Long is the way without a trace,

without compass, without stars.

Black is the night as black is my soul.

Black are your eyes.

 There was a fight

between my heart and my mind.

The reason won this time.

I didn´t let my emotions to decide.

I would kill to hear your voice,

To feel your hands,

To see your look like it was

and I can´t see it no more.

Reggie Watts

 
Many times English sounds to me just like that. Here it is the most confusing TED talk I have ever seen. It is worthy to listen to it.

Bob Dylan

I could have choosen any song from Dylan because I like most of them, but this one has a special meaning for me. I bought this 'cassette', Desire, the first time I went to London at the age of 16, too much rain has fallen...:)

Anyway, music makes feel you young and I have found this amazing version from The White Stripes. The moment I found the former one from Bob Dylan I will post it. Enjoy.

"One More Cup Of Coffee"

Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky
Your back is straight your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie
But I don't sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below.

Your daddy he's an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He'll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below.

Your sister sees the future
Like your mama and yourself
You've never learned to read or write
There's no books upon your shelf
And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go.
To the valley below.

Robert Zimmerman, probably the name doesn´t say anything to you but what if I say Bob Dylan?

Since he was a teenager, he wrote beautiful songs and performed them in local coffee houses. After his season in Greenish Village, in New York, he began to gain reputation and soon he started to create unforgettable and emblematic songs that defended civil rights and anti-war movements like Blowing in the Wind and The Times are Changing, becoming in this way the voice of a generation.

It was not until 1965 however, that he reinvented himself musically shifting from acoustic music to electric one, not being afraid of the consequences that this change could provoke on his fans; just simply he got a new audience. He had no precedent on lyric writing and in the mid 60’s the reached his creative peak.

In 1980 his popularity declined after commercial disappointments but he teamed with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jimmy Hendrix and Roy Orbison creating the band The Traveling Wilburys.

Modern Times became  singer-songwriters' first #1 album in the USA since 1976's Desire. At age 65, Dylan became the oldest living person at the time to have an album enter the Billboard charts at number 1.

Today is Dylan's 71st birthday, let's congratulate him  for all these years of good music.

Here it is a video related to "flow". It is concise and clear and it shows perfectly well how people learn and which is our compromise as teachers. Lets try to put it into practice. Let's nurture creativity.

Do you feel like learning about English language in a funny way?

Do you know what anamorphosis is? Well, I didn´t know until Emilio showed us that painting by Hans Holbein “The ambassadors”, do you remember it?

In this picture, there is a clear example of this technic where the artist fits an anamorphic object in a scene painted with a normal perspective. This object is seen as a spot when you look at it from the front. Nevertheless, the painting was conceived to be exposed at a side of the stairs. Therefore, when the spectator went up the stairs, the picture was seen obliquely and the spot became a skull, a traditional symbol of the passing time and the ephemeral life.

As you can see this technic, it is not new since the above picture dates from 1533.

This oil painting is shown at the National Gallery in London, but if you cannot to visit London at the moment (by the way it must be really busy these days) I can offer you another alternative. This morning my nephew and me made an attempt of painting in an anamorphic way this morning, and taking into account that we had no the appropriate materials neither the right colours and also considering  that it is our first work it can be said that  it resulted in a  quite acceptable picture. It is called “The crack”. If we continue with this hobby, I will let you know.

Sir Ken Robinson

SIR KEN ROBINSON’S TALK

Introduction

He introduces the subject of the conference by saying it is divided into three parts: human creativity, future, and capacity of children for innovation.

Main body

1. To begin with, he explains that creativity is as important as literacy by giving some funny real examples with children. i.e.: A teacher asks a girl: - what are you drawing? and she answers: - It is a picture of God. The teacher replies: - but nobody knows what does he look like. And she murmurs: - they will know in a minute!

He adds that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.

2. He continues the talk by saying that we don´t know what is going to happen in terms of future, since in every public education curriculum Maths and Language are at the top as most important subjects followed by Humanities. Art and Music are at the bottom. He explains that it is like that due to the fact that there was no public education until the XIX century and these two subjects were the most useful ones to work in an industrialized society. Now it seems that the whole purpose of public education is to produce university professors without taking into account all those extraordinary creative people.

