The Big Apple

 When we say “the big apple” or “the city that never sleeps” we think of New York. Visiting New York City is a dream comes true for many people. When we imagine this city, we always think of all the films and TV series that this magical city has inspired. I was very lucky to visit this city in several occasions thought out my life, but my last visit two years ago was very special. Since I was very young when we last visited I didn’t remember it clearly, but the moment we arrived and I contemplated the city, I felt like I really was in a film. I wish I could describe what I felt at that moment because it´s incredible. Its lights, the skyscrapers, everywhere you looked you where capture by its magnitude. The “life” you felt the moment you step in this city captivated me for the beginning. It really is the city that never sleeps.

Night time in Manhattan

Another reason this trip was special was the opportunity of visiting my family, specially my cousins since I haven´t seen then in several years. I have the amazing luck of having a second home in a special place. Another special moment was being able to see where my mom lived and grew up, seeing her old building, the streets where she played, where she went to school, makes me understand why she loves this city so much.

My mom´s building located in 14 street Manhattan

My uncles took us to the state farm in Pennsylvania which was an amazing experience I felt like I was in Texas. There were country music, cowboys, pig races; I really had a great time in the fair.

The places which I love were The Village, Soho and Brooklyn specially crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, its streets, its shops and restaurants and its amazing pizza. All this makes me want to live in Brooklyn in the future. We don’t know what our future might bring us but I hope to accomplish this dream one day.

Soho

        

My passion

I come to present my passion, basketball 🏀. I've been playing this sport since I was 5 years old and now, at 20, it's still my favorite and I never get tired of practising it.

It all started because my father played it when he was young and as a child I always played with him. When I was 5 years old my parents decided that, since I liked it so much, they should sign me up for the sport's extracurricular activity, and they did it.

The year I started I loved it, I knew that this sport was my thing and that I wanted to continue on this path. Since then, I've played on three different teams. My stage from 5 to 16 years I played in EDO Blanco Amor, from 17 to 19 in Pabellón Ourense and now, since two years ago, I play in Carmelitas Ourense. 

In summer, when I don't go on holiday somewhere, I spend my time throwing balls into a basket in my country house. I am always there for hours and hours every day, and I never get bored. With a basket and a ball I'm happy for the whole day. Hours can go by and I'm still as entertained as I was in the first minute. 

I have had to sacrifice many things to be able to play; parties, birthdays, celebrations... but all of it has been worth it because I love basketball. It's a way to stop thinking about everything else and clear my mind for a while. When I coach or play I don't think about anything else but that.

When something is part of your life for so long, it's already part of you, and that's what happens to me with basketball, which is part of me. I hope that my body will let me play for many more years and that, one way or another, it never leave my life. 💙

Why physical activity and eating natural food are important for health?

Hello everyone,

I would like to share with you how sport improves my daily life. I have been playing football since I was six years old. I started playing football because my older brother used to play in a football team. I went to see him every weekend at the pitch and I start loving that team sport. For this reason I decided to join the same football team as my brother.

The experiences at different football clubs taught me a lot about responsibilities, friendship, teamwork… Football gave me more than any other sport. I left the team three years ago, but I play football every time I have a ball.

If you don´t have enough time to join a team, you can take up with some workouts at home or going to the gym. The gym offers a sort of activities: aerobics, pilates, stretching, yoga, spinning … And you can choose whatever you like.

Moreover, doing regular activity helps you managing all the stress that you have been accumulating during the whole journey, as well as improving your self-image and self-confidence. Exercise enhances long-term memory and helps focusing your attention.

Finally, it’s essential to keep a balance diet and don’t skip meals. Consuming as much fresh food as possible and avoiding junk food, will make you feel lightness and proud of yourself. I invite you to follow my advice, and then you can comment your experience on the blog.

Marina d’Or 2019

Last year, fulfilling my little sister's dream, at the end of July, my family and I went on a trip to Marinador "Holiday City".

We took a Santiago-Valencia plane and when we got there, a train to Oropesa del Mar, Castellón. A taxi picked us up and took us to the door of the hotel.

Once there, we had to wait a couple of hours to complete the check-in since there were so many people.

We went up to the rooms and everything pointed to those being the best days of our summer.

The hotel surprised us every day at breakfast with the visit of one of the mythical mascots of Marinador (Pirate Meow, Pulpita, Golden Turtle, Tito Lorito, Simarina, Garfiodor and Poseidor "and at night they offered shows for all the children who were there (My 7 year old sister had a great time!).

During the day, we made excursions to water parks, beaches, games, swimming pools, spa, etc.

Before returning to Galicia, we spent a day in the centre of Valencia and went shopping!

