12/28/08

Enjoying with a Segway

My friend Juan Álvarez, a local celebrity famous for his art but also because he doesn't want to learn to swim and to drive a car or cycles, enjoying with a Segway, a vehicle hired by my company in "10 years of XL internet" party. I invite you to see a video with him and a gallery of pictures with all of us.

12/21/08

A year full of unexpected events

Once upon a time a life full of unexpected things

That's my life, specially in 2008 when all the activities begin like one thing and finish like other huge different. One example: last year, I was travel to Rome invited by my sister Cris. The original idea was to work in her project CRELOC, to learn about her new job at EEHAR (Spanish School for History and Arqueology in Rome) and to make tourism during a couple of days... A quiet trip.

Well, like I was flying with my friend Juan Álvarez who publish in the Italian magazine "Blue", all of us was invited to a party organized by the designer Franco Saudelli at his home.
There I could know two dozens of nice roman people at the same time: designers, journalists, editors... Boys and girls.
In one moment of the night, after diner, I discovered a shelf with a little collection of spectacular women's shoes... Tests, photographs, comments, laughs... Everybody plays the game!

And, surprise! My pictures and my name in "Blue. Contemporanei a l'imbecillita" several months later!

12/6/08

Testing

I'm testing some Internet skills. For example SitePal, a service on-line to create your own animated talking.

That's my firt test!
Last notice: Unfortunatly, the free version of this test remain active just for 15 days! I'll think about the possibility to pay for the service.

12/3/08

Too busy to write





Wooow! Just now, when Bell School Cambridge Newsletter has sent a notice about this blog (with this enormous photo), I'm too busy to add a new post in it. The main cause is that I prepare a party with the help of my team to celebrate "10 years XL internet".
I would like to include all my memories about my experience there before the end of the year. I need it!

11/21/08

Music and films in English


Last summer, in England, I shopped for music and DVD films. I found interesting and cheap things.

In the Bell School Library there are a lot of DVDs to be borrowed and I used it.

Currently, at home, I try to listen to some song or to watch some film in English every day. Although a good communication (Fluency) is a priority, I would like arrive to have a good English accent too. Phonetics is very important to me.

11/15/08

A marvelous gift



Day by day, I understand better and I enjoy comics more. It's an interesting and deep expression of Literature, not only for children but for adults too.
Since I was a teenager, one of my favorite designers was Max*, National Price of Cómic* in 2007. He's a mate of other great cartoonist, my friend Juan Álvarez*, who offered me a trip to Mallorca in my birthday... With a visit to Max's studio included? I'm not sure, but the card sent to me express something like that: between the tower of the Murcia's Cathedral and Bardín at the foot of the lighthouse, the happiest woman in the world is flying. With a pilot and my friend, I hope!

*in Spanish


11/10/08

Today is my birthday


Am I going to talk about my feelings? Yes, but I'll be brief: I'm not 50. I'm 20 with 30 years experience.

Myself in Flickr, a cathartic exercise against fear of aging.

11/8/08

Problems

After all these posts and comments about recent things in my life, I would like get back about my experience of English learning in Cambridge.
At the end of my first week in Bell School, I had a crisis. I was sure that my real level was lower than Upper-intermediate (the level assigned to me in the first test) and I needed talk about it with my main teacher, John Page.
I thought the possibility of making a change because I needed much more time than my classmates to read the exercises, my Vocabulary was quite short and my Grammar in oral expression was full of mistakes. I couldn't process the enormous quantity of information that I received each day.
But my teacher advised me to remain with the same group and to be stimulated with the difficulties. Besides, he told me, my classmates had differents problems than me, with Phonetics, for example. In his opinion, the situation was balanced.
I agreed and I didn't change. With the help of some books and more hours of study I could improve my English and be more confident and happy.
I think now that there, in Cambridge, I was building a new status for me, I could make "muscles" for the future (in words by my teacher in Spain, Stephen Hasler).

10/19/08

Baba O'Riley effect

I grew up in a dictatorship but I was accompanied by many people who fought to put end it. Not only in politics... In the seventies in Spain cultural life was very, very poor and open mind people found abroad the inspiration to survive, the idols to imitate and the hymns to be sung.
One important song at this moment of my life was "Baba O'Riley" by The Who. Now, I have recovered it in credit lines of "CSI", the TV series. The world has changed quickly!