3. Finally, he explains the extraordinary capacity children have for innovation illustrating this part with the case of Gillian Lynne, who was a child with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) when nobody knows that this disorder existed. As she failed in school, her mother took her to a doctor who recommended that the girl should attend dance classes. She became a dancer, important choreographer and now she is multimillionaire. Someone gave her a chance to develop her creativity.

Conclusion

He concludes by saying that we have to be conscious of the richness of human capacity and rethink the fundamental principles in which we are educating our children so they can face the future.

Good morning friends, just an exercise to practise "for and against essay". I have to recognize that it has taken me more than an hour to do it. It is a hard work for a Sunday morning. See you on Tuesday.

“SCHOOL PLAYS A MORE IMPORTANT ROLE THAN THE FAMILY IN SHAPING ONE´S PERSONALITY”

Did school play a major role in the development of your personality than did your family?

One point in favour of the role of schools is that it is at school where children first learn to socialise. Since the ratio is twenty-five pupils per class as a minimum, they get used to treat with different kind of characters and personalities and they will learn to solve many kind of situations and troubles between them, what means socializing.

An additional argument in support of school is that young people are exposed to a wide variety of subjects. One typical example of this are extracurricular activities such as visits to public buildings (police station, post office, fire station…), or trips to school farms , public library, theatre, etc.

What is more, the average child spends as many as eight hours a day in school, which is a logical reason to think that school´s influence is enormously important in his life.

On the other hand, most children have a closer relationship with their parents than with their teachers, which imply that a child’s psychological features are formed by following the patterns given by his or her parents.

Moreover, so much of the school day is devoted to competition and preparation for examinations that there is little time left for personality development. In example, in terms of primary education, the weekly time dedicated to subjects such as Maths, Sciences  or Languages is nearly the triple than the one spend in subjects such as Alternative Education, Arts or Citizenship.

Furthermore,  children usually spend five years of their lives at home before they even go to school. That is because they see their parents as the model to follow and of course children rely on them and turn to them any time they need help or support.

To sum up it is true to say that school plays a fundamental role in the formation of an individual personality. However, it is obvious that when we talk about unstructured families, usually the patrons followed are the ones given by the family and only in limited cases children are mature enough to understand that what they are taught at school is the good path to follow.

After several attempts, I gave up at last, and now ‘To the Lighthouse’ sleeps comfortably on my bookshelf.  Can you see it? It is the one on the top right corner. It is in the section of English books, it is not as big as I would like but I am proud of having and English book section. Anyway, two weeks ago, I went to Granada with my family and as always, I like to go to librería metro to have a look and there it was, the book bound to be read by me. I know for sure that it is not as good as ‘To the Lighthouse’, since I rely on Emilio’s opinion about this book, but it has cliff-hanging scenes that urge me to continue reading. It is also certain that I am not learning as much vocabulary as I could by reading the former one. Nevertheless, I am getting new words and enjoying that is my aim. Well, the book concerned is ‘The forgotten garden’  by Kate Morton, I recognise that it sounds just like a romantic novel, the kind of Jane Austen’s, but no lovers around, not at the moment, just an Australian woman looking for her grandmother’s roots in England. The searching is awkward since Nell (the grandmother) was a foundling. The action takes place in three different stages:  1913 when Nell is abandoned, 1975 the living period shared by the two main characters and 2005 when the authentic pursuit is undertaken.

As suggested before, the book is quite simple. Notwithstanding, you can find beautiful descriptions from time to time, as the one that follows:

"...He was a scribble of a man. Frail and fine and stooped from a knot in the centre of his knobbled back. Beige slacks with grease spots clung to the marbles of his knees, twig-like ankles rose stoically from oversized shoes, and tufts of white floss sprouted from various fertile spots on an otherwise smooth scalp. He looked like a character from a children's story. A fairy story."

Hi again, howizitgoin´?

there is a Waterboys´  song roaming my head all this days, and I wonder why since it has nothing to do with Easter, well the thing is it is wonderful and I just want to share it with all of you. Enjoy it!

Good morning everybody, I continue waking up at seven, and following the same routine, the only difference is that I am not going to work; even so, I cannot find time enough for me. It is supposed that I would have spare time to study English but Gods are against me, I´ve got so many things to do… My house is cluttered up with clothes to iron, books to order, toys to pick up, and children to feed, for not to mention my cat, she never leaves me alone. Now she is here, by the keyboard, trying to debar me from writing anything.   I wonder if I will be able to mend all this mess any time.  My husband does his part but it is of little avail since when everything is more or less tidy, mess begins to appear again, I don´t know how. By the way, do you think I´m lying?  Here you´ve got a proof:

This is my son´s bedroom and it reminds me of one of those teenager´s bedrooms that appear in American films, aren’t you gasped?  I was, but it is just a room and I´m not dejected, I just close the door it is the most reasonable thing to do when you´ve got more gripping things in which spend your time.

