FAU - Cris Barra

At Christmas of '97 when I was four years old I received the toy that maybe was the main inspiration to study Architecture, a set of LEGO bricks. At first I've tried to make the houses that appears in the box, but was getting boring by the time, so I've started trying to replicate some landmarks of Santiago especially the ENTEL Tower, maybe one the most important landmark of Santiago in the late 90's, this figure was one of my most common recreations in LEGO. By the time these creations has becoming to be better but at my teen ages, I changed the blocks for the modelling programs for computer as Sketchup, from these moment I've decided to make the big step and study architecture, because it was one of the engines that moves my life accompanied by the Archery, the Vexillology and the Olympic Games. In 2013, the year when I've enteres at FAU, I've discoverde one LEGO set called "Architecture Studio" but I've discovered that is very expens...

One of the app that I use more often in my phone is called "Obenkyo" (Study in Japanese), I've discovered this application around three years ago, some months before my entry at the Japanese Language Academy. For me Obenkyo was the first milestone for my Japanese Language studies, at first I've started with Katakana and Hiragana, after I've learn both syllabaries I had a strong base to start my Japanese Studies. Normally I use this app around 30 minutes by day, the most of the time to improve my callygraphy and now to learn the most feared thing for the Japanese Language Students, the famous "Kanjis", if I want to get the Japanese Profiency Certificate I must learn 103 kanjis for the N5 centificate and if I want to get the N1 certificate I must learn over 3000 kanjis, a very hard goal, but not impossible. For the moment this apps keeps in development to improve some failures and add more kanjis by the time, at this moment Obenkyo have only the N5 K...

Five years ago, I've crossed the pond for the first time in my life, the reason of this trip was to compete at the second stage of the Archery World Cup in Antalya (Turkey), before the competition I went to Berlin (Germany) for a training camp to help us to carry on with the "Jet-Lag"after all the activities has finished we've had a stopover at Munich (Germany... too). I didn't had any idea for the scales for our return to Chile, and our former coach told us that the fist scale will be seven hours in Munich, he asked to us what we can do in that hours, as a great Olympic Fan, I've said why not go to the Olympic Park and know some of the venues that was used at the 1972 Olympic Games? All the team thought that was a great idea, so we went there, I can say these park is really impressive, but the most important piece of this park was the tensile roof of the Olympic Stadium, perhaps the masterpiece of the German Architect Frei Otto (Pritzker 2015), before my ...

For me choose a piece of technology which had an important role in my life , wasn't very hard because the only device what made these difference was My Personal Computer whatever its model or kind (as Desktop or Laptop). At first my PC has been a important tool for my first steps in my educational development, specially for reading, for this I've used a software that my father got from the Ministry of Education, it was called "Abrapalabra", thanks to these program I've learnt to read at 3 and half years. In my school days my family got an internet connection, from these days I've started to navigate across the vast ocean of internet and travel across the globe without moving from my house, and also was the starting point of my Olympic Games and Vexillology research. At my first days in highschool, I been started to learn about design softwares, as Sketchup and Illustrator, in the beginning was very difficult, but by the years I've got more experien...

When I was a Child, around four years old, I've started to see one brand new TV Game-Show called "Si se la puede, Gana!!", literally translated as "If you can, You win!!", these show was broadcasted by the Televisión Corporation of the Catholic University of Chile (known as Channel 13), the format of this TV Show was inspired by the Japanese TV Show called "Happy Family Plan", this program was broadcasted from 1998 until 2004. This program consisted about of the selection of some families across our country that they've sent a letter to apply for the program, and after that one of the heads of the selected families had to pass a skill test where you had sometimes to prove your balance, your focus, your memory, your precision and specially the capacity of control your nerves, if the test is passed the family wins a brand new car, and if not, the family have a second chance at the last program of the season. Every friday at 10 p.m. with my family...

One of my main hobbies are learning languages, at this moment I'm learning Japanese, it's a little difficult because these language have a lot of symbols, divided in three groups, two syllabaries called Hiragana and Katakana (These are the easiest) and the Kanji group, they're over 5000 characters, each of those can have various meanings and it be too hard to learn it. The international certification test for the Japanese Language it's called "Japanese Language Proficiency Test", this test have five levels, from N5 (Basic Level, must learn 103 Kanjis) to the N1(High Level, must learn over 2400 kanjis), this test is taken twice in a year (July and December). I've started to study Japanese at March of 2016, at first it wasn't very difficult because I've used my summer holidays to learn Hiragana, Katakana and some Kanjis to advance in the learning process, at those class we used one one the best know books to learn Japanese, its called "Minna...