A concert.

I haven’t gone to many concerts. Last year I went to see Chuck Berry, and it was “fun” (as much fun as it could be to watch an 80 years old Chuck trying to play the guitar like when he was 20 :c but at least I saw him in real life, which is better than youtube) and a few years before that I went to see Gustavo Cerati (It was good because I had the chance to see him before his death), and after that I went to  two Silvio Rodriguez’s concerts, which were my favourite concerts from all of them.

I really like Silvio’s music; I started listening to him when I was a little girl because my father liked him, so he played his guitar and sang his songs. So when I was old enough to go to a concert my father brought me to see him. We went to times, one in 2005 in the Victor Jara stadium (we went with my mom and brother, and it was the first time I went to a concert), and the second time was in 2006 in Arena Santiago when he was presenting his album "Erase que se era" , and I only went with my dad.

I remember that when my dad brought the tickets to the last concert we went he wanted to make it a surprise for me, so when I was “sleeping” he went to my room and tried to hang an envelope from the ceiling, but his plan didn’t worked because I was just pretending to sleep when he came to my room, so I caught him while he was trying to make his big surprise :c he was sad, but happy to see that I was happy to go to see Silvio.  

It was really fun, I sang all his songs and enjoyed the music and Silvio’s voice, which still sounds the same as when he was younger. I really like him because of his lyrics and the way he plays the guitar, and also because of the memories of my childhood that listening to his music brings to my head.

 

My recent readings: Kuragehime

Well, this year I’ve read many things, including manga, novels, short stories, etc. I started this summer reading “The hound od the Baskervilles” by Arthur Conan Doyle, I also read Herman Hesse’s “Siddharta”, and some short stories written by Carlos Fuentes. The last month I started reading “El Quijote”, but I haven’t finished it yet. I’ve also read many mangas during the last months, including almost all of the mangas written by Inio Asano, like “Oyasumi Punpun” (Goodnight Punpun), “Subarashii Sekai” (What a wonderful world), Hikari no Machi (City of Lights), among others.

 

But one of the readings that I’ve enjoyed the most has been “Kuragehime” (Jellyfish Princess) a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Akiko Higashimura. I first saw the anime based on the manga and the story caught me. Kuragehime tells the story of an 18 years old girl called Tsukimi, who has arrived to live in Tokyo from a small town. One day, when Tsukimi was a little girl her mother brought her to the aquarium to see the jellyfishes, and while they were looking at a really beautiful jellyfish that looked like a bride in her white dress, Tsukimi was told by her mother that when she grows up she was going to become a beautiful princess, and she was going to wear a beautiful white dress like the jellyfish.

 

The problem from the story that Tsukimi’s mother told her is that after her death Tsukimi didn’t became a real princes like her mother told her, but instead she became a jellyfish “otaku” (fan) and moved to Tokyo to become an Illustrator. In Tokio she lives with a group of otakus in a house where men are not allowed, and they call themselves “The amars” (nuns).
Theirs life was peaceful until Tsukimi meets Kuranosuke, a cross-dressed boy who bring a twist to the amars life, especially for Tsukimi.

It’s a really funny story, and completely different from other mangas that I’ve read, the characters are singular. I like it because it shows the story of “not normal” girls that has to face the world, and they do it in their own particular way.

 

A Group (?) Activity

Well, in my life I haven’t done too much group activities voluntarily (school activities and sports at the gym class weren’t something I could choose). Maybe the only thing I did on group was playing football when I was 9, but my mother didn’t allow me to do that because I was “pata’e lana” (and she was right, I broke my ankle  two times :c ) and I never tried it  again.

Since then I’ve only been doing single activities, like painting, cooking, sewing, reading, etc. But now I do much of these activities with my boyfriend, so I can call them 2-people-group activity. One of the activities we regularly do is reading (like a book club), and we do it every time when we see each other. We started reading together last summer, when we went on vacations to Bolivia for one month. The first book we read was The Little Prince (we read it in English, and we’ve been reading it since then, over and over again) and what we do is to take turns and read aloud to practice our comprehension and pronunciation, we also read it in Spanish and we did the same: take turns and read aloud to the other.

It doesn’t seem like a fun activity, but I really enjoy doing it especially because of the story that “The Little Prince” tells, I never get tired of that. And I also like the way my boyfriend tells the story, he talks like if he were a BBC news reporter, so we laugh a lot.