By no means, I´m going to abandon the C1 adventure, I am relentless, I am not going to give up, and we will see where this “crazy train” is taking me. Meanwhile I´m enjoying this travel a lot.

And speaking of crazy train, here you´ve got a version of this Ozzy Osbourne´s song by Bullet For My Valentine. Let be clearly understood that I don´t like heavy very much.

All aboard
Crazy,but that's how it goesMillions of people living as foesMaybe it's not too lateTo learn how to loveAnd forget how to hate
Mental wounds not healinglife's a bitter shameI'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I've listened to preachersI've listened to foolsI've watched all the dropoutsWho make their own rulesOne person conditioned to rule and controlThe media sells it and you live the role
Mental wounds still screamingDriving me insaneI'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I know that things are going wrong for meYou gotta listen to my wordsYeah
Heirs of a cold warThat's what we've becomeInheriting troubles I'm mentally numbCrazy, I just can not bareI'm living with something that just is't fair
Mental wounds not healingWho and what's to blameI'm going off the rails on a crazy train

ELDERLY PEOPLE

When I was living in England, one of the places that I visited was Cheshire since two of my best friends were working in an old people's home. Between others, a traffic sign that specially grasped my attention was this one:

It is amazing, there were so many old people living near there that it was necessary this kind of signs, even I took a photo from it. Looking at this picture I have remembered that the place where I lived, Eastbourne, was called the cemetery because buses crowded of elderly people came every day to spend a few days on holiday. In spite of the bad food and the bad weather I think England is the place where more elderly people I have seen doing a normal life, going out to parties, driving, working, etc.

FINE-TUNNING OUR WRITING 2

It was very early in the morning, exactly 5:20 am, earlier than usual for the retired Martin and for any other human being, taking into account it was Sunday. After a whole life waking up at 6 to arrive on time to the high school where he imparted Literature lessons, he would now choose to relax comfortably in bed until the sun had risen and began to penetrate through his bedroom window. But that spring day a strange and uncanny feeling had come into him; it was a sensation of anxiety that invaded his body and he felt he should get up at such and inopportune time. Martin didn't know exactly what to do so he dressed up with the clothing he had left the night before on the small settee by the window, took the book that his daughter Clare has gifted him in his last 83 birthday and started reading it by the bedroom window. The nightingales were singing outside, in the garden that formerly had been the untidiest and wild of the neighbourhood and now was one of the most envied since the old teacher dedicated many of his free time to take care of it.  This twitter was mainly concentrated  all over the great old willow which Martin's great grandfather had planted some 150 years ago, according to the family record. Suddenly, there was silence, such a deep quietude that Martin was profoundly affected. He stood up as a spring and looked through the window. Under the centenarian willow there was a, let's  say, fragile boy, probably under ten, dressed in poor old clothes, reading a book. The vision was so shocking and out of the context that Martin rubbed strongly his eyes. For a long time that seemed endless, he stared at the boy, who was deeply absorted in his book, as it was his habitual place of reading, his space to enjoy novels and fantastic stories, a corner of his own garden. Then Martin crept carefully downstairs, without making a noise, opened the glass door onto the blooming piece of land and again padding softly so not to disturb the lad, he approached the tree. Coming near the ground, he inquired: "It seems a very interesting reading, doesn't it?" For the first time, the boy looked away from the pages and, smiling in a shy but charming way, said: "It is the book of my life". When the boy raised his head and they eyed each other Martin perceived that it wasn't the first occasion he had seen this child. Even his clothes were familiar to him. "Do you live near here?", Martin asked curiously. "I do", said the boy. "What about your parents, do I know them?" "Of course, you do". Martin began to suspect and with a hint of trembling in his voice stuttered: "is your-your name Ma-Ma-Martin?" "It is," answered him beaming openly. The astonished teacher stumbled and fell when he reacted to such an answer: It was himself.

