A bit of Cuisine: Cachapas

Cachapas are a part of traditional Venezuelan cuisine. Like arepas it is a popular "outdoors" food, particularly in roadside stands. They can be pancakes or tamales of fresh corn dough, the latter (cachapa de hoja) are wrapped in banana leaves and boiled. The most common ones are made with fresh corn that is ground and then mixed into a thick batter and cook on a budare like pancakes; the cachapa is slightly thicker and lumpier because of the pieces from corn kernels. It can be served with many toppings, but traditionally with butter or margarine and any variety of white cheese (queso blanco) on top. They can be prepared as an appetizer or a full breakfast, depending on the size. Cachapas could be very elaborate, some including different kinds of cheese, milky cream or jam.
Venezuelan Corn Cakes: Cachapas Recipe

10 ears of corn
2 tablespoons sugar (avoid if the corn is too sweet)
1/4 cup milk
Pinch salt
Corn oil, for sauteing
1/4 lb fresh cheese
All this information and the picture above was taken from Wikipedia
I really like the Cachapas, specially when I eat them as breakfast. They are sweet and have an strong corn flavor. I prefer to eat them with butter and white cheese. They are typical from here, and there´s not a truly Venezuelan that hadn´t try them at least once (but if you try them once you´ll want to keep eating them *hehe* ^_^). I wish you could try them, for sure you would like them.

A bit of video games: The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess

This time I´m going to talk to you about the exciting action- adventure kind of video game, "The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess".
The Legend of Zelda series (ゼルダの伝説, Zeruda no Densetsu) were created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and developed by the popular company Nintendo. Since the start the Zelda series had been a success comparable with video games like "Mario bros.", "Metroid Prime Zero" and the "Final Fantasy series". All of this games had been published by Nintendo, excepting for the last Final Fantasy additions which had been developed by Sony in their popular console, the "Playstation", known for its great graphics.
"The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess" was released on November 2006 for the sixth generation console the Nintendo Wii, and a month later for the Nintendo GameCube. It tells the story of a 16 years old boy called Link who lives in a small town called Ordon, in the outskirts of the Hyrule kingdom. He is a country boy who aspires to become the mayor of the town in the future. He resembles nobility, gentleness, and he is the example for the children who live in the town, who admire him strongly.
One day he is asked to deliver a sword to the king, and at the last moment a gang of monsters attack the town and kidnap his best friend Illia, one of them hit him on the head and he fell unconscious. When he wake up he is tied with chains into a cell and he has no human for anymore, he is a wolf and he can´t understand what happened.
A very mischievous creature from the darkness appears and says that she is called Midna, and that she might help him only if she also receives help from his side.
This is when his adventure began, for the regeneration of his body, and to find his lost friend he has to fight between the light and the twilight discovering that he is truly the hero that has to save the whole kingdom or it will be dragged into the darkness by the evil fake king from the twilight, Zant.
This game is very special, because it reunites many elements from all the past Zelda series games, and it also has new elements like the fact that Link can transform himself into a wolf, which will help him in many opportunities. Also the adventure is not only developed in the "Light world" if not also in the "Twilight world", and the darkness is not presented in an evil concept, if not in a different concept, where there is a group of bad creatures who are against the good Twilight princess, and who want to conquer the whole world.
Miyamoto was inspired in experiences that he lived in his youth, in Kyoto, where he usually went to near rural towns, and he liked to visit the forest, and a cave in the depths of the forest, which was a big inspiration because the forest, and rural towns are very important and frequent elements that we can find in all of the Zelda series.
If you want to know more about the The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess I suggest that you visit their official site at http://www.zelda.com/tp/, where you will find the character´s history, a more detailed game story and some videos and downloads from the game. Hope you enjoyed the post, have a nice play!

I liked this which I found in the Internet, is a Hourglass, specifically the one from the new Zelda game: The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass.

A bit of Art: Andy Warhol

Besides this English course and the regular courses of Electronic Engineering I´m in an Art course called "The Appreciation of the Piece of Art" (CSX544). Our teacher, Coral Delgado, sent us an assignment which consist in making a presentation about a piece of art that we don´t really like with the objective to know more about the work of the artist, and then try to change our opinion. When you really understand why the artist is doing what he is doing then you can see it different, it doesn´t means you will like it, but most of the times your perception changes.

I hadn´t make my presentation but I already chose the artist who I´m going to talk about, and his name is Andrew Warhola, most known as Andy Warhol.

Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928. Since very young he suffered of St. Vitus' dance and scarlet fever what made him became somewhat of a hypochondriac. He studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and moved to New York City where he became a succesful publicist and illustrator. He was also hired by the RCA Records to design album covers and promotional material.

"Andy Warhol's first New York solo Pop exhibit was hosted at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery in November 6-24th, 1962. The exhibit included the works "Marilyn diptych," "100 Soup Cans," "100 Coke Bottles" and "100 Dollar Bills." At the Stable Gallery exhibit the artist met for the first time John Giorno who would star in Warhol's first film, "Sleep," in 1963." (taken from Wikipedia).

Andy´s work quicly became controversial and very popular because it was completly different from the art conception of the time. He wanted to do something absolutly new. He started painting cartoon characters but he wanted to be totally different from what seen so far so he changed and started painting commercial products and artists, who were his friends or people he admired.

He died in 1987 and he was the most representative artist in the genre of Pop Art.

I chose Warhol because I found his work like mere imitations of simple pictures, I thought he was getting credits copying the faces from famous personalities and making "posters" from commercial products.

Presently I understand that he had a lot of influence from commercial products because he studied commercial art, that´s what he liked and what he did through his life. Even if I still don´t find Warhol´s art quite original or inspiring, now I understand why he did it. Artists and commerce where his life, and as he presented what he most liked in his pictures he deserves respect and admiration. He also made a revolutionary art and became the most important Pop artist from history.

A Short Introduction

Hello, my name is María Gabriela Brito, I´m 19 years old and I´m an Electronic Engineering student at the USB (Simón Bolívar University).
This blog is a project for my English course (ID5128), thought by our teacher Bertha Leiva, where my peers and I are supposed to create an individual blog and talk about whatever we want, in English of course.
This is my first time creating a blog, and I´ll try to comment about everything that seems interesting to me. About my tastes, I like anime and manga (japanese cartoons), video games, languages, Asian and Italian food, animals, art and a lot more of stuff.
I`ll try to make this a very interesting blog and talk about my preferences and actual things, See you! ^_^