viernes, 30 de mayo de 2014

CLASS OF 2014

This activity is dedicated to my 3º B students this year: Iris, Nicolás, Marco, Ana,Amelia,Sonia, Angira, Alvaro, Carlos D & G., Alicia, Sara, Amara, Gloria, Eva , Isabel, Amy,Raquel, Manu, Alberto and, last but not least,Elena.
 It owes a lot of inspiration to the short story Class of ´81 by Joanne Harris.
The students enjoyed imagining themselves in 2034 and wrote enthusiastically about this future class reunion.Three aspects to consider: Exaggerate, Do not hurt other people´s feelings and Try some humour. The response was much better than I had expected...Even when the bell rang the students kept on writing and listening to their colleagues´ creative compositions...


Already I was feeling quite nervous. We´d made made the promise twenty years ago, an unimaginable distance to our fourteen-year-old selves. Since then I´d had little contact with any of the old school friends...I arrived too early and could not recognize anybody at first.. Twenty years..Unimaginable time..Now we were thirty four and I felt happy, well, some of the time. The first person to arrive was A, she had not changed a bit: Tall, elegant, blonde wearing a black top over what looked suspiciously like nothing at all, she had married a hotel manager and had two children. Then came B, a film director who had married an English man, lived in London and lived a fulfilled life travelling to and fro. C , a video game creator, had not married and had had several intermittent relationships with a famous actor. D had come out of the closet and lived with his partner. E and her partner F had adopted a child from South America. G had become a Roman Catholic priest and his friend H had joined a convent but had to leave after discovering herself pregnant.(The Holy Ghost?)

I , sporting a long pony tail, was a funeral director in Catalonia, a different country now, similar to Portugal.He had married the Maths teacher´s daughter.

J had changed beyond recognition and for a moment we thought he had gatecrashed into the party. It was when he showed us his hidden tattoo that we could tell it was JR.

K had been a cheerleader, a fashion model, a waitress, a bartender, in fact, she had had so many jobs that she had undergone several identity crises.

L had had several abortions and had finally decided to give up for good.

M had always loved N in secret, his high school sweetheart. He had never forgotten her. So both were stuck  and trapped in loveless marriages and this reunion could mean their dreams might come true....


Continue with the rest of the class from O to Z and tell us what happened to them:

Olivia
Peter
Quentin
Rosemary
Sandra
Timo
Ursula
Verónica
Walter
Xavi
Yolanda
Zacarías




ABRACADABRA

 ABRACADABRA  is just a word which supposedly has MAGIC power. In fact, all words may be therapeutical. I´m not referring to religious words at all...

MATCH the words in  the left-hand column with their definitions BELOW:

 

1)ARACATACA

2)CARRATRACA

3)BALACLAVA

4)BALALAIKA

5)BACLAVA

6)JACARANDA

7)ILAVALAVA

8)CATALAN

9)CATAMARAN

10)MAHARAJAH

11)ABRAXAS

12)BANDANA

13)CATARACT

14)MADAGASCAN

15)JACKASS 

16)PRANAYAMA

17) AMALGAM 

18) ANTIMACASSAR

19) CARAVACA 

20) CHAPARRAL

 

 

A) A LARGE COTTON OR SILK SQUARE WORN AROUND THE NECK

B) A VILLAGE IN MALAGA PROVINCE FAMOUS FOR ITS SPA

C) A FOOLISH PERSON

D) A SAILING BOAT

E) A WATERFALL; AN EYE DISESASE

F) A VILLAGE IN COLOMBIA WHERE GABO WAS BORN

G) A SUBTROPICAL TREE WITH BLUE FLOWERS

H) BREATH AS THE ESSENTIAL LIFE FORCE

I) AN INDIAN PRINCE

J) PERSON BORN IN CATALONIA

K) A WARM KNITTED HAT THAT COVERS THE HEAD AND NECK WITH AN OPENING FOR THE FACE

L)A SAMOAN VERSION OF THE KILT

M) A SONG BY CARLOS SANTANA

N) A CAKE OF TURKISH ORIGIN  WITH A FILLING OF HONEY AND SPICES

Ñ) A RUSSIAN THREE-STRINGED INSTRUMENT

O) A NATIVE OF MADAGASCAR

P) A MIXTURE; AN ALLOY OF MERCURY

Q)  A COVERING TO PROTECT A CHAIR OR SOFA

R) A TOWN IN MURCIA 

S) A DENSE FOREST OF EVERGREEN OAKS


NOW DO THE SAME WITH THE OTHER FOUR VOWELS.i.e.: 

 

