Spring idioms

Pre-holiday

My students didn't feel like working very much today, so this is what they did to try to convince me:

Thank you for your kind words, Pilar and Ramón but we had time to work and to enjoy too!

Rehearsing!

Rehearsals begin!

                                                                                       

We are also doing some shadows with our hands, so here are some videos to get inspired.

Solar eclipse

Today we'll see, with the right glasses, a solar eclipse. To celebrate it, a couple of songs dealing, or not, with the sun and the moon. Or not.

Limericks

http://www.rhymezone.com

http://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/lessons/how-to-write-a-limerick/

How to Write a Limerick

WHAT IS A LIMERICK?

Limericks are one of the most fun and well-known poetic forms. No one knows for sure where the name “limerick” comes from, but most people assume it is related to the county of Limerick, in Ireland.

Edward Lear is the most renowed limerick writer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lear

The reason limericks are so much fun is because they are short, rhyming, funny, and have a bouncy rhythm that makes them easy to memorize. In this lesson, I’ll show you how you can write your own limericks in just a few easy steps.

THE RULES OF LIMERICKS

Limericks, like all poetic forms, have a set of rules that you need to follow. The rules for a limerick are fairly simple:

• They are five lines long.
• Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme with one another.
• Lines 3 and 4 rhyme with each other.
• They have a distinctive rhythm (which I’ll explain shortly)
• They are usually funny.

RHYMING A LIMERICK

The rhyme scheme of a limerick is known as “AABBA.” This is because the last words in lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme. Those are the “A’s” in the rhyme scheme. The “B’s” are the last words of lines 3 and 4. Let me give you an example:

Let’s take a look at one famous limerick:

There was an old man of Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket;
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

— Anonymous

SOME LIMERICK TRICKS

There are two more things that you will notice when you read limericks:

1. The first line usually ends with a person’s first name or the name of a place.
2. The last line is usually funny.

Because the first line is usually the name of a person or place, writing the first line is the easiest part. You simply pick the name of a place or person – like “New York” or “Dave” – and write a line like this:

There once was a man from New York

Or

There was and old woman named Dave

Then go to your rhyming dictionary and start looking for rhymes like “cork,” “fork,” “pork,” “stork,” or “cave,” “gave,” “wave,” and so on to find more words to complete your limerick.

Once you’ve found some rhyming words, you’ll want to start thinking about a funny ending for your poem. I find it’s easiest to write lines 1, 2, and 5 first, and then to fill in lines 3 and 4 afterward. For example, I decided to write a limerick about someone from Seattle, so I started it like this:

A talkative man from Seattle
would spend his days speaking to cattle.

I then noticed that the word “prattle” rhymed with “cattle” and “Seattle” so I wrote the last line, like this:

She said, “Why it’s nothing but prattle!”

Finally, I went back and wrote lines 3 and 4 to complete the limerick:

A talkative man from Seattle
would spend his days speaking to cattle.
When asked what he said,
one old cow shook her head,
and replied, “Why it’s nothing but prattle!”

You’ll notice that I changed the last line after I wrote lines 3 and 4.  I did this so the poem would make more sense. It’s okay to change your words at any time if it improves the poem.

YOUR TURN

Now it’s your turn to see if you can write a limerick of your own. Remember to follow these steps:

1. Choose the name of a person or place and write the first line.
2. Look in a rhyming dictionary for words that rhyme with your person or place name.
3. Write line 2 and 5 to rhyme with the first line.
4. Now write lines 3 and 4 with a different rhyme.

When you are done writing, read your limerick out loud to see if it has the right rhythm; three “beats” on lines 1, 2, and 5, and two “beats” on lines 3 and 4, as shown above. If not, see if you can rewrite some words to get the rhythm right.

LIMERICKS TAKE PRACTICE

I know that writing limericks is going to seem hard at first because it’s sometimes difficult to get the rhythm, the rhymes, and the joke to all work together. But don’t worry; with a little practice, you’ll soon be creating funny limericks of your own that will make your friends and family laugh. Have fun!

More examples:

There once was a young girl named Jill. 
Who was scared by the sight of a drill. 
She brushed every day 
So her dentist would say, 
“Your teeth are so perfect; no bill.”

I once knew a word I forgot
That means, "I am sorry we met
And I wish you the same."
It sounds like your name
But I haven't remembered it yet.