All of a sudden he realized how quick life had passed, how ephemeral we are. His life had been a full one, he had enjoyed family, friends, travels,... With literature as a goal he had gave lessons, he had written inspiring books advicing people on how to take pleasure in plain things of life, such as he had done all these years. At this very moment he was content, satisfied of his trajectory and watching all his memorabilia passing before his eyes, he understood that the non desirable but on the other hand awaited hour had arrived. Now, he reckoned, is high time I wrote "The End" in "The book of my life".

Last week I watched a funny comedy called "Jumping the Broom" (as you can see my friends, and as impossible it may seem, I did find the time to watch a movie) but I couldn´t guess the meaning of the tittle until scarcely had it finished.

Since the subject grasped my attention I decided to look for information in the Internet and that is what I found:

Jumping the broom, as it name indicates, means to jump over a broom (when you have just got married).

The origin of this costume is a bit confusing. Historically, "broom-stick weddings" were first known in Wales. There has been dispute among scholars over whether the tradition originated among the Welsh people themselves or among Romani living in Wales. A commonly held belief is that the practice has roots in West Africa and as the film is played by black people I will take this for granted.

In Ghana brooms were considerated spiritual symbols and were wawed above the heads of newlyweds and their parents, and since ethnic groups in Ghana were prominent in the Atlantic Slave Trade, it is possible that this practise passed along.

Most marriages between enslaved blacks were not legally recognized during American slavery, as in law marriage was held to be a civil contract, and civil contracts required the consent of free persons. In the absence of any legal recognition, the slave community developed its own methods of distinguishing between committed and casual unions. The ceremonial jumping the broom served as an open declaration of setting down in a marriage reationship. Jumping the broom was always done before witnesses as a public ceremonial announcement that a couple chose to become as close to marriend as was then allowed.

And this is one more aspect of slavery (racism) of which I was ignorant of.

I do hope that this piece of information will be useful, or at least peculiar for you.

NO DICKENS, SORRY

Here I am, Sunday night, and still involved in C1 tasks, it's gonna be my divorce!!! (just kidding :))

I have let my thoughts wandering but I cannot find words, expressions or even a piece of a story to write in a similar way to Dickens, it is a very daring and awkward task, at least for me, I have never read Dickens before, anyway.

Maybe I am able but not inspired this weekend, I don't know, the thing is that I try to have the blog updated and I should to write something to do so, that is because I'm writing about what I am not going to do.

All this sounds like a paranoia, better to give up by now. 

My writing of this week has nothing to do with terrorism. I´m going to try to write a story using inversion and passive voice. Let´s see what happen.

While living in England I was taught a lot of vocabulary and expressions from Lady Rosamund Newborough, a charming and nice old lady for whom I worked. One of the words that grasped my attention during a conversation with her was "balaclava". Do you know what a balaclava is? Here it is the definition: close-fitting garment covering the whole head and neck except for parts of the face, typically made of wool.

Never have I heard such a word before. It sounded like Spanish but the origin was unknown to me. Which was the etymology of this curious word? Was it coming from Latin or maybe Spanish? In that moment it was impossible for me to check where was it coming from and I forgot about it since it is a word not frequently used.

Little did I imagine that the answer to my question would appear unexpectedly  while reading "To The Lighthouse". Let me explain myself, there is a sentence on page 22 that reads at follows: "...he turned sharp, and rode off, to die gloriously she supposed upon the heights of Balaclava."

What a surprise! Here it was again, "Balaclava", after so long. Being written with a capital B made me to be suspicious of and then I took my monilingual dictionary and looked up for such a word discovering that there was a battle with this name.

Battle of Balaclava: a battle of the Crimean War, fought between Russia and an alliance of British, French and Turkish forces in and around the port of Balaclava (now Balaklava) in the southern Crimea in 1854. the battle ended inconclusively; it is chiefly remembered as the scene of the Charge of The Light Brigade. 

So I discovered that balaclavas were worn originally by soldiers on active service in the Crimean War, hence the name of this cloth. What a relief! What a thorn remove from my mind! What a joy!

The ways in which we learn a language are always unsuspected, you just have to be in the right place at the right moment. If I wouldn´t come to EOI to do the C1, hardly would have I ever thought about reading "To The Lighthouse" and never would have I found this word again, but I did, and now I´m proud and happy of knowing where the word balaclava is coming from. Isn´t it cool?

Good morning everybody! Do you feel like a hippie party? 

