Pablo

Travel information

I am currently

Description

About me:

My name is Pablo, Im 22 and I am from Mexico City.
For many of us choosing a profession is like standing in a cross road, for some in life it may come earlier and for others later but eventually the time comes to everybody, for me it came in the spring of 2021 after finishing high school. I had gained experience both in and out of the classroom and the idea of studying University right away didn't quite fit for me. I wanted to learn more about the world in order to have a clue into how I could fit within it. It was then that a good friend suggested me taking a few months off as a workawayer, I chose to start in Spain because my father´s family came to Mexico from Spain in the Spanish Civil War and I had never been there before.

During my 14 months as a workawayer in Europe I had the good fortune of visiting beautiful places and to meet even more wonderful friends. Being a person raised in the city I often planned my trip to live in places surrounded by nature, greatly because of this I got to experience first hand the effects that the climate shift is having in the weather and the global heat cycle around the world: For the time I was in Cervinia (Italy) for the ski season most locals agreed that it was the season with highest temperatures and less snow fall in more than 20 years and, when I arrived to the Norwegian island Vannøya (400km above the arctic circle) temperatures were soaring around 28-30 degrees for at least a week (10-15º C anomaly). For this reason I decided in fall 2022 to enroll at University to study Chemical Engineering. Here I have found a new passion for Chemistry and Process Engineering, closely related fields that have helped me understand from a different perspective the pressing health and environmental issues that we are facing around the world.

Pablo

Interests

Languages

Languages spoken
English: Fluent
Spanish: Fluent
Russian: Beginner
Swedish: Beginner

More details about my language interests
This workawayer has indicated that they would be interested in sharing their language(s) or learning a new language. You can contact them directly to discuss this.

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Skills and knowledge I'd like to share or learn

I'm interested in:  

Animal Care

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Some knowledge of:  

Gardening

DIY and building projects

Being an elderly companion

General Maintenance

Creating/ Cooking family meals

Life at a Farmstay

Helping around the house

Hospitality/Tourism

Charity Work

Languages

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Able to teach about:  

Eco Projects

Art Projects

Helping with Computers/ Internet

Teaching

More details about your skills

Skills that may be of value to you :
-House painting.
-General carpentry and woodworking.
-Earth building (Ive taken a few courses on bajareque, adobe and tapial techniques).
-Violin playing (my violin is my travel partner every where I go).
-Garden care.
-Cooking (I know basic Mexican and Italian recipes as well as bread making).
-Farm and agriculture work.
-Good driver (I am used to driving a manual car in Mexico City.
-Mountain guiding: Although Im not a trained mountain guide I have experience guiding. guests while working for a hotel in the Alps.
-Bicycle repair.
-Photography (I do photography at home as extra income for University tuition).
-Bookbinding (my parents own a small printing house were we often make editions by hand).
-I love drawing and oil painting.
-Math, chemistry and physics tutorships when asked to.
-General Finance (I took a class about Project Financing for engineers at University).
-Basic web design (my dad works as a designer and we are building a website together).
-I know salsa dancing but I am a little bit rusty

Skills I have learned through life:

From my school years,
I did my school years in the Waldorf school system, here learning is thought of as a Journey where the experience is a fundamental element in the process. In waldorf schools students apart from regular curriculum study geometry and human anatomy with clay, they learn wood carving, water color, different knitting techniques, horticulture and compost making.


From my high school years,
There is a government program in Mexico which allows any person to apply for a 1 time highschool exam, if passed, this exam is equivalent to a 3 year normal highschool education scheme. I used this opportunity to make a sort of tailor made high school that allowed me to learn things I wouldn't have time to learn in a regular education system. I learned carpentry and joinery, volunteered in the fire breach brigades during the dry season in the mountains near Tepoztlán (around 1:30 hr drive form Mexico City), learned the fundamentals of earth building techniques (adobe, tapial, bajareque) with a specialist from la Universidad Autónoma de México (UAM), and I worked as an artist assistant for a painter who was making a large scale project called "La Nueva Clonación". I had a tutor with whom apart form studying history, geography and other school subjects we went to learn lithography and traditional cotton paper making in a workshop in the province of Veracruz called "La Ceiba Gráfica". I helped my mother in a fund raising campaign for donation of backpacks with water tanks to the local forest fire brigades in Tepoztlán that are used for forest conservation and fire prevention, my job was to manage the finances and to find good providers to buy the backpacks from.


I play the violin since 8 years old, Ive always studied with private lessons but I have also been part a couple of youth orchestras, playing in music with a group of different people and different instruments is an exercise I greatly enjoy. At the moment Im not part of any music organization but I keep meeting my violin teacher Irina Pogodina with whom we are currently studying solo violin works from Bach, Paganini and Wieniawski as well as the Khachaturian violin concerto.
Although I study classical repertoire y am often asked to play everything from pop songs, folk music, Christmas carols, chorus music, improvisation...etcetera. Ive played at weddings, festivals, award ceremonies, at the subway, airport, dinners, birthdays, for guests in the hotel and for the cows in a farm.

Skills and experience learned while being a workawayer (In Europe),
Workaway has allowed me to get work experience from many different contexts. I started doing farm work picking cherries and cleaning weeds in a small mountain farm in Spain and later I worked feeding and taking care of cattle in Sicily near Palermo. I worked for an art academy in Florence doing "handyman" type work (painting walls, cleaning, basic carpentry, bike fixing,...) as they were moving in a new building.

After spending time in Florence I travelled to the Alps to workaway in a small but very busy mountain lodge hotel. Here, during the summer months my main tasks were going hiking with guests (because I knew the trails) during the mornings and coming back to the hotel around 4 pm to serve dinner or to help in the kitchen. During the winter months tasks got more diverse: around 1/3 of my time was spent in the car driving guests to and from the airport in Milan and the ski lift, we served breakfasts and dinners every ay, did groceries, room cleaning, chek-ins, basic maintenance and occasionally gave ski lessons to guests that didn't know the place or needed help with their skiing. I worked here for six weeks in summer and for the whole 2021-2022 ski season.

In Oslo I helped a lady fixing a basement apartment that she wanted to rent, we removed the carpets in exchange for a pre-fabricated wooden floor, scrubbed and polished the clay floor in the bathroom and kitchen, and gave a hand of paint to where was needed. The last workaway job I took was in an island in the north of Norway where I helped fixing insulation as he there was a house in the property that needed new insulation ass well as exterior wooden wall cladding.

Skills Im learning Im currently learning:
After 14 months in Europe as a workawayer I came back home to Mexico City to start my bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering, Im currently finishing the second year. I recently got a partial scholarship to study in exchange for work at the University. I teach beginner/ intermediate level violin lessons. Last year I got a professional camera to digitize my grandpa´s slides which I have been using this semester to do still photography work (portraits, house photography and digitizing canvas paintings), extra income that allows me to cover around 85-90% of my tuition.

Age

22

What else ...

I am Mexican and Spanish national and up to date with Covid vaccines.

Some more information

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  Smoker

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  Driver's licence

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  Allergies
  no

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  Special dietary requirements
  no