There once was an ape in a zoo
Who looked out through the bars and saw YOU!
Do you think it's fair
To give poor apes a scare?
I think it's a mean thing to do.

There once was a Martian named Zed
With antennae all over his head.
He sent out a lot
Of di-di-dash-dot
But nobody knows what he said.

There once was a hunter named Paul
Who strangled nine grizzlies one Fall.
Nine is such a good score,
So he tried for one more
But he lost. Well, you can't win them all!

Speedy Sam, while exploring a cave,
Had what I call a very close shave.
He stepped on a bear,
That had dozed off in there.
I'm glad he was faster than brave.

There once were two back-country geezers
Who got porcupine quills up their sneezers.
They sat beak to beak
For more than a week
Working over each other with tweezers.

Said a salty old skipper from Wales,
"Number one, it's all right to chew nails.
It impresses the crew.
It impresses me too.
But stop spitting holes in the sails!"

There once was a poor boy named Sid
Who thought he knew more than he did.
He thought that a shark
Would turn tail if you bark.
So he swam out to try it --- poor kid!

There was a young fellow who thought
Very little, but thought it a lot.
Then at long last he knew
What he wanted to do,
But before he could start, he forgot.

13.1 mm thin

A couple of days ago one of my students, Alberto, posed an interesting question after warching a video about the new MacBook. Could it be said, "13mm thin", or "13 mm thick"? He argued that we normally say "the big" adjective, in examples such as "13 years old", "2 metres tall" or "3 hours long"

From my point of view, we use the adjective that interests us more, thus, 13 mm THIN, as we want to emphasize thinness. Were it be a mattress, it would be 100 mm THICK.

Here's another explanation:

"old" is an adjective, of course. 
"fifty years" is a noun phrase used as an adverb answering the question "how (old)?". 

How old is he? = adverb adjective verb pronoun. 

The pattern is NUMBER + UNIT + DIMENSION-ADJECTIVE 

Numbers: 3, 6, 10, 20, 75, ... 

Dimension adjective: old Corresponding Units: years, days, months, ... 
Dimension adjective: long Corresponding Units: miles, feet, yards, meters, light-years 
Dimension adjective: wide Corresponding Units: (same as for length) 

From this we get "How long?" "Five meters long." "How old?" "Fifty years old." "How deep?" "A millimeter deep." ... 

Exception: It's not "25 degrees hot", just "25 Degrees.

I hope it's clearer now!

St. Patrick's Day

On March 17th The Irish celebrate St. Patrick. What do you know about this day? Read, watch the videos and find out.

And this is St Patrick as seen by science!

Lyrics:
In the year of our lord eighteen hundred and eleven
On March the seventeenth day
I will raise up a beer and I'll raise up a cheer
For Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Here's to brewers yeast, that humblest of all beasts
Producing carbon gas reducing acetaldehyde
But my friends that isn't all -- it makes ethyl alcohol
That is what the yeast excretes and that's what we imbibe

Anaerobic isolation
Alcoholic fermentation
NADH oxidation
Give me a beer

[CHORUS]

My intestinal wall absorbs that ethanol
And soon it passes through my blood-brain barrier
There's a girl in the next seat who I didn't think that sweet
But after a few drinks I want to marry her
I guess it's not surprising, my dopamine is rising
And my glutamate receptors are all shot
I'd surely be bemoaning all the extra serotonin
But my judgment is impaired and my confidence is not

Allosteric modulation
No Long Term Potentiation
Hastens my inebriation
Give me a beer

[CHORUS]

When ethanol is in me, some shows up in my kidneys
And inhibits vasopressin by degrees 
A decrease in aquaporins hinders water re-absorption
And pretty soon I really have to pee
Well my liver breaks it down so my body can rebound
By my store of glycogen is soon depleted
And tomorrow when I'm sober I will also be hungover
Cause I flushed electrolytes that my nerves and muscles needed

Diuretic activation
Urination urination 
Urination dehydration
Give me a beer

[CHORUS]

HISTORY OF ST. PATRICK’S DAY

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on March 17, the saint’s religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over 1,000 years. On St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink and feast–on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.

ST. PATRICK AND THE FIRST ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE 

Saint Patrick, who lived during the fifth century, is the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland. Born in Roman Britain, he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave at the age of 16. He later escaped, but returned to Ireland and was credited with bringing Christianity to its people. In the centuries following Patrick’s death (believed to have been on March 17, 461), the mythology surrounding his life became ever more ingrained in the Irish culture: Perhaps the most well known legend is that he explained the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) using the three leaves of a native Irish clover, the shamrock.

