Who am I?

 That’s a tough question to ask!

I am Gandini: I am a little bit crazy, creative (at least I hope so), sociable and, sometimes, hard piece of work. I am active and lazy, and I often fall asleep when I am going out.

The name Gandini sounds Italian, doesn’t it? Sorry to disappoint you,  but I am “only” Austrian and my real name is Barbara. After school I moved to Italy to study International Communications and Advertising, and since then the nickname stuck with me. Since 1 ½ year I am back to Graz again and studying at the Transcultural Communication Department and I am also enrolled in a Master’s degree named “Global Studies”.

 

I love experiencing new cities and countries, and I love living somewhere else even more than travelling. If you are travelling you just get a glimpse on the culture, but if you live somewhere you dive into it! That’s probably the reason why living in Italy wasn’t enough, and I did an Erasmus semester in Izmir, Turkey, too.

 

Once you get to know me better, you’ll notice I have many quirks. For example: I hate to take decisions. Instead, I toss a coin or ask my Magic 8 Ball so fate can tell me what to do. It’s not that I really believe in fate, it’s just that sometimes it’s easier to realize what you really want by singling out one’s options. Actually, I decided like this to move to Italy: I tossed a coin, it told me to stay but I was so unhappy, I just knew I have to go anyway. (I told my mum about that last year – it almost gave her a heart attack!). 

What more is there to tell about me? I love to “waste” a lot of time chatting away with my friends, flat mates and people I just met. I am easily enthusiastic about new projects, so my schedule is always exploding. That’s probably why I am always dazing away when I am going out. If it ever happens while I am in a pub with you, please don’t take it personally! : ) In contrast to that, I sometimes just want to lie around in bed eating pizza and watching stupid series for days (btw, my favourite is My Name is Earl).

 

If you’re wondering what I do in my free time, I can’t really give you an answer. Most of the time I am just so swamped with my everyday life, I don’t have any time to take up hobbies right now. In Italy, however, I used to participate in a cross cultural theatre workshop named “Human Beings”. This kind of acting immediately put a spell on me and I would love to join a workshop here in Graz too! So if you happen to know a similar workshop, tell me please!

Well, that's enough about me. Let’s read your blogs!

I am I and my circumstance

The Roman Castle and the Theatre of Sagunto

Well... who am I? As the philosopher Ortega y Gasset said: "I am I and my circumstance" but what more could I say about me? My real name is José though almost everyone calls me Pepe (it’s a diminutive, as in the Italian names Giuseppe=Peppe), I am 20 years old and study Translation and Interpreting because I've always enjoyed learning languages. The truth is that I'm not a very interesting person. I consider myself a person that has a screw loose, but I can be a bit shy when I don’t know the people around me. I was born in Sagunto, Spain and now I am studying in Graz thanks to the ERASMUS programme.

With regard to my hobbies, I love theatre, when I was a kid I dreamed with being an actor. As I grew up my passion for theatre led me to join a theatre course in my town. I still remember our first improvisation match. For those who do not know what this means, a improvisation match is a “battle” between teams in which each team makes a representation without any script, just a few keywords given by the public that thanks to the imagination of the actors end up becoming a small performance. The second year of theatre we did a play that I can remember like it was yesterday, it was the first time I felt that the theatre was part of me.

In my room I don’t have many things because in two suitcases in which only let you put 23kg of weight in one of them and 8kg in the other there can be only a few things. But something I could bring with me from my country was a "estelada", a flag that maybe you have seen lately in the news, is the flag that represents the Catalan people fighting for their freedom. Yes, in Valencia we also speak Catalan and some of us feel that we are more siblings of Catalan people than of Spanish. Another thing that I brought from Sagunto is a gift that my friends made me, is a banner with pictures and their messages. In the photo we are in Graz, some of them came to me this February and the truth is I had a great time.

Coming back to the Ortega y Gasset’s quote (“I am I and my circumstance”) and what it means: I'm not just me, I have also part of Graz inside me, part of Sagunto, part of my culture and language, and of everything that surrounds me; in short, my circumstance.