My name is Belén and I was born and grew up in Santiago, the capital of Chile.
I am 23 years old now and I am studying to be a primary teacher. Right now I am in a university exchange programm in Finland, for one semester.

I have been very lucky to have a family that I love and has given me the chance to travel to quite several places in North- and South-america.

I have always loved travelling, but in 2009 I lived something that made me know the best part of travelling and increased my love for it. That year, I was in 11th grade, in school, and I was an exchange student for six months in a small city called Ellwood, in Pennsylvania, USA. That experience really thaught me a lot of myself, my culture and, of course, it made me learn a lot about a different culture and different persons too.

So to me, travelling is more than just visiting beautiful places. Of course, that is a great part of it, but what I really love is to get to know other people and cultures. Travelling for me is about sharing histories and learn from each other. And the more I travel, the more I realize how similar we people really are...how we all really want the same for our life.

So, I´m really looking forward to staying with or receiving people and keep something from them in my memory. Maybe just a short conversation or just a welcome smiling. Really, I think I can always learn from people and travelling (:

Interests

This is the list of my big passions:

1. PEOPLE. They are really what make sense of my live. The people who are part of my life are the ones who can make me reach happiness. I would not be who I am withouth people.

2. NATURE. It is something that makes me feel in peace with me and the world. I love feeling connected to nature. It makes me feel the inmensity of everything that surrounds me and, by reminding me how small I am and how short my life is it reminds me to enjoy and to look forward to what´s really important for me. My favorite places to go will always be those where I am surrounded of nature (:

3. CHILDREN. I find them fascinating; their innocence, the way they perceive the world, how the amaze or how they notice things we adults don´t ever do. This is why I chose my career, I love working with kids.

4. TRAVELLING. This is something that makes me learn so much. It means getting a stop of the routine, it means getting to know me better, it means enjoying the moment, it means getting to know cultures, getting to know persons and learn about each other. It means constructing new dreams because of something I lived while I was travelling.

• culture
• traveling
• teaching

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: To be honest, I`ve never been able to define my taste in music and everytime someone asks I don`t know what to answer. But I can say I enjoy some brand music playing in the radio (I have to admitt I love singing them while I am driving in a very -like some would say- girlish style), I enjoy grunge and I enjoy some old school music like the Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones or the Beatles. I´m also always looking for covers of different songs played with violin or chello (I love those instruments). Not a music expert, no idea how to define my taste in music...but I enjoy and love it as most people do.

Movies:
-The blue lagoon (La Laguna azul)
-Fried Green Tomatoes (Tomates verdes fritos)
-Star Wars

Books:
-Little women

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

This is a hard one! Ok let´s see... I will think about this and I promise to come up with a cool story soon!

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Peru

Countries I’ve Lived In

Chile, Finland, United States