Baba O'Riley

Out here in the fields
I fight for my meals
I get my back into my living
I don't need to fight
To prove I'm right
I don't need to be forgiven
No, no, no

Don't cry
Don't raise your eye
It's only teenage wasteland

Sally, take my hand
Travel south crossland
Put out the fire
Don't look past my shoulder
The exodus is here
The happy ones are near
Let's get together
Before we get much older

Teenage wasteland
It's only teenage wasteland
Teenage wasteland
Oh, oh
Teenage wasteland
They're all wasted!

10/18/08

20Blogs Awards

I'm contest in "Premios 20 Blogs" organized by 20 minutos, a Spanish newspaper quite read. In this edition of awards, only the participants can vote their favorite blog, one vote in each category.
I have inscribed my "English for life" in "Blog in original version" and I hope that all the blogmates who analyse it can see wich I'm an English student not a teacher like other participants in the same category.

Premios 20Blogs

10/8/08

I introduce you to* Pepe Colubi

Pepe Colubi is a ever young Spanish writer, a critic of TV programs, expert in "The Sopranos" and other great series. He's publishing his articles in several magazines and he's promoting his first novel, titled "California 83".
To honor the great sense of humor of this new friend, I'm completing the album of photographies received this Summer from Vietnam with the testimony that, in Cambridge, a lot of people read "California 83". And in Spanish! Why not?

*Read comments

10/7/08

With a pencil


#remmurcia
I have a friend who can create a story from zero to infinity just with a pencil and a sheet of paper. And I'm a lucky woman who can ask him to recreate a special moment or feeling to me. For example, when Michael Stipe, the singer of REM, sitting on the border of the stage, was singing and moving his right hand and softly, like in a dance, one girl put her own hand below, touching him for a few seconds. A very nice moment in the concert in Murcia!

My friend is a great cartoonist. You can know more about him throug his blog, Juan Álvarez, and the website www.murciacomic.com, which we make together in our free time.

10/2/08

I could understand him!

#remmurcia
Yesterday, when Michael Stipe talk to the public, I could understand his first words!

I recommend you to follow the tour or to read the comments about the concert in Murcia. And to practice English with lyrics of R.E.M. like me!




Loosing my religion

Oh, life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I said it all

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it
Oh, no I've said too much
I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

Every whisper of every waking hour
I'm choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt, lost and blinded fool, fool
Oh, no I've said too much
I said it all

Consider this, consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this the slip
That brought me to my knees, failed

What if all these fantasies
Come flailing aground
Now I've said too much

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you

And I don't know if I can do it
Oh, no I've said too much
I haven't said enough

I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But, that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try?
That was just a dream
Just a dream
Just a dream, dream

10/1/08

R.E.M. in Murcia

#remmurcia

What incredible concert! I need more time to talk about it. Maybe tomorrow.

9/27/08

About books

I remember now that my Italian classmate Alberto Togni helped me in several ocasions. For example, he showed me an interesting English Grammar at the Bell Study Centre. A book which I borrowed and I bought before coming to Spain at the Cambridge University Press Bookshop.
These one and others:

1. "English Grammar in Use", by Raymond Murphy. A self-study reference and practice book for intermediate students of English
2. "English Vocabulary in Use. Upper-intermediate", by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O'Dell. 100 units of vocabulary reference and practice. Self-study and classroom use
3. "Cambridge Learner's Dictionary". The ideal dictionary for intermediate learners of English.
4. "Hamlet". Cambridge School Shakespeare. Scripts and classroom activities, notes about characters, performance history and language.
5. "Just Right. Upper Intermediate. Student's book", by Jeremy Harmer and Carol Lethaby. Marshall Cavendish Education. Sometimes used in the main class.
And also, in other shop: "Uncut". Music and movies. Magazine with a free CD

9/26/08

Amy and me, we wake up alone

I used this beautiful song, "Wake up alone", by Amy Winehouse, in the slideshow "Just to say: See you!" which I did at the end of my main class to say goodbye to my classmates.
I recomend you click here to ear the music and, at the same time, look at the album (better if you push F11). Don't forget open twice the browser.

9/23/08

Cycling to Grantchester

I like cycling in my own city and, since the begining, I was quite interested in cycling in Cambridge. But I was a little bit worried to drive alone on the left.

I arrived to cycling at the end, when the classes are finished and I had more free time. My teacher John Page, who cycles everyday, animates me, and my schoolmate Javier Fernández Sebastián comes with me to hire a bicycle.

