A Spooky tradition

Hi there!

As for today´s blog, I would like to rave about one of my favorite festivities, and I´m not talking about the incoming 18, no… I´m talking about “Halloween”.

I remember since I was a child I liked the idea of Halloween, both for the free candy and for the costumes, I was always craving for that spooky time; I remember that when I was little my mother would arrange a whole party for me and my cousins who were always there for the holyday.

As we grew, my cousins stopped coming for the weekend and I started to invite my friends, which without knowing, started some sort of tradition, in which we would take turns to host this “Halloween party” and the rest of the group would drop by there at night on costume and ready for a night of movies and pizzas. And every year I putted so much effort into my costumes, for me it was a new challenge every time, to do make-up, props, get the clothes; It´s definitely my favorite part (but not every year I´m happy with the result).

Things got even bigger when we met a friend that had his birthday on oct 27^th, so now it was kind of a “Halloween theme birthday” of 15 people or so. That year he invited us to his aunt´s Pub where we could watch movies on a screen and play pool.

This year is my turn to host the party, it´s been a few years since I last hosted it and I´m nervous but also really excited for what it can be!

A flawed superhero

Hi everyone! 

As today’s blog, I would like to talk about one of my favorite movies, Spiderman: Into the spider-verse and the hero/protagonist of that movie, Miles Morales.

I remember last year being so hyped about the release of the movie, the graphics were stunning and since the first trailer it had me hooked to the plot, I went to the cinema the first week upon release and was totally worth it.

Moreover, the character of Miles just…was so well written. He was a normal teenager dealing with a lot of expectatives due to all the sudden changes on his life, he was lost and afraid, and even though he had a supportive family and people who cherished for him, he needed to find his own answers, he needed to “take that leap of faith”.

Through the movie, we see his growth as a person, how he becomes more confident as he begins to know his own weaknesses and strengths, to, at the end, face the villain thanks to all the things he learned from the people around him.

I found Miles Morales to be a relatable character, even in a world of superpower and thus, he is always trying his best (and not always succeeding) he cares for the people he love and, unlike other superheroes whose always seem to be this “perfect person that always wins ”, miles is constantly failing and getting up, and learning from that, and I think that this kind of flawed superhero is way more inspiring than a perfect one.

A beach review from a coastside girl

Since I can remember my family lives in Cartagena, a little town near the coastside that in fact, has two beaches (Playa Chica and Playa Grande) So it is kinda ironic that my favourite beach is in Rocas de Santo Domingo, a town much farther away. 

Me liking that beach it´s mainly because of my family, they were the ones that liked to go to that beach on weekends and I ended up liking it,  specially since it was so fun growing up. I remember playing on the dunes of sand, and getting in the big puddles of water that formed between the rocks. Also, because we intentionally avoided the summer season, there was little to no one else around so it seemed to me as a child that that beach was like a secret place just for us.

But I would also go there on summer with my friends, that was a totally diferent experience!

We would get there so early just so we could enjoy all day swimming... and swimming on that beach was a real challenge due to the rough waves that would either throw us off, nearly drown us or literally makes us fall face first to the sand. But we always managed to, somehow stay alive (and frankly speaking, that was all part of the fun). 

The sad part of the story is that I would always come back home with sunburns (use sunblock kids!!) and I would spend the other half of the summer sleeping in weird positions to avoid toching them. 

I remember one year...it was the worse, I got a sunburn on my whole back, neck, chest and shoulders; that time my mother and I tried everything from tomato juice and milk to creams, aloe and pills to heal them...after some time they heal but i remember having to sleep sitting the firts couple of days.

Choripanes and memories

It´s not a single experience, but I´ll always remember the Fiestas Patrias of my childhood and the enthusiasm that my family put on them. We would gather on my great grandmother´s backyard and do either a barbeque or a "discada" (a seafood stew cooked on an iron disk on the ground), my uncle Pablo would arrive early and prepare the fire and decorate the place, my great aunt would make "empanadas" for everyone and my mother with my great grandmother would be making sidedishes and salads.

It was really fun back there when i would go around, helping on little things, receiveing the remainings of the family that would arrive near lunchtime, playing with my cousings and assembling the tables on the backyard where we would eat. And I specially remember that after lunch my uncles Víctor and Jaime would play "cuecas" on the guitar for us to dance.

And like that, it was all dance, laughs and drinks till´ the night when my cousins would go to sleep at their grandmother´s house and only the adults would keep the chatting...and me, because with my mother there, there was no one on my house for me to go back (but usually we would go back home not-so-late).

It is a dear memory for me because it was the only time of the year that the whole family would gather and just have fun and be ourselves.