Last day, at dawn (5:00 a.m.), we went to the airport to take the plane and return to Santiago. It was all over now :(

We met new people and spent wonderful days with my family !

Au pair in Ireland 28 August 2016 to 3 July 2017

I have always wanted to travel and get to know other cultures, when I finished the Cycle of Infant Education I decided to leave, it wasn´t something easy since I had never traveled outside of Spain and much less alone. When I left I was 21 years old, I also didn´t know what was waiting for me, since I could leave a good or bad family so I took a risk. I started the search and it wasn't easy but I was lucky enough to find a great family in County Kildare in the village of Leixlip. The family consisted of three children, Erick 8 years old, Anna 9 years old and Cristina 11 years old, their parents Robert (Irish) and Miriam (Spanish).

The Irish family and me when we visited Santa´s house. 

I made friends quickly there, in the end we finished a group of three girls (Carmen, Maria and me), who shared our experiences, we were like a family. 

María, me and Carmen in St Patrick`s Day.

Carmen, María and me in Guinness Store House.

During my stay in Ireland I have been able to travel to London, Edinburgh, Belfast and some towns in wonderful Ireland.

Me with a Scottish in Edinburgh.

Me in Edinburgh Castle.

Me in The Giant´s Causeway, Northern Ireland

Me and María in The Giant´s Causeway

In Belfast with the famous big fish.

The Guinness Lake, Wicklo, Ireland.

The Cliff of Moher, Liscannor, Co. Clare, Ireland.

London

Howth, Ireland.

It can also fulfill my mother's dream which was to go and see me and meet the family I lived with and the environment I was in. It was a short but intense trip in which we were able to enjoy ourselves and I especially gained strength to continue the months I had left in Ireland, my mother enjoyed herself as a child and fell in love with Ireland and its people. For me this has undoubtedly been one of the best things that has happened to me during my stay in Ireland.

My au pair experience has been great, I have been treated like one of the family. I liked the education I received in Ireland, they were autonomous children, I also liked the school education, they worked on projects and only had thirty minutes of homework a day, except on days with good weather they didn't send homework so they could enjoy the day playing outside.  

The culture is similar to that of Galicia so it didn't take me long to get used to it, the only thing was the food and the climate (in one day we could go through all four seasons) and

I also liked the Irish people a lot because they are sociable, very nice people and above all if you need something they are always there. On one tour we were told to stop with the map open anywhere and see how quickly someone helped us, we did and it was true, this doesn´t happen everywhere. 

No doubt I would repeat it again and I recommend it because besides learning another language you learn many other things and above all you value much more, since you have to find your life in an unknown environment for you, for me it has been the best thing that has happened.

Ireland will always be present in my life, what better way than with a tattoo of an Irish cloverleaf.

My dream trip to Italy

When I was 17, I went to Rome with my class. I loved that trip for many reasons: I could travel with my friends, the culture of the country, the gastronomy and the different places that we visited. For this reasons I would like to take a trip through several cities of Italy in 10 days.

On the first day I will arrive to Rome. When I will land, I will go to the hotel and take a little walk through the city. On the second day I will visit Vatican City in the morning. In the afternoon, I will visit the historic centre of Rome. Some places that I can visit are Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Piazza di Spagna y the Piazza del Popolo.

On the third day, I will go to visit some wonderful places of Rome like the Colosseum or the roman forum. On the fourth day, I will visit some village in the south of Toscana. I will spend the night in a hotel of Siena.

On the fifth day, I will visit some places in Siena like the cathedral and Piazza del Campo. In the afternoon, I will visit some villages in the north of Toscana. This villages will be Monteriggioni and San Gimignano. On the sixth day, I will go to Florencia. I will visit the historic centre and I will learn about the history of the city. Also, I will go to Pisa to see the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa.

On the seventh day, I will go to Venecia to see the wonderful channels and the Piazza San Marco and their surroundings. On the eighth day, I will go to Milán and I will visit their beautiful churches and cathedrals. On the ninth day, I will return to Rome to enjoy the city and prepare for the return trip. Finally, on the next day I will return to Spain with a dream came true.

I would like to share this trip with my friends. This is because they have the same dream as me. They want to visit the wonderful places that exits in Italy. We know that are more places to visit in Italy. But these places make us all very excited.

The best week of my life!

I want to talk about the best experience of my life! I love music, I think I´m listening to music everytime, even when I´m studying I listen to classic music. My favourite kind of music is metal music. In order to listen to metal music, the last summer I went to Resurrection Fest in Viveiro. I saw that Parkway Drive was going to the festival and I though "I don´t mind if I only know this band, I need to see them". When I see all the bands that were going to play in this festival I almost had a heart atack because I realised that I love the most of them. The day before the festival I was nervous as hell, I think these day I slept two hours. Before the festival I was talking with a lot of people that were going to go in order to make friends. I met all this people in person in the festival and it was awesome. We made T-shirts for everyone, these group of people were called "Resupiña". I made a lot of friends from a lot of places from Spain and nowadays, they mean a lot to me.

