Topics propositions

• Fame and fortune. Is it a good or bad thing? What would you do to reach your dreams of fame and/or fortune?
• Technology: how new gadgets and activities had changed our lives and our relationships. We can talk about how cellphones or Internet had changed the way we comunicate, and the concept of "privacy" nowadays.
• Is our society a loneleny one? (this is related with Unit 3, lesson 3) How modern life and new technologies help us to stay better or worse?
• We can share our experiences with important people in our lives, trying to make a chart like in Unit 4, lesson 3. And of course, we try to use conditionals.
• Our favourite everyday objects: clips, post-it, microwave... What we would do if they weren't developed?
• Talk about food and food descriptions.
•  Realism, fiction, drama? We can discuss about our favourite genera of books, movies, or plays. Last class we discovered not everyone reads a lot, but we see movies!

I propose we can think on some ideas about every topic, and share them on monday.

See you, and study a lot!

Lia.

What happens when you hit on the “Next Blog” button?

This happens. I found this blog some weeks ago, and after reading some entries, and review the related blogs, I was totally immersed on a very strange and inspiring world. Is not about hijabs, you know, is about living your beliefs, creating supporting networks, and continue being you. In this case, they are women who fit fashion and modesty. But it can be applied to any topic on your life.

A place to visit

I had a big trouble with this topic, but the solution was quite simple: If I had the possibility to buy a ticket now, without restrictions, which would be my destination? And the answer is: Bilbao.

Bilbao is the capital city of Vizcaya, in the north of Spain, almost in the border with France. It’s a very old city, founded in 1300 D.C., surrounded by two small mountain ranges, and with the Nervion river inside. Its most important commercial activity was sea commerce, ship construction, and steel industry. Nowadays, sea commerce is one of the main activities.

Today is one of the ten most populated cities in Spain, and city of the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao. Although all of its population speaks Spanish, during last decades, school programs worked to teach Euskera to new generations. Is a very difficult language, because is not a romance language, but every public sign is in Spanish and Euskera.

I suppose it’s very cold in winter, so I would like to go there in spring or summer. I’m not sure if on the north of Spain is hot as Madrid in summer, with 40ºC, and very low humidity. But I want to visit the Guggenheim Museum, walk on the river’s side, and visit all the historic places there. I’ve seen some photos and videos of the city, and it’s a beautiful one.

And I would buy this t-shirt:

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My favorite website

I really don’t use Internet websites to work, or study. Usually at work, the most used programs are Outlook or Excel. Maybe, if I were a journalist or Marketing executive, I needed to review sites about news or new trend is markets.

But in my daily life, I have some favorite (or most visited websites), which are:

Google (http://www.google.com) is the best resource of everything. When I need help to do a composition is there, when I want to study, is easy to find web sites with free material, and you can find real treasures if you are patient and try different words.

Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar) is a site to learn Japanese, but written by the experience of a student. It is not enough to learn everything, but it has good material and good explanations. You also can find a lot of material in Google.

When I need to relax, I visit Neopets (http://www.neopets.com) to play with my pets. I also spend time blogging at Livejournal (http://sansanita.livejournal.com), or reviewing crafty sites.

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My learning experience at Norteamericano Institute

I just started this year, at the half of the language program for adults. During the first semester of the year, I attended two levels, one with Professor Catherine, and one with Professor Paula.

Catherine has an interesting style of teaching. We reviewed the entire book, but we played a lot, and sang Beatles songs. The class was small (just five students), and we always had time to review the workbook and doing additional material.

After that, the study began to be more difficult, and we started with Paula. She is very sweet, just as Catherine, but she is always late in the schedule. We learned with Maria Elena, that if you want to be on date, you need to be fast (extremely fast. If you were five minutes later with her, you missed half of the class, really). But Paula is more relaxed. I had some classmates from previous level, so it was very easy to fit with the new scheme. The bad aspect of this level? The number of students. We were around ten, and the level of each one was very irregular. But we did presentations and compositions, to improve our written and spoken skills. That was absolutely in line with my objectives, because I plan to take an International Exam.

The remaining two levels experiences on a new post soon. Have a nice day.

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About colors

Since always, clothes have been a way to distinguish people. If they are men or women, married or single, young or old, these characteristics are expressed using fabrics and colors.

I prefer clothes in colors that look good with my skin color, and look good together. Of course, sometimes, I need to express my depression wearing black or gray! But it is not usual.

When I go shopping, I prefer easy to combine colors. This a little limiting policy, but it can be compensated choosing colorful accessories. I don’t express my personality on my clothes colors. I prefer to add details like makeup or special accessories to express my mood everyday.