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.