The experience was very beautiful. I knew the meadows cycling from Cambridge to Grantchester. There, in a place named "The Orchard", we had an excellent tea with cream and a cake in a enormous garden with a lot of apple trees.

In this garden had meeting the Bloomsbury Group (Grantchester Group here): Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, Keynes, Wittgestein... and the poet Rupert Brooke, who made Granchester famous. A little museum and a shop help us to know better those important artists and philosophers.


I came back at the evening. Four miles in total, more or less. And a memory for the rest of my life.

9/21/08

Glamour or not glamour

I remember my first Saturday in Cambridge. After five days there, I felt that it was very important to get my hair whased and brussed. On Wednesday, I searched a hairdresser at the City Centre and, finally, I had an appointment for Saturday, at 1:15 in the morning.

I slept better than the previous days and I was very happy having a coffee and reading “Le Monde”. I don’t found “El País” neither other Spanish newspapers and, unfortunatly, read "The Guardian" was very difficult to deep in news about Georgia. What I enjoyed breakfast at Nero Caffé, oposite The King's College!

Well, I’m prepared to do by mobile phone my weekly radioprogramme “100% Internet”, in that occasion talking about Bell and Cambridge.

After that, in The Fitzwilliam Museum I had the oportunity to check one doubt about one of the questions made in the class of Friday evening. I saw a sund-dried clay brick with a cuneiform text made at Ur, Assyria, in 2049-2047 BC and an Egyptian text in limestone writed in 2170-2020 BC. The question is definitively answered: the oldest written language is Egyptian. I have hade the time to enjoy the collection of British an French peinture just before to go to the hairdresser.

In the evening, lunch at home with any meals buyed in the supermarket and a film in my laptop. After that, I came outside and I’ve walked during three hours or more: I knew the transparent swimming pool of Cambridge and I showed any skaters training near the building, I took several photos to the front off the closed shops around The Grafton Center... A very different Cambridge that complete my first perception. Coming back to the colleges’s area I found a big bookshop, Beffers, that I reviewed almost complete without to shop anything yet. I didn't like falling mad for the shops in this travel.

The Santa María Church's bell sound, hand-played by young people (students, I suppose) put a beautiful end in my first Saturday in Cambridge. At the same time, I ate a hamburguer with bacon and cheese with letuce and ketchup. Prosaic, yes, but authentic.

9/20/08

1 to 1 tuition


The help of my teacher Andrew Holister (just with a "l") was very important to make me more confident in my English learning experience.

I understood very well his accent and he was very patient with me. Then, in our "One to one tuition" I could resolve a lot of doubts and corrige the mistakes and misunderstandings that I did all the time.

He began showing me the questions that all the people made me whithout stop, the basic questions made to know new people. And the rigth answers, certainly!

9/19/08

The Eagle, meeting point

"The Eagle" is one of the most remarkable pubs of Cambridge. My teacher Graham -responsable of English for Marketing and Business Class- recommended me it and sed me that it's a pub where Watson and Crick discovered the form of DNA. My Spanish classmate Javier sed me that one day he show there Stephen Hawking.


The pub is very big, divided into rooms surround a courtyard. There I tasted several bits of differents beers before to choose one, "Tiger", my favorite. That night I knew a very kind group of girls from other school.

9/17/08

One day, after lunch

Bell School Cambridge is a multicultural place with all kind of students. There I had the opportunity to meet people from China, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, Georgia, Colombia, Belgium, Italia, Holland,... and Spain, of course. Seventeen years old and middle-aged than me, students, managers, teachers, politiciens, writers... everybody with the same aim: to improve English.
Sometimes, out of the blue, piano players like Stefano Ambroglio showed us his particular skills:


9/16/08

Soap Opera

The first activity in my first morning class was to practice English skills with the Soap Opera like subject. We began researching about the name "Soap Opera" with the help of Wikipedia. Then, I learned that the original sponsors of serial broadcasts on radio were Colgate-Palmolive and other soap manufacturers. Also we watched in Youtube the Hollyoaks episode "Max dies".

Then, our teacher, John Page, gave us the instructions to work in groups of three students. We must Design our own soap opera and to presente and to play our own screens and dialogs.
Probably, the funniest was Levant, Gena and Jason Group, but I didn't can apreciate their story. At the second week, I arrived to understand just a little bit their Turkish, Korean and Taiwaneese accents.



