:(

At the end of October we had to move to a new house which was a little bit further out but we were extremely grateful to find it.

Now we had our own private bedrooms each and we only shared the house with an Italian girl who was studying and working. She also spent most of the time at her boyfriend´s house.

Here is a pic of my room.

After all this drama finally we felt like home, we loved the neighbourhood, we had three supermarkets close by and the tram was only a minute walk away.

We loved our university and the teachers were too nice with us, we had to read a lot of books in Italian language which helped us to improve our Italian because we didn´t know any Italian.

We met a lot of friends from different countries but we made a group with Spanish people who now some of them are my best friends and I miss them so much.

Here I will present you some of them.

Rome is pure magic and I cant wait to go back as soon as possible. I will show you some of my favourite places.

And to close this post I am going to talk about the places we visited during this experience which are Firenze, Tívoli, Venice, Verona, Vienna, Bratislava, Stockholm and London.

I wish I could show you some videos I made but instead I can show you some photos of our trips hope you like it!!

How we spend our free time in quarantine

Nowadays the entire world is in a difficult epidemiological situation: in the whole world there have been a total of 3.3. million infected by Covid-19 and 243,000 deaths. And to overcome this situation on the fourteenth of May the government of Spain declared the state of alarm.

When the declaration of the state of alarm was anounced, I took a very important decision: I would stay in Ourense and I would not go home with my family. And why did I take that decision? For several reasons.

As a risk patient (due to a heart disease) it was safer for me to stay in the city, because on the way from Ourense to my house I have to take many means of transport (an intercity bus, two city buses and a boat); due to the fact that my mother works in a centre for disadvantaged people (like homeless people or drug addicts) and she is in contact with a lot of people; and for being able to infect my family in case I were ill.

Luckily, here in the city I am with my partner and together we have some ways to spend time. And, for now, the fifty-one days we have been confined have flown by.

First, in order to have a long-lasting entertainment, we decided to start watching a series. The series we finally chose was Breaking Bad. The main character of this series is a chemistry teacher who, knowing that he has lung cancer, decides to use his knowledge of chemistry to leave money for his wife and two children. How? Cooking cocaine. If you have not seen this series yet, I recommend it. Breaking Bad has become my favourite series.

Another thing we are doing a lot in this quarantine is cooking. I have always liked cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, but in these circumstances I do it more. So, for example, we have become great pizza makers: we make the pizza dough and personalize it with the ingredients that we like the most. To them we almost always add different types of cheese (gouda cheese and goat cheese), mushrooms, olives or bacon. Another of the recipes that we have made are some homemade donuts. They were also delicious!

During the quarantine (and the rest of our lives) we can't be without music. Although now I can’t go to concerts or festivals (one of my favourite hobbies) and although he can’t participate in rap battles, the music is still present in our day to day: when we cook, when I do some class work, when we wake up...

Finally, another thing we are doing a lot is talking to our family and to our friends. Even if you are away from them now you shouldn't lose contact with them. Being in contact is so important, and more on a important day like today, the Mother's Day.

Although you can't be in person with your mother and your relatives, you can be with them through the screen of the mobil phone or the computer. I know that it isn't the same, but at least you can share that special moment in some way. For example, today I made a video call with my parents, my sister and my brother to see how my mother opened her Mother's Day gift. These little details can bright your day.

My Erasmus

Hello everyone! 
In this post I’m gonna tell you a bit about the best experience of my life: my Erasmus.

I had always been clear that I wanted to go on Erasmus, since I considered it a great opportunity that I didn’t want to miss. 

However, what was not so clear to me was the destination, because I was interested in many European countries. Finally, due to the economic level and despite the cold, my friend Yesi and I decided to apply for Poland. We don’t usually think about this country when we talk about Europe. Precisely, that also made us decide for it, since it was a totally new culture and we were curious to discover it.

I remember perfectly the day that we arrived in Warsaw. It was September and there was a very good weather in Galicia, but when we land there we found a grey city and very serious people in general, distant and even unpleasant. We thought, “what do we do now?”

The next day we went to Torun, our destination city, and we only hoped that the situation would improve. On the way to the hostel that we had booked (because we went to Poland without a rented apartment yet) we already noticed the beauty of this medieval city bathed by the Vistula river.

Toruń

Then, the good times started. Despite how different Poland is from us in lifestyle, personality and culture in general, we adapted there perfectly! I think that it was because when you go abroad you find all cool because is new for you!

In that five months we met people from many countries and there are people and moments that we will never forget! It didn’t matter the day to go to party at the Kredens, the typical Polish pub with little a little red light and wooden tables where we use to go at nights. The party there was great! I used to dance and talk to many people from different countries, and it was so fun! When reggaeton songs were playing, all of the Spanish people went crazy singing and dancing, and the rest accompanied us! Another good thing was that the alcohol was very cheap: for 1,50-2€ you could drink the best Polish vodka.

One thing that I realized is that people love Spain and the Spanish! They say we are the best country to live because of the beach, the party, the food and the warm weather.

This is a photo of the day we went to a traditional Polish wedding, played by a Spanish boy and a Turkish girl who fell in love during the Erasmus. It was so cute!

 

The night of the Polish wedding

Without a doubt, one of the best parts of Erasmus is travel.

I went to Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Stockholm, in addition to having visited the main cities of Poland. All the trips have their anecdotes, good but also some bad, such as missing the train back to Torun or having to share a room in hostels where there was always someone who snored.

It would be difficult to choose the trip that I liked the most, but I think I would choose the one to Stockholm because we went all together and also because there are things that surprised me a lot, like that the public transport works with garbage, instead of use fossil fuels. I think that it invites us to reflection on how backward Spain is in the environmental matter.

Stadion Station of metro.

The place that fascinated me most of all was Zakopane, on the Polish border with Slovakia. It is a small town located between mountains, and every small place of it makes you fall in love, with the wooden houses and the stalls everywhere. You can have incredible views if you take the cable car and look at Zakopane from the top of the mountains. If you want to go there, I recommend you going in the winter to appreciate all its beauty.

The most impressive thing there is to hike to the Morskie Oko ("Sea eye" in English), in the Tatra Nacional Park. It takes approximately 5 hours walking, but it is worth it. The cold and the tiredness are forgotten when you arrive at the Morskie Oko, the frozen lake between the snowy mountains that surround it.

Morskie Oko Lake

 

If you have lived the Erasmus, you already know that it is incredible and you wish that it could be lived again. Getting out of the comfort zone and living abroad has been wonderful, it has made me learn many things, and many of them without realizing it.

I hope I have brought you closer to my experience and that it has been entertaining for you!