All the festival was insane, and I had a really really good time, I felt very sad when I had to go home. All the concerts I saw were awesome, I discovered a lot of bands and I enjoyed a lot the bands I knew before the festival. I enjoyed especially Parkway Drive because I love them a lot, I love their music, they do their songs with a lot of passion and when they played in the festival you could see that they were enjoying playing their songs and making people happy. I will put here some photos of the concert and a link if you want to see the concert and if you like metal music.

I plan to return to Resurrection Fest this year because it´s going to play one of my favourite bands in the world and a lot of good metal bands. I´m afraid that this year it´s going to be complicated to go due to coronavirus but I´m positive and I am going to think that I will return and I will have a really good time with my resufriends!

MY WHOLE LIFE DEDICATED TO…

When I was a child I always went to the rhythmic gymnastics competition of my sister. I watched her from the grandstand of the pavilion. I couldn’t wait for my fourth birthday to come around because children had to be four years old to start gymnastic lessons. My first exhibition was in 2003 and it was an emotion-filled moment. That day we received a medal, MY FIRST MEDAL, and it was such an important medal for me that I put it aside in my bedroom. Today I still preserve it.

Seven years later I started to compete in National Champions. I was very nervous and confused because it was a high leap; I passed from training three hours a week to three hours a day. I thought I couldn’t be able to put up with that pressure. I was wrong; I trained very hard day to day and I won one Galician Championship after another for four years until I left my gymnast period. Even I represented Galicia Team in Scholar Age Championship during four years which Federation allow you compete.

 

I never believed I could get all of that and I’m very proud myself for my persistence and not only for my records. This is the thought that I will like to transmit to my gymnasts. At the age of sixteen I started the first course to become a trainer. I continued for two years more to obtain the national degree. . Today I’m rhythmic gymnastics coach and I’m training four groups at afternoons. There are many difficult times as a trainer but there are many happier ones that make up for all efforts. 💪

Take a bucket of popcorn and... Learn English!

Nowadays, we have at our disposal an infinite number of series on various topics: action, love, adventure, history... And with all of them, we can learn new vocabulary to use in our lives.

Watching these series in our native language can serve us as entertainment, but if we change them to English, we can enjoy different benefits. For example, it helps us to better understand the language and practice listenings. In addition, by having subtitles, we can more easily recognize the sounds and pronunciations of words. Without evading the amount of new vocabulary that we learn and the way to express it.

To get started with these practices, some tips should be followed. You have to start little by little, putting the original audio and subtitles in Spanish. When you think you are already mastering it, change the subtitles to English. The most important thing is to lose the fear of not understanding the dialogues! 😎

Some of the series with which you can start, and which at the same time are very entertaining, are the following:

• Game of thrones. Surely many of you have already seen it, but in your language. For those who don't know, it's about the fight between different dynasties for the Iron Throne. Therefore, it's perfect to learn war vocabulary and also vocabulary from the fantasy world, in addition serving to practice listening comprehension, thanks to the accents of the characters.

• Skins. It's an adolescent series that relates the problems of a group of friends: drugs, sex, alcoholism, anorexia... With this series, you will be able to learn colloquial and everyday vocabulary. The language of young people of the moment. In addition, you will empathize with each of the characters, and you will even drop a tear. This is a point in favor of working on feelings.

• Black mirror. It's a science fiction series where the top of how technology affects society is mainly covered. Each chapter is independent of each other, so they could be conceived as small films. It's perfect for acquiring new concepts related to technology or the problems that sometimes entails. With this series, you will draw many conclusions...

• Peaky Blinders. It's the most famous series about gangsters. It's set in Birmingham in 1919. In this case, this series already has a higher level of English, so it would be aimed at those who have a little more command of the language. The accents of some actors are quite closed, but based on practice, they can be understood without problem.

• Vikings. Another of the most famous series of the moment, set in Scandinavia in the 700s. This series is full of action, and with it you will learn about Norse history and mythology. Also, the actors speak very slowly and clearly, so many times you won't even need the help of the subtitles.

• Sense8. I can't explain much the plot of this series, because I would make many spoilers, but it has been a series that had a great acceptance and at the same time, a great rejection. The actors come from many different countries, there's even a well-known Spanish one. So, thanks to this, you can hear many types of accents.

And that's all! I hope that list of series has helped you, and that you can improve your English with them.

Leave me a comment if you have already seen one, or if you want to recommend another one that isn't there! 😁😍