If you want it, live it

Dear all,

I've been very busy to keep up my writing lately, but today I found an excuse to keep writing. An old acquaintance of mine, Jelena Golubovic, who I happened to meet in a Latin contest some years ago,  has given a life-changing speech in a TED talk, yes, you heard right. In the video she comes up with a good idea. When you have a goal you want to attain, you have to live as though you have just attained that goal. Well, anyway, I found her video so fascinating that I prepared an activity for my students of Advanced 2 for them to practise their listening.

I'm going to share with you both the video and the exercise. As usual, the answers will be down below. Thanks Jelena, I'll follow your wise advice from now on.

Fill in the gaps with a maximum of five words:

1. She was so poor that she wore dresses made of ______________________.

2. At 14, she was _______________ by some men.

3. Today when Oprah speaks the world _____________________________.

4. She had to pay €20,000 for __________________________.

5. She got the last €10,000 because ______________________ sponsored her.

6. Oprah spent her days _____________________________.

7. The person looking for the girl of his dreams was at that point _____________ in a job he hated.

8. After a year and a half he ______________________ to quit the job.

9. She enjoyed watching herself become faster, ___________ and _____________.

10. The future ‘you’ has ______________________ you have yet to develop.

Answers:
1. potato sack  2. molested 3. takes notice 4. tuition expenses 5. mother's clients 6. interviewing her dolls 7. stuck 8. mastered the courage 9. better and stronger 10. developed habits.

What do you think about this amazing TED talk? Have you been encouraged to actually change the way you see things. I hope so. 
See you around. 

The Time Machine: by H.G. Wells: when travelling in time turns out to be a distressful adventure!

Hello avid readers,

It's been a while since I last wrote my last book review. I had time to resume my reading habits over the Easter holidays, and this time I read another classic: The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells. 

Can you imagine travelling forwards and backwards in time? There would be numerous advantages. Imagine getting to know the futuristic society, new gadgets, new possibilities,... This is what the main character of the story , the Time Traveller, thought. He conceived time as another dimension and, in the same way one can move in time, one can also move in space.He invented an artifact to travel backwards and forwards in time and told about his breakthrough to a bunch of scientists and other people.  After his fellow companions laughed at his idea, not believing in him, he decides to test his machine and travel forward in time and so he does and he ends up in year 802,701. Nothing is quite as he expected. Instead of experiencing a world of endless technological breakthroughs, he ends up in a world inhabited by childlike creatures who seem to be quite happy. In this world, at first, there seem to be no problems, and no wars. In fact, everything is full of fruits and flowers. 

However, the Time Traveller will soon discover that this world is not what it looks like. Soon after his arrival, his time machine mysteriously disappears. While trying to explore this new world and find his machine again, the time traveller makes a shocking discovery. This dystopian society consists of two different classes: the Eloi, considered wealthy aristocrats, and the Morlocks, ape-like creatures that live in the underworld in the darkness. They will come out in the dark and feed on the Eloi. 

The time traveller will live many adventures fighting the Morlocks while trying to get his machine back. On the way, he will befriend one Eloi girl. After learning about the intricacies of this dystopian world, he manages to use the time machine again and travel even further into the future, where humans no longer exist, and the only inhabitants are some crab-like animals and big insects. When he manages to get back in time to his own era, he tells the story to the group of scientist. No one believes in him, so he promises to use the machine again and bring evidence. However, he will never come back...

The book tackles some of today's problems. The world in the future is not so different from today's world. In that world, society is divided between the upper classes, who have a comfortable life, and the lower classes, who must work hard under difficult circumstances to keep living. Although millions of years have gone by, the essence of the world has practically remained the same. Human violence is also another topic explored in the book. Even though wars have apparently been suppressed, the Morlocks keep fighting and killing the Eloi, human beings keep destroying one another. The working classes are, as a matter of act, reveling against the upper classes. The Eloi's peaceful life can only be granted by the miserable conditions of the Morlocks. As H.G. Wells puts it, history is condemned to repeat itself. 

Although H.G. Wells's story is riveting, I sometimes feel that the plot does not unfold the way it should. In my humble opinion, this futuristic world offers a great deal of possibilities and scenarios that H.G. Wells has not explored. This book is not the typical futuristic dystopia and many more details should have been added to make the story a bit deeper and more plausible. 

Well, if you are into reading, have a look at my entries on different books: Christmas short stories; my review on William Golding's The Lord of the Flies, my analysis of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, my post on Dickens's Oliver Twist, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and my entry about Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea; Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo. 

Easter glossary: get to know some terms related to Easter in English

Now that Easter is practically history until next year... I thought it would be a pretty good idea to devote an entry to Easter vocabulary, that is, words and expressions that one can use to refer to some Easter moments and traditions. Before reading this post, you may as well want to revisit my post about Easter traditions, my post on Easter videos to practise your listening, or my post on Maundy Thursday. Well, have you caught up with some knowledge on Easter? Now it's time you learnt (or rather revised) some of the Easter vocab and expressions. Let's begin:

Important dates associated to Easter

- Lent: It is a six-week period starting on Ash Wednesday (just right after Carnival) and finishing on Maundy Thursday. During this time, Christians are supposed not to eat meat on Fridays and also to fast. During this period, there are no weddings, baptisms or other religious sacraments.

- Holy Week vs. Easter: Holy Week is the week starting on Palm Sunday and finishing on Holy Saturday, not including Easter Sunday. Easter, on the other hand, Easter, as such, begins on Easter Sunday with the resurrection of Jesus Christ and finishes on Pentecostes Sunday. 

- Palm Sunday: This happens just one week after Easter Sunday, that is, before Jesus Christ resurrection. People go on procession carrying palm branches to commemorate Jesus Christ's arrival in Jesuralem. 

- Maundy Thursday: This important day pays tribute to the Last Supper. In addition, on this day, Jesus Christ himself washed the feet of his disciples to prove himself humble. In the past, monarchs would do the same with beggars to commemorate this, but now this long-standing tradition has deeply changed and in the UK, the queen of England gives Maundy money to different men and women. 

- Good Friday: This day is a reminder of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and death.

- Holy Saturday: This is the day after Good Friday and it is considered the last day of Holy Week. 

- Easter Sunday: On this day, Jesus Christ resurrected. The last procession takes place on this day. It is officially the first day of Easter. On this day, gardens and houses are decorated with Easter eggs and there are Easter egg hunts in different parts of the globe. 

Holy Week and Easter traditions

- Easter eggs: At Easter, people buy and exchange Easter eggs. There are two types of eggs: chocolate eggs (very typical nowadays), or hard-boiled eggs used to decorate houses or play different games, such as egg tapping (breaking other people's egg by tapping them with your own egg without breaking it), Easter egg hunt (finding Eggs around the garden) and Easter egg roll (a race where people have to push their eggs with a spoon).

- Easter bunny: It is a figure bringing the Easter eggs.

- Simnel cake: A fruitcake typical at Easter. 

- Morris dance: A typically English dance to scare spirits away.

- Processions and religious pilgrimages: They are some kind of "religious parades" to commemorate different events related to Jesus Christ. 

Well, technically the Holy Week is over and Easter begins. If you are lucky and are on holiday, enjoy it!