DID YOU KNOW?

More than 100 St. Patrick's Day parades are held across the United States; New York City and Boston are home to the largest celebrations.

Since around the ninth or 10th century, people in Ireland have been observing the Roman Catholic feast day of St. Patrick on March 17. Interestingly, however, the first parade held to honor St. Patrick’s Day took place not in Ireland but in the United States. On March 17, 1762, Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City. Along with their music, the parade helped the soldiers reconnect with their Irish roots, as well as with fellow Irishmen serving in the English army.

GROWTH OF ST. PATRICK’S DAY CELEBRATIONS 

Over the next 35 years, Irish patriotism among American immigrants flourished, prompting the rise of so-called “Irish Aid” societies like the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick and the Hibernian Society. Each group would hold annual parades featuring bagpipes (which actually first became popular in the Scottish and British armies) and drums.

In 1848, several New York Irish Aid societies decided to unite their parades to form one official New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Today, that parade is the world ‘s oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States, with over 150,000 participants. Each year, nearly 3 million people line the 1.5-mile parade route to watch the procession, which takes more than five hours. Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Savannah also celebrate the day with parades involving between 10,000 and 20,000 participants each.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY, NO IRISH NEED APPLY AND THE “GREEN MACHINE” 

Up until the mid-19th century, most Irish immigrants in America were members of the Protestant middle class. When the Great Potato Famine hit Ireland in 1845, close to 1 million poor and uneducated Irish Catholics began pouring into America to escape starvation. Despised for their alien religious beliefs and unfamiliar accents by the American Protestant majority, the immigrants had trouble finding even menial jobs. When Irish Americans in the country’s cities took to the streets on St. Patrick’s Day to celebrate their heritage, newspapers portrayed them in cartoons as drunk, violent monkeys.

The American Irish soon began to realize, however, that their large and growing numbers endowed them with a political power that had yet to be exploited. They started to organize, and their voting block, known as the “green machine,” became an important swing vote for political hopefuls. Suddenly, annual St. Patrick’s Day parades became a show of strength for Irish Americans, as well as a must-attend event for a slew of political candidates. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman attended New York City ‘s St. Patrick’s Day parade, a proud moment for the many Irish Americans whose ancestors had to fight stereotypes and racial prejudice to find acceptance in the New World.

THE CHICAGO RIVER ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY 

As Irish immigrants spread out over the United States, other cities developed their own traditions. One of these is Chicago’s annual dyeing of the Chicago River green. The practice started in 1962, when city pollution-control workers used dyes to trace illegal sewage discharges and realized that the green dye might provide a unique way to celebrate the holiday. That year, they released 100 pounds of green vegetable dye into the river–enough to keep it green for a week! Today, in order to minimize environmental damage, only 40 pounds of dye are used, and the river turns green for only several hours.

Although Chicago historians claim their city’s idea for a river of green was original, some natives of Savannah, Georgia (whose St. Patrick’s Day parade, the oldest in the nation, dates back to 1813) believe the idea originated in their town. They point out that, in 1961, a hotel restaurant manager named Tom Woolley convinced city officials to dye Savannah’s river green. The experiment didn’t exactly work as planned, and the water only took on a slight greenish hue. Savannah never attempted to dye its river again, but Woolley maintains (though others refute the claim) that he personally suggested the idea to Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY AROUND THE WORLD 

Today, people of all backgrounds celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, especially throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. Although North America is home to the largest productions, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in many other locations far from Ireland, including Japan, Singapore and Russia.

In modern-day Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day was traditionally been a religious occasion. In fact, up until the 1970s, Irish laws mandated that pubs be closed on March 17. Beginning in 1995, however, the Irish government began a national campaign to use interest in St. Patrick’s Day to drive tourism and showcase Ireland and Irish culture to the rest of the world. Today, approximately 1 million people annually take part in Ireland ‘s St. Patrick’s Festival in Dublin, a multi-day celebration featuring parades, concerts, outdoor theater productions and fireworks shows.

Bingo!

Bingo!
Just by chance, this song is the soundtrack of 3º C and 3ºD
Listen up and enjoy!

