Meine Hobbys Ich mag Sport im Fernsehen schauen. In Kolumbien Fußall ist der beliebteste Sport. Ich mag ihn, aber ich finde ihn manchmal langweilig. Ich denke, dass die besten Sporte für Zuschauen aus den Vereignite Staaten sind. Meine LieblingsSport ist der Basketball, weil kompliziert ist. Basketball ist auch spektakulär: „Dunks“, Triples, unmögliche Sprosse, „BuzzerBeater“, defensive Spiele, und natürlich viele Regeln. „NFL-Football“ gefällt mir auch. Vielleicht hat NFL mehr Regeln als Basketball: Ich habe für NFL verstehen eine kurze Lektion gebraucht. „Superbowl“ ist sehr unterhaltsam, weil alles passieren kann. Ich glaube dass NFL unberechenbarer als Fußall ist. Ich mag auch Fahrrad fahren. Ich mach besonders bergauf fahren, weil man kann mehr Bewegung machen. Ich gehe gern ins Fitnessstudio aber Gewichtheben gefällt mir nicht so gut. Ich trainiere am liebsten mit meinem eigenen Gewicht. Wenn ich Zeit habe, schaue ich Fernsehseries. Meine Lieblingsfernsehserien sind Breaking Bad und Black Mirror, aber Breaking Bad ist der Beste! Letze Staffel von Black Mirror ist nicht so gut als vorhergehenden Staffeln. Stranger Things gefällt mir auch. Ich habe Dark geschaut und es war toll, dass ich ein paar Wörter verstanden habe, aber noch zu wenige. Ich muss mehr Zeit in Deutsch zubringen

Über mich (I am a A2.1 German student and this is my first notebook entry). Danke für Ihre hilfe! Ich heiße Victor und ich bin achtundzwanzig Jahre alt. Ich wohne in Bogotá, Kolumbien. Bogotá ist die Hauptstadt des Kolumbien. Ich bin Bauingenieur von beruf und Ich arbeite als Strukur-Designer oder Statiker. Ich habe viele Gebäude dessiniert und ich habe viel in diesem Job gelernt. Mein Job ist manchmals sehr eintönig, aber die Arbeitsbedingungen sind nicht schlecht. Ich habe keine Kinder und ich bin single. Ich wohne mit meiner Mutter und meinem Cousin. Er hat seit acht Jahre alt mit uns gewohnt, weil leider seine Mutter gestorben ist. Aber hat er mit uns einer neuen Familien bekommen. Man kann sagen, dass er mein Bruder ist. In letzer Zeit haben wir ein wichtiges Ziel erreicht: wir haben eine Wohnung gekauft, deshalb haben wir jetzt Hypothek. Trotzdem sie ist besser als unendliche Miete!

Sports in United States Since I started to follow sports in United States, I'm impressed on how everything is done to achieve a big spectacle. The rules, format, broadcasting and even stadiums are intended to get the maximum emotion. One element that I love about all sports are the revisions, it make the game more fair and clear. As a fan of soccer, it's frustrating that one of the most popular sports still has to deal with bad calls and an unnecessary uncertainty. The first sport that I watched was basketball. Fortunately, the announcers know that the latin american audience is not a recurrent viewer, so they are used to spend an important time of the transmision explaining the game and the rules. I was astonished when I found out that NBA has economic penalties for what is called "flopping". If this rule were(was?) applied to soccer, a lot of players would need loans to pay for their "acting shows". Another feature that I love is the challenge, because you should have the right to review an important play. I've heard some old-fashion "lovers" of soccer saying that "challenges would take out the escense of soccer". It's sad, they want soccer to stay in the shadows of evitable mistakes. The challenge oportunity that I like the most is the NFL's, the head coach has a red flag and he throws it, it's very graphic: you can see that an statement is made. In addition to the previous characteristics, the way the timer is handled is an important element for a transparent sport. It gives to the game an important quality: suspense. There is nothing as exciting as a "buzzer beater" in the NBA, it's the best of example of the common saying: "Time is gold".

Cycling Since I bought my bicycle I've been riding a lot. The first month I was able to do around 30 km, the uphills were giving me a hard time. Another aspect that is difficult for me is getting used to the position on the bike, it makes your back hurt and of course, the seat can be "a real pain in the ass". I overcomed these difficulties and finally I was able to stand a route of 80 km, it was very gratifying. Nowadays, I'm able to do the hard uphills near my city, Bogotá. I admire professional cyclers, I think that it is the most underrated sport in the world. The salary is ridiculous in comparison with other sports as for example soccer, taking into account the effort that cycling requires. Being 20 days in a row and 5 to 6 hours per day riding, is extremely hard. It's incredible to see what Colombian Cyclers have been doing past few years, Nairo Quintana is going to be the most important cycler in our history, but I'm fan of Esteban Chaves: "the man with the biggest smile in the world". I hope to see Nairo Quintana as the winner of Tour de France-2017, he had been really close the last two years.

Today, I cameback to work... Today I had to cameback to work. It was really difficult because of the hour to get up. The last two weeks I was used to sleep a lot and to do a lot of excercise. When I arrived to the office, fortunately everybody was in the plan to talk about vacations, even my boss. We spent almost half of the day in sharing experiences, it was pretty entertaining. I talked about my experience on italki and the benefits of being here. Hopefully we'll have more language partners from Colombia! A lot of people was exceptical about the real benefits of an electronic plataform, sometimes it's difficult to break down the paradigm with respect "new methods". For me the best experience to share was the language exchanges that I had done. It have been fun and constructive, I feel that I have more confidence about my speaking. I'm looking forward to find more language partners, if you are learning spanish and you speak english, please write to me right now!

My own experience about the speaking ability: "Start to think in the language that you are learning" The last three months I've been building up my english in order to take the TOEFL exam. I've found that you can improve your reading and listening abilities by yourself. I call them "the passive abilities", because readers and listeners make only an internal process of analysis, without an active or visible action. On the other hand, "the active abilities" such as speaking and writing, requires an inmediate response and are more difficult to practice. The inmediate response in speaking is the most difficult situation for me, at the beginning it always got me and my fluency was very limited. I've always listened that you really are fluent in a language "when you start to think in the language that you are learning", instead of translate the words. But the thing is that it never happened to me, and I felt that statement very distant from my reality. I attended to several courses of english in university and beyond what I learnt, the most important thing that I incorporated to my learning process was the concept of "Rehearsing". The teacher picked me for an "experiment" that was going to be conducted during the semester: I didn´t know to use the chopsticks and the teacher gave me two weeks to be able to pick up a sheet of paper, a pencil and other things. I learnt the following things: - I found videos and information on "how to use chopsticks". At the end of the month that the teacher gave me, I aproved the test, but I did small changes in the way of holding them. The same thing happened to me with the process of learning english, I never reach the common saying of "thinking in english". However, I rehearsed a lot and in some point the starting words for a conversation were "available" in my mind. For me it's more as if you practice to having a quicker acces to a word, instead of "think" in that word "and in english". - By losing the fear to do a mistake, you gain a lot. It´s better to continue spaking with a mistake, than make a pause and start to think in the correct form. If you keep doing mistakes and learning the right way, at some point you'll fix them. The best quote for this process belongs the TV series "Westworld": " "Mistakes" is the word you're too embarrassed to use. You ought not to be. You're a product of a trillion of them. Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life on this planet using only one tool: the mistake" I hope you'll find all this "jibber jabber" useful, in some way...