Welcome to my 98213th attempt at blogging! I’ve always been a big fan of working with websites, but I’m not great at creating content… and so I just bored myself into deleting all the ones I made in the past. I don’t feel like I have anything specific to share now, but I’ve been wanting to write. So here we are again!

My name is Gabriela, and my nicknames are Gabi or Gabby, depending on where you are from and which pronunciation comes more naturally to you. I was born in 22 April 1993, so I’ve been 27 years old for a few weeks now. No noticeable changes from 26 as of yet, but I’ll wait. Right at this moment, I am writing from Santa Catarina, Brazil, where I was born and raised, and where I fled to once it became clear that the covid-19 situation was out of control. Before this pandemic, I was happily working through my Masters program in France. I also lived in the United States as an exchange student when I was 16 – 17 years old, and did a postgraduate course in Toronto, Canada, when I was 25.

My hobbies have always been listening to music (mostly pop), reading (romances, memoirs, fantasies, science), and watching television shows or movies. Last year, while I waited to see if I’d get accepted for my Masters and got frustrated applying for jobs that I never got, I realized it had been a while since I had studied any languages. During my last university year, I had taken Italian classes, and ended up dropping out due to a complete lack of time to give the course the dedication it deserved. At that point, I was already fluent in English and Spanish, as well as in Portuguese, which is my mother tongue. Wondering if I could learn anything on my own, I started looking into languages that had a different alphabet, such as Hindi, Japanese, Chinese, and, finally, Korean. Out of all the options, I realized that the Korean entertainment industry was probably something I could get into, which would definitely make the language learning process more fun.

So in May 2019, I started studying Korean. I was accepted into a Masters program in France on the following month, and then I also started learning French. I’ll probably talk about the whole process for both languages a little further on, but I’m nowhere near fluent on either one. I’d put myself on an intermediate level for them both, but that might also be a bit of a stretch. It just so happens that I realized studying languages is as fun as all my other hobbies, which would have probably scandalized my teenage self.

And then, during the infamous 2020 mandatory quarantine period, I decided I should learn drawing. I’ve never really drawn anything other than figure sticks, but I guess this is another hobby now. There is no such thing as a natural talent over here, so we’ll see how that progresses if I manage to keep going.

I’ll probably use this space to talk about all of these hobbies, my traveling experiences (providing I ever leave my house again), artists I admire and whatever else comes to my head. I’ll be honored if anyone reads anything I write, but, if no one does, I figure it will just be good to let these thoughts out of my head. ❤

Au revoir!