Hello, everyone! My name is Nicole Galhardi, and I'm new to steemit!

A friend of mine introduced me to this website after I helped him translate one of his posts. He explained to me all about this engaging and wonderful community! I was thrilled and decided to be a part of it! If you have any tips/advice about this community, let me know in the comments! I appreciate your support and interest. Thank you very much! This post might be lengthy, but I'm just excited to meet you all!

Let me tell you a little bit about myself, so you can gain some insight, regarding the content you will be reading from me. I'm 19 years old and was born in Venezuela; however, I'm currently living in Australia. I'm an author, artist and aspiring scientist.

When I was 15 years old, I had to take a year off school due to some unfortunate circumstances. I had always been a high-achieving student and loved studying, so not going to school for a year was a compelling challenge. I decided, nonetheless, that I was going to invest that time. I didn't know how, but I knew I had to. I owed it to myself.
Before this break from school, I had become almost obsessed with reading. I was the person that always had a book in her hands. And so, I started to write fiction. It was fun, challenging, tiresome and provoking... all at once. I loved every second of it! So much work paid off at the end, as I completed my first book less than a year later. This book is titled "Mundo en Llamas" (World on Fire) and was published in January this year, thanks to my mother's support.

I still consider that year as one of the most productive of my life. I procrastinated, of course, but I got so tired of it. I was fed up with doing nothing. I also discovered, by accident, that I had some promising artistic skills. One day I went with my aunt to wash the car. I happened to have a notebook and a pencil with me, so, out of boredom, I picked a random picture off my phone and tried to draw it. It was a Vegeta (yes, from Dragon Ball) picture. I was shocked when I saw the final result. It didn't look bad at all! It was pretty close to the original photo. After that, I became immersed in art, trying to perfect my skills the most that I could. Today I still do it as a hobby, but I'm thinking about getting some profit out of it.

Once I came to Australia, things got interesting! I finished high school here. The first couple of months were rough and somewhat frustrating. However, I achieved an ATAR of 93.60, two academic scholarships and one accommodation scholarship to study Advanced Science (Biomolecular Physics) (Honours) or Bionanotechnology (Honours). This is something I'm very proud of! It was all worth it because I will never forget the look on my mom's eyes. I was so happy that I was able to honour all of her sacrifices. She is a badass in every sense of the word. We spent 3 years apart. She worked hard every single day to provide for my future. I'm so grateful that she's with me.

This is us!

Love her so much!

I'll be writing about art, writing tips, Venezuelan issues, politics, short stories, Spanish, langauges, among other stuff.
Thank you so much for reading this! And I hope you enjoy the content I'll be sharing!

Some examples of the drawings I've done:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmA2ApYFvUh/?hl=en&taken-by=nikolee.gal
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl6p23glJNH/?hl=en&taken-by=nikolee.gal

And my Instagram profile! (I created this account only 2 weeks ago)
https://www.instagram.com/nikolee.gal/?hl=en