This week, I worked hard at home to write a scene of "Secrets and lies". All was quite difficult to me, but funny!

9/6/08

Bell School

Bell School Cambridge is near Addenbrooks Hospital. I wen to the school by bus every day.

I had problems to measure time in minutes and seconds like British people usually do. In my mediterranean way of life, minimum unit of time is 5 minutes. But 5 minutes more or less is an enormous quantity of time in a place where punctuality is a great value.

Not to be late, usually I'd come very early in the morning. The first day, with one hour in advance!

9/5/08

Staying in a Cambridge College

It's very impressive to knows that Peter Cavendish, the scientist, lived in the same college as I lived in this summer.

Newton and Darwin walked Trumpington Street a lot of times... Like me every day.

Shakespeare and his actors often had meetings in "The Eagle" pub, just a few metres from my room.

Probably the presence of all these ghosts were the reason that I didn't sleep in two weeks.

9/1/08

Through the window


I'm staying in Peterhouse College, the oldest college in the University of Cambridge.

My bedroom didn't have any luxury, not tv, nor enough light to study, just this view with King's College as background.

And, outside the picture, at the right hand, a lot of trees in a lot of different green and yellow colours.


8/31/08

Rewinding

I think that it's important to begin this blog presenting my resources, skills and tools in languages.

My mother tongue is Spanish and I studied French as second language at school. My mother was an excellent French teacher (now she's retired) and she taught me when I was child. Moreover, I can understand Catalan, Italian and Portuguese quite well if the conversations happen in a relaxed atmosphere.

In terms of English, I must say that to learn this language is a pending subject for years which causes me quite a lot of frustration. Although English is important in my job as web manager and business women, I've someone who is responsible for translations and who works as an interpreter when I need deeper English communication.

I was almost self-taught, I was learning with BBC videos, tv series subtitled and Internet tools... But, I needed a faster and more complete method.

Since January, I have been improving my English with the help of Stephen Hasler, a very nice British teacher who has lived in Murcia for twenty seven years and knows very well the problems that Spanish people have to learning English. I'm sharing his classes with my partner in XL internet, Daniel Caballero. Our teacher recomended me Bell Scholl Centres for my summer holidays. Thanks, Stephen!

My English isn't very good yet, it's just enough to get by. I didn't have time in two weeks in Cambridge to understand so enormous quantity of words that people said me, to fix all this Grammar, Vocabulary, skills for Marketing and Business, correct Pronounciation and Writing... But now I've a global and clear knowledge about what I need. I'm more confident and I'm sure that I'll find time and energy to have a better level as soon as possible.

I'll be really happy with this new language for my life.

8/30/08

Language immersion


Sunday 10 August 2008. I arrived from San Javier (Murcia, Spain, 18:25 and 40 ºC) to Luton Airport (London, United Kingdom, 20:00 and I needed a raincoat).

I'd arranged a taxi to go directly to Cambridge but nobody was waiting for me there. I called to know what's happened but my mobile phone didn't work very well and it went off before finish my conversation with Mr. John B., my taxi driver contact. I bought a drink to get coins and to call again. I got to understand him that all was under control, just a little delay, and I must wait for my taxi in the Airport Arrivals Area. Finally, the driver appears!

Then, with my first little problem resolved and travelling on the left with a nice taxi driver, I begin an amazing adventure: a total English immersion for two weeks.

2/13/08

Homework: Make questions with HOW (long, deep, old…)

1. How many students has Stephen this year?
2. How often should you have English classes for the best results?
3. How old is your youngest student?
4. How many students had S. in 2007?
5. How cold is Loch Ness?
6. How many inhabitants are there in Cambridge?
7. How far is it from London to Cambridge? How far is London from Cambridge?
8. How many times did Lourdes’s children fall when skiing?
9. How often did they laugh at Stephen’s jokes last weekend?
10. How much doest it cost to make a woman happy?

.............

Answers

1. I’m not sure, but I estimate that they are ten.
2. The most complete english class is daily
3. It’s a girl who is 20 years old
4. In 2007 S. H. be teacher of 100 spanish students
5. Loch Ness is very cold because its water comes from glaciers
6. Cambridge has 130.000 inhabitants more or less, students included
7. It’s about 80 km (50 miles)
8. Well, I don’t have this information yet, but it’s possible that Steve will give me it soon
9. Ditto
10. Actually, that’s a challenge that depends of her boss, her hairdresser and, finally, her lover.