Some of my students' compositions and dialogues

Keep up the good work!

The boy who could do it

El niño que pudo hacerlo

Dos niños llevaban toda la mañana patinando sobre un lago helado cuando, de pronto, el hielo se rompió y uno de ellos cayó al agua. La corriente interna lo desplazó unos metros por debajo de la parte helada, por lo que para salvarlo la única opción que había era romper la capa que lo cubría.

Su amigo comenzó a gritar pidiendo ayuda, pero al ver que nadie acudía buscó rápidamente una piedra y comenzó a golpear el hielo con todas sus fuerzas.
Golpeó, golpeó y golpeó hasta que con-siguió abrir una grieta por la que metió el brazo para agarrar a su compañero y salvarlo.

A los pocos minutos, avisados por los vecinos que habían oído los gritos de socorro, llegaron los bomberos.

Cuando les contaron lo ocurrido, no paraban de preguntarse cómo aquel niño tan pequeño había sido capaz de romper una capa de hielo tan gruesa.
-Es imposible que con esas manos lo haya logrado, es imposible, no tiene la fuerza suficiente ¿cómo ha podido conseguirlo? -comentaban entre ellos.

Un anciano que estaba por los alrededores, al escuchar la conversación, se acercó a los bomberos.
-Yo sí sé cómo lo hizo -dijo.
-¿Cómo? -respondieron sorprendidos.
-No había nadie a su alrededor para decirle que no podía hacerlo.

Eloy Moreno. Adaptación de un cuento popular.
Incluído en “Cuentos para entender el mundo”
Puedes conseguirlo firmado y dedicado aquí:
Ver libro

My favourite words

Hello! To begin the week with a smile, here is the opinion of an English native speaker on his favourite Spanish words. What are yours? Comments welcome!

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/favorite-spanish-words

8 Spanish Words We Should Be Using in English

The following eight Spanish words have been carefully selected from two years on the Iberian peninsula spent studying the language and befriending its people.

BY ED M. WOOD

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When I left university I felt like I was bursting through a set of saloon swing doors, arms loaded with qualifications about to hold up the professional world until they handed over the job of my dreams. I think many graduates feel like this, and this misplaced confidence compounds the disappointment when the professional world shrugs its collective shoulders.

My reaction to this disappointment was to turn my back on the opportunity vacuum and stock up on soft skills. I googled for TEFL courses in Spain, found a charming townlet called Zamora in Castilla y Leon and booked myself a one-way ticket. My Spanish education, albeit informal, started almost as soon as we touched down. I was tasked with navigating my way across Madrid weighed down by my backpack and an oppressive, immovable mid-summer mugginess.

Your relationship with new words is shaped to some extent by the context in which you learn them. Whenever I hear words like estación de trenes(train station), vía (track) and billete (ticket), images of hulking, dusty mazes of misinformation arise in bubbles of residual dread. I consider this part one of my Spanish education, which I would revisit every time I tangled with foreign bureaucracy or indulged in awkward small talk, often ending up feeling inadequate and unpractised. Part two was the polar opposite: education through warm discussion with heated housemates; bar room jibes and living room jest; and the daily, routine exchanges with familiar faces in familiar places.

The following is a list of my favorite words from two years of part two. I sincerely hope you enjoy it, and look forward to your input as to your favorite foreign words.

1. Leche (noun) - Milk

You can’t do much with milk in English. If you spill it, you can cry over it, but that’s about it. One of the first things which struck me on my arrival on the Iberian peninsula was the apparent fascination with milk. Excitement, disbelief, good fortune, bad fortune, admiration… could seemingly all be expressed with the help of milk. Don’t believe me? Consider the following, entirely fabricated exchange:

El jugador de fútbol corría a toda leche cuando uno de sus oponentes le dio una leche en la pierna.

• The soccer player was running at full speed when one of his opponents hit him on his leg.

“Ay la leche”, gritó el jugador al caerse al suelo.

• “Damn it”, cried the player as he fell to the floor.

Un espectador en el estadio comentó a su amigo, “¡Qué mala leche! Ese futbolista es la leche, y si está herido no va a poder jugar en la final, ¡Me cago en la leche!”

• A spectator in the stadium turned to his friend, “That was out of order!He’s the best, and if he’s injured he’s not going to be able to play in the final. Bloody hell!