MISSISSIPPI..., LIMPKIN, ILLICIT, IMPLICIT,INTRINSIC, INDISTINCT,BIKINI,

DISINHIBITING, INDIVISIBILITY, INVINCIBILITY, INVISIBILITY,

INHIBIT,INVITING, KNITTING,MINISKIRT,MISGIVING,PICNICKING....(Cl.Mata)

 

SEVEN-ELEVEN, ELEMENT,WEEKEND, SEVENTEEN, PRESENTER,EXPECTED,

EMERGENCE,EXCELLENT,BETWEEN,WHENEVER,DETECTED....(Cl.Ferreres&H.Jiménez)

 

O...BOOKWORM, OLOROSO, BONOBO, BLOODSHOT,BOOKSHOP,COCOON,COOKBOOK,

COOLBOX,DOORKNOB,MONSOON,PROTOCOL,

ROOFTOP,TOMORROW, WOODWORK,

VOODOO, HOODOO, SHOWROOM,(Ana Mª García Belt)...

 

U...ULURU, UBUNTU, ZULUS, HUMMUS, HUMUS; UNTRUTHFUL,

FULCRUM, LUPUS, HUMBUG, HUN, USURP, PULL-UP

UNSUNG, LUSTFUL, UNSTUCK, UNTRUSS, GURU, USUFRUCT,...

 

TRY TO FIND THE FOLLOWING CONSONANTS IN WORDS:

 BB   CC   DD  FF  GG   HH   JJ  KK  LL  MM   NN  PP  QQ  RR SS TT VV   WW  XX   YY   ZZ

  

 

sábado, 3 de mayo de 2014

TOBACCO,ALCOHOL,THE NET,MEDICINES AND ALL THE OTHER DRUGS

In our society some people, both young and old, are hooked on pills as well as other substances. Young people ,by definition, like to experiment and to try anything new. Aldous Huxley stated:
"The systematic drugging of individuals for the benefit of the State(and, incidentally,of course, for their own delights) was a main policy of the world controllers. The daily Soma -Internet- ration was an insurance against personal maladjustment, social unrest and the spread of subversive ideas.If as Karl Marx put it religion is the opium of the people, nowadays this situation is reversed Opium/the Internet is the people´s religion.Like religion the drug had the power to console and compensate, it called up visions of another , better world, it offered hope, strengthened faith"... Brave New World Revisted
The net is highly addictive.It creates virtual realities removed from the day-to-day real world. Try avoiding the internet for a day, a week or a month..you´ll suffer from withdrawal symptoms similar to any other drug...

Drug abuse has been around for a very long, long time, since the earliest and most primitive cultures..
It entails the confusion of body and soul. Freedom to teenagers means the choice between being slaved to drugs or the power to say NO (Part of consumer education). Drug abuse is a type of slavery, an accelerated lethal game of pleasure towards ...DEATH, a quick answer to the anxiety created by a certain kind of addictive society..

AN INFORMED YOUTH WILL KNOW HOW TO ACT AND WILL DESERVE A BETTER FUTURE

Most teenagers do not take drugs, and of those who do, most use only"soft" or legal drugs, take them only experimentally and occasionally, and eventually, give them up altogether.The most common practice is for drugs to be taken at weekend parties for the same reason that adults smoke and drink:just because they enjoy it and because it makes them feel uninhibited or relaxed.
Fashions in the drug world come and go.There was a time when heroin and cocaine ruled supreme.

Find out what the effects of the following substances are(They may have both an action-function- and a medical use):

Alcohol: Beer, Whisky, Wine, GNT, Vodka,...

Tobacco: Electronic cigarettes, cigars,..

Cannabis:hash,kiff, grass,weed,pot,tea,puff,blow,marijuana, a joint,hashish, dope,ganja,..

Ecstasy : E, Adam,Burgers, Disco Biscuit, Black and Reds...

Amphetamines: Pep pills, Speed, Whizz,Sulphate,Purple hearts,Blues,Black bombers, Bennies,.

L.S.D.: Acid, micro-dots, tabs,sugar,instant Zen,windows,..

Barbiturates: Sleepers,Amytal,Nembutal,Seconal, Tuinal,Downers, Blue angels,Pentobarbitone, Diazepan...

Cocaine:Snow, Coke, C, Crack,Blow, snuff, Charlie, Dust,Powder,..

Heroin: H, Horse, Junk, Jack, Stuff, Smack, scrag,boy, chinese..

Methadone: Physeptone, Phy, Dollies,..

Glue-sniffing: solvents,ether, chloroform, lacquers, varnish..

Angel Dust: Phencyclidine: PCP,..

Magic Mushrooms & Cacti

Librium:Chlordiazepoxide

Other drugs and medicines:...

Most info above taken from: Brave New World revisited by Aldous Huxley
                                        Drugs The worries,the threats, the facts by Dr. Richard Barrymore
                                          Antitox Addepos