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Sergy
Category: Intermediate 11-12 Date 2012-05-28 18:05:48 
I heard in the background as the seagulls hovered over the heavenly landscape. The waves crashed on the sand. Sleeping in my hammock under a big umbrella on a deserted beach, the breeze caressing my face.
Then suddenly, I got upset by a large siren that quietly slept. I immediately suspected that it was a great ship, informing the passengers of an iminent arrival in port.
Although and because of some doubt, I opened my eyes.
Oh, My God!!!! Noooooooo!!!!!!! My head screamed without saying a word.
Finally understanding what happened, everything had been a dream, and the alarm clock got me back to reality.
I wake up at 6 am, I get up at 6.10 and do not need much time in the bathroom. Obvious! With 5 minutes to wash my face, have a shave and get washed, enough.
They call me the multi-faceted person. How it could be that?
Come on! Dare to ask.
Just Titles
Category: Advanced 11-12 Date 2012-05-25 14:01:16
Possibly the last thing that is decided when a book is written is the title. Nevertheless it’s the first thing that a potential reader reads.
For this reason to choose it, it’s a difficult and decisive task and it’s very important for the success or the failure of a book. After you read the title you should want to know all about the book, it should pull you to read it. Or perhaps quite the opposite, in the moment you read it, you just decide not to open the book.
Belén
There arent intermediate positions
Category: Advanced 11-12 Date 2012-05-25 13:44:27
My favourite film director, without any doubt, is Woody Allen. I have seen all his films and I have enjoyed a lot with his stories. He is not only the director; in most of the movies he has also been the screenwriter. At not only this, since he has usually been an actor, and in some cases, the protagonist or main character.
Woody Allen has directed and screenwritten 42 films. He has been an actor in 37 occasions. And he has also done some short films, enough books, and some theatre plays. His trajectory has been regular and he has achieved a lot of awards. He is even more admired in Europe than in the U.S.A.
The main famous actors in Hollywood desire to work in his movies. It seems a necessary thing in the filmography. It is not an economic question: Woody Allen is an alive legend and is prestigious to have worked with him. Some of these actors and actresses are Melanie Griffith, Scarlet Johansson, Diane Keaton, Sean Penn, Dany de Vito, Hugh Jackman, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Robin Williams, and the Spanish ones, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. But the list is never-ending.
At the same way, in the last years, it is a touristic decoy for important cities to have one of his filming in its streets. Some examples are “Midnight in Paris”, “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona”, “Hollywood Ending”, and “Manhattan” or the next film “To Rome With Love”
I recognize a similar style in every of his films. Normally he appears like a stormy man with psychological problems, traumas, fears, and so on. And inevitably complex relationships between men and women, exhibiting impossible situations and curious processes are always described.
The argument of his films probably is the reflection of part of his life: the Judaism contradictions, couple conflicts, the habit of psychoanalysis for the North Americans...
I like the end of the films because they never have a close ending or a spectacular situation. The end of his films is always open, ready to leave my mind imagine new stories and possible future situations for the protagonist.
My favourite film is “The Purple Rose of Cairo”. Jeff Daniels and Mia Farrow are the protagonists of this romantic film. For me it is a chant of hope. There is always an exit from hard situations and we always need to lift the look for a while and start again the fight. I recommended today, specially because of the hard times we are living. It’s inspired in the great depression of 1929.
The films of Woody Allen are liked by a lot of people, but I admit that it is a personal kind of art. Normally there aren't intermediate positions: or you like it, or you hate it.
This is the trailer of “The Purple Rose of Caire”
And, if you like it, this is the whole film. It has only one problem: it is in Spanish.
Alfonso Dolset
Lady of the music
Category: Advanced 11-12 Date 2012-05-24 10:40:00
Donna Summer was a lady of the music. Probably her death won't have so much impact than the disappearance of other artist. But in fact she was the singer that came into fashion dance music; artists like Diana Ross, Janet Jackson, Paula Abdul, Madonna, Danni Minogue, Lisa Stanfield, o more current ones like Britney Spears, Rhianna, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, and so on, have been the heiresses of her style.
Donna Summer, “the queen of the Disco music” has died when she was 63, after a hard battle against a breast cancer. She kept it her illness secret and actually she was working in a new record. His family communicated it to the media “This morning, we have lost Donna Summer, a women with a lot of skills and gifts, the biggest one, her faith”
By the end of the seventieth years in the Spanish discotheques people danced with the music of artists like Camilo Sexto; the most popular music was from “singer songwriters” and the beginning of the “Nueva Ola Madrileña”. In the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, one sound heir from the Soul and the Funk music, triumphed and it meant the born of the most commercial type of music.
In the best times of Donna Summer I was still a child but when I was a teenager, I enjoyed with this kind of sound and I recognize, still today, the quality of her music. Quality without any need of a difficult and eccentric life.
Everybody remember the funny scene with the song “Hot staff”.
Thanks Donna for your legacy.
Alfonso Dolset
THE TELEPHONE CALL By Eva Gracia
Category: Intermediate 11-12 Date 2012-05-24 10:39:09
The other day I received a telephone call from one of my best friends, Erika....
She wanted to know how I was and I answered her that I was very vell but that in the previous days I had been worried about our friend, Pitxu.
Erika asked me what had been the cause and I said that Pitxu had been reforming her house and she had had many problems...
I explained Erika that one of Pitxu´s neighbours had claimed for her refurbishment because he said that she hadn´t the planning permission.
Pitxu told me that when the neigbour said it to her, she had been hysteric and asked the bricklayers about it and they explained that it was correct and consequently the refurbishment was going to last one more week.
In these moments, Erika stopped my speech and asked me when it had happened and I answered, it had been two weeks ago and she exclaimed that the refurbisment HAD ALREADY BEEN FINISHED...
We laughed and we said goodbye and promised to telephone the next week....
Has ever happened to you anything similar?
Are you fed up wtih refurbishments?
Perhaps, you should contract this bricklayer....
In One Day: six countries.
Category: Advanced 11-12 Date 2012-05-23 23:04:39
Before my children were born, I had the opportunity to travel through many countries over Europe. Usually I travelled with friends by car and we booked in the cheapest places, like camping, youth hostels or seedy hotels.
I know different cities and places in Portugal, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, and so on. We lived a lot of funny experiences and knew beautiful places and interesting people.
In an occasion at the end of our holidays, we lived a curious situation. After twenty days knowing Paris, Berlin and mainly Poland from north to south, we started our back home journey.
We got up in Poland (city of Krakow), had breakfast in Slovakia, we went through Austria and had lunch in the south of Germany, crossed near Liechtenstein, and slept in Switzerland next to the French border since we couldn’t arrive to France because of a traffic jam. In short, almost seven countries in a day!
This was my journey
I invite you to try to play this game with the objective to remember some cities and monuments from Poland.
Could you let us know in class some curious experience in one of your journeys or trips?
Thanks
Alfonso Dolset