Su amigo le respondió, “no te pongas de mala leche, tio. No me parece tan serio. Se levantará y seguirá jugando. Lo verás.”

• His friend responded, “don’t get into a bad mood, man. It doesn’t look that serious. He’ll get up and continue playing. You’ll see.”

“Y una leche”, dijó el espectador abatido.

• “No way”, said the spectator, dejected.

So you see, if you memorise the above expressions, you can really milk that leche.

2. Polvo (noun) - Dust

“Dust” is a surprisingly versatile word in English: a footballer may receive a particularly hard tackle and kiss the dust, only to receive an apology from the opposing player once the game is over and the dust has settled. As you grow up, your favorite teddy bear may be left in a corner to gather dust, only to be dusted off once the next generation of bear huggers comes along. Just like in English, you can bite the dust, or morder el polvo, in Spanish, although I wouldn’t recommend it.

Si estás hecho polvo - if you’re made (into) dust - then you’re ground down, exhausted, knackered, whacked, and si estás hecho polvo de la cabezathen you’re stir crazy, nuts or out to lunch. And si haces polvo a alguien, then you make someone (into) dust, meaning you wipe the floor with someone in a competition. So you get the picture: if you’re polvo, then you’ve been pulverised.

But Spanish also uses some idioms that bear a more tenuous connection to the tiny particles that we call dust. For reasons that remain unbeknown to me, polvo also refers to the sexual act. So if you’re prudish (or mojigato; another one of my favorite words which didn’t make it into this list), then avert your gaze now… Look up the phrase echar un polvo and you’ll see the definition realizar el acto sexual, whilst if you say someone has a polvo - alguien tiene un polvo - it means you find them sexually attractive. There we have it; many shades of grey to this dust.

3. Resaca (noun) - Hangover

Resaca is one of those words that many English speakers will already know, like tapas, burrito, cargo, guerrilla, chorizo, and armada, without knowing the original or alternative meanings. Did you know that burritomeans “little donkey”; guerilla means “little war” (making the popular collocation “guerilla warfare” kind of redundant, although guerilla fare sounds like a poorly spelled circus act); and un chorizo can also mean un ladrón (a thief), making it theoretically possible for a chorizo to run away with your chorizo. Going back to the resaca, though, as I have a terrible tendency to do: tener resaca means “to have a hangover” in everyday parlance, but la resaca also refers to the undertow or undercurrent which leaves debris and driftwood scattered across a shore following a storm, and it is this playful imagery that endears me to the word.

4. Botellón (noun) - Public drinking

Botellón is the augmentative form of botella (bottle), so el botellón would literally translate as “the big bottle”. As any visiting Erasmus student will recall (although this may depend upon just how big the bottle was), un botellón is much more than a supersized coke container. Descend upon a public square and you’ll be met by hundreds of buoyant youths riding towards a sugar high on a wave of calimocho, a surprisingly potent mix of wine and coke which betrays all the stereotypes of Spain as a nation of fine-wine-worshippers. Botellón-ing has become such a feature of Spanish youth culture that further terms have been spawned, including botellódromo - an official space for the execution of botellones - and macro-botellón which, as you may have guessed, is even bigger than a big bottle, although it remains unclear at what point a botellón becomes a macro-botellón.

5. Vergüenza (noun) - Embarrassment/Shame

Vergüenza falls somewhere between shame and embarrassment depending upon the sentence into which it falls. ¡Qué vergüenza! would translate as “how embarrassing!”, while if I were to say to you ¡Qué poca vergüenza tienes! I would be castigating you for “having no shame”. But my choice of vergüenza comes not from its breadth of use but rather its involvement in two delightful terms: la de la vergüenza and vergüenza ajena. La de la vergüenza translates as “the one of the shame”, and refers to the final piece of food left on a shared plate that no one dares to pluck for fear of being banned from all future tapas-oriented activities. Vergüenza ajena is the Spanish equivalent of that popular “untranslatable” German word Fremdscham; the feeling of embarrassment or shame that one feels on behalf of the perpetrator of the shameful or embarrassing act.

6. Friolero/Caluroso (adj) - Sensitive to cold/heat

The average Brit has an ingrained need to comment on the weather or enquire thereafter at any given opportunity. This is not at all unusual when you take into account how imminently changeable and whimsical weather is in the British Isles. What’s more surprising is that it’s the Spanish, with their hazy days and sun-filled plights, who have two common words which the English could really do with: friolero and caluroso. The adjectives are used to describe someone who is particularly sensitive to cold (friolero) or heat (caluroso). So next time someone complains of the cold in clement times, tell them to stop being so friolero.