 Last week it was my friends Pilar and Marcos´ 50th birthday and they decided to celebrate it in a peculiar way last night. So they rented a rural house very near from Motril and invited their friends to a fancy dress party. It was very amusing and also sentimental since they were remembering old times through a slide show of photos (you know,  military service, Holy  Comunion,  wedding, siblings,... ) Marcos´ brother spoke about the events that took place when they were born (Vietnam war, first Beatles´ song: Love Me Do, the birth of Spiderman, people that were born in the same year than them: Bon Jovi, Demi Moore,...) and when  everybody was nearly crying, music began to sound: tallyho!!! Jimmy Hendrix, Deep Purple, Nino Bravo, Santana, Janis Jopplin,...) It was great really fun!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PILAR AND MARCOS!

My friends Patty and Mer and me.

Pili, the hippy hostess.

Marcos, the hippy host and Manolo Hendrix.

Elvis was there too.

CHARLES DARWIN

Why did I choose Darwin?

First of all, because when I was a girl the book "On the Origen of  Species" were always going round my home though I never read it. I guess it was from one of my four sisters and now that each of us live in different houses I wonder where the book will be, if exists.

Secondly, since I have never read the book, my conscience told me that, at least, I should research  about the author, so I did.

Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire on the 12th of February of 1809 (by the way, I was living very near there for six months). Since he was a child he was interested in nature and after studying at Cambridge University he was invited to sail on the HMS Beagle on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America. He spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections.

He established that  all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, a process that he called natural selection. He published his theory in his 1859 book On the Origen of Species.

The Church of England's response was mixed. There were some liberal clergymen that interpreted natural selection as an instrument of God's design and other people like the Bishop of Oxford, that argued against Darwin's explanation and human descent from apes.

He thought of religion as a tribal survival strategy, but still believed that God was the ultimate lawgiver. In 1879 he wrote that "I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. -I think that generally ...an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind".

Charles Darwin got married with his cousin Emma Wedgwood, they had ten children two of whom died in infancy. It made that his faith in Christianity faded. He suffered years of illness. He had stomach problems, headaches and heart symptoms. He died at the age of 73.

Cartoonist parodied animal ancestry in an old tradition of showing humans with animal traits, and in Britain these droll images served to popularise Darwing´s theory in an unthreatening way.

Note: The shopping centre in Shrewsbury is called "Darwin shopping center".

Lessons of life

After reading ´Mandela´s Way´ I always think of Mandela as an intelligent man, calm, patient, humble, a man who transmits tranquility, who can see the goodness in every person and doesn´t judge without knowing.

I have learnt a lot of things through this book and I have enjoyed it a lot since is practical and applicable to your own life, it really gives you lessons of life.

What I take from the book, in terms of my own life,  is that patience is a gift. Haste and urgency usually lead up to mistakes and regrets. We must be able, or at least we must learn,  to control ourselves and think twice before taking important decisions.

Another important lesson is that love moves the world. The best way of overcoming problems is to be in love (with a person of with a cause). I think love helped and made Mandela strong enough to bear his long imprisonment.

And among other lessons (because this book is good all the way through) I also take the idea that each of us must have our own garden, our own space, a place exclusively for us as individual persons whether a physical place or  listening to music, practising sport, maybe the time spent learning a language (I think this is my garden now).

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my friends from the C1!!! I haven´t done anything special this Xmas but resting body and mind and enjoying my family. Nevertheless, I have been involved in a few things that don´t require a big effort:

- on the 26th I went to Los Tablones, a small village attached to Motril, to see a living Nativity scene that local people perform only twice every year by Xmas time. They began to do it two years ago and every passing year it is becoming more popular since it is carried out with a lot of atmosphere and accuracy. I´m not religious at all but it deserves to be visited and I recommend you to go next year.

- I have watched the second season of ´Downton Abbey´, in English of course, since it hasn´t shown yet in Spain. Do you know the serie? I also recommend it to you.

- At last I could dust my guitar and play a few chords.

But now it is time to think about coming back to reality, begin to work hardly and enjoy C1.

Here are some photos from the Nativity scene and from my daily routine.

Amor Leigh´s 4th birthday (my daughter) on the 16th of December.

De tapas on Xmas!

My son, Agustín, with his guitar.

By the way, do you remember this painting? It has been rewarded with a honorable mention and I´m happy for that, I need very little to be happy. Consuelo has posted it in her blog too, with my words about it, and I want to thank her for taking into account my opinion about this picture.