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!

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.

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

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.

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

R.E.M. in Murcia

#remmurcia

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.