7. Desvelado (adj) - Unable to sleep because you are kept awake by something or someone

“Estuve toda la noche desvelado”, murmured my compañero de piso, or flatmate. He had just appeared from his bedroom, grumpy and confused, and so most probably unsympathetic to my need to know what on earth desvelado meant. It is in these situations that your mind races for connotations, associations, roots, derivatives, generalisable meanings of prefixes; anything that affords a stable enough foundation on which to estimate a response.

“Des-” is a negative prefix, so likely referred to the absence of something, so now I just needed to work out “-velado”. I knew una vela was one of those homonyms which baffle language learners, carrying multiple meanings including “a sail”, “a candle”, and “a vigil”. If estás a dos velas, then you’re broke, penniless, with no money for electricity and just two candles; whilst si pasas la noche en vela, then you’re on vigil all night, or awake. “That’s it!”, I thought. The opposite of en vela - to abandon the state of vigilance - he’s slept so heavily that he’s now struggling to return to the world of the living. “Pues me alegro por ti, David, que bajo este calor no me puedo ni dormir”; I was happy for him, as I could never fall asleep in the sweltering Spanish summer.

He looked at me, yet more confused; “Desvelado, tío; despierto, alerta, incapaz de dormir…” Desvelado, it turned out, was another one of those words that is conspicuous by its absence in English; to be unable to sleep because something is keeping you awake, be it noisy neighbors or your latest preoccupation.

8. Agujetas (noun) - Muscle stiffness

My final word on my list of favorite German words was Ahnungslosigkeit, which made it onto said list due to its euphony. Similarly, the word agujetasis a wonderfully guttural adventure which rockets and plummets between consonants and vowels whilst exercising some of the sounds that anglophones must master to mimic a Spanish accent successfully. Its phonetic merits are not the only thing which endear one to the word, however. Agujetas refer to the muscle ache, soreness or stiffness that one experiences in the days following unusual physical exertion.

The word’s approximation of the diminutive form of the Spanish word for needles (agujas dim. agujitas) immediately inculcates the image of thousands of tiny needles pricking a tired, cantankerous muscle group, although the true root of the word agujetas is not believed to lie here. One intriguing theory proposes the following sequence of semantic leaps; agujetas was used as a term for objects of little value. This then became a colloquial, dysphemistic label for the meagre tips given to postmen on horseback in the 18th century, which in turn became synonymous with the aches an inexperienced rider endures after riding a horse.

Words are just wonderful, aren’t they?

International Women's Day

On March 8th we remember that inequality still exists for us women in many aspects, in many countries. Here is a song about women. Enjoy.

ONE WOMAN

In Kigali, she wakes up, She makes a choice, In Hanoi, Natal, Ramallah. In Tangier, she takes a breath, Lifts up her voice, In Lahore, La Paz, Kampala. Through she’s half a world away, Something in me wants to say - We are One Woman You cry and I hear you. We are one Woman You hurt, and I hurt, too. We are One Woman Your hopes are mine We shall shine. In Juarez she speaks the truth, She reaches out, Then teaches other how to. In Jaipur, she gives her name, She lives without shame, In Manila, Salta, Embu. Though we’re different as can be, We’re connected, she with me - We are One Woman Your courage keeps me strong. We are One Woman You sing, I sing along. We are One Woman Your dreams are mine We shall shine We shall shine - And one man, he hears her voice. And one man, he fights her fight. Day by day, he lets go the old ways, One woman at a time. We are One Woman Your victories lift us all. We are One Woman You rise and I stand tall. We are One Woman Our dreams are mine We shall shine Shine, shine, shine - Official song of UN Women, “One Woman”, lyrics by Beth Blatt, music by Graham Lyle and Clay which was composed for UN Women and performed by Graham Lyle, Clay, Beth Blatt, Gemma Bulos, Tituss Burgess, Tracy McDowell, Country Reed and United Nations International School Choir. And here's another interesting video in which Malala, the girl who survived the talibans, speaks out. http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/study-break/video-zone/malala-yousafzai-winning-nobel-peace-prize

Exams

Here are a few images I found out about exams and studying. Do you agree with them?

And this is us, the teachers!