Next year our country will be celebrating its bicentennial, 200 years of independence. I feel proud to be a Chilean, and I’m sure we all feel the same way. We celebrate this day every 18th of September, dancing cueca, our national dance, eating all sorts of delicious national dishes and sharing moments with our families and friends.
A warm welcome to Third Seniors who return today from their study trip. I'm sure we have all missed them immensely, and are happy to know they are safely returning. enjoy your holidays and I'm looking forward to seeing you all in a week.
Post-its
Post-it notes, those small, yellow sticky pieces of paper which we all use, were not planned but were the result of a failed experiment. A man named Spencer Silver had been working in the 3M research laboratories in 1970, trying to find a strong adhesive. He developed a new type of glue but it was weaker than what 3M already manufactured. It stuck but could easily be lifted off. It was super weak instead of super strong! No one else knew what to do with it, but Silver did not throw it away - he kept it. Then, one Sunday four years later, another 3M scientist called Arthur Fry was singing in the church choir. He used pieces of paper to keep his place in the hymn book, but they kept falling out. Remembering Silver’s adhesive, Fry put some on the paper. With the weak adhesive, the paper stayed in place but came off without damaging the paper. In 1980, 3M began selling Post-it notes world-wide. Today, they are one of the most popular office products available.
The Guillotine
This method of execution by decapitation was introduced into France by a man named Dr. Guillotin, and it became the symbol of the French Revolution. It stood in what is now the Place de la Concorde, in the centre of Paris. During the Reign of Terror, or the revolutionary period, the executions were a gory spectacle which attracted crowds of supporters from among the ordinary people, who cheered wildly as a great number of aristocrats were executed.
Many aristocrats were guillotined, mostly because of the hate the revolutionary leaders felt for the upper classes, who had oppressed them for so long. Among the most famous people guillotined were King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who had never been popular among the people, and was despised because of her extravagance.
Canal Boating
This is definitely a vacation that is not for everyone. If you like to spend your holiday at the beach, or dashing from one place to another, this may not be to your taste. But if cruising along a narrow waterway at 3-4 miles an hour sounds appealing to you, you have a wonderful ‘activity’ to embark on. Take a leisurely trip on a canal boat, or houseboat, for the most relaxing holiday in your life.
Canals are typically winding, following the contours of the land. The scenery is varied and as the canals also cross towns, you can have the best of both worlds. Occasionally you go through tunnels or come in contact with aqueducts. Perhaps you’ll have to operate locks or moveable bridges. This is the opportunity to meet interesting people from other boats and share the work or exchange information and experiences.
There is an organized canal system all over Europe and also in the USA and Canada and houseboats can be rented for short and long-term holidays.
Have a look at the following site, which offers lectures and courses from Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA and Yale. I’m sure you’ll find something to interest you! The courses cover areas which include Biology, Chemistry, Literature, Engineering, Entrepreneuship, Mathematics, Law, Psychology, etc.
If you want the English version, go to archives February 2007.
250 gr. margarina
3/4 taza chocolate amargo en polvo
3 tazas de azúcar
6 huevos - ligeramente batidos
pizca de sal
chorro de vainilla
1 1/2 taza de harina
2 cucharaditas de polvos
3/4 taza nueces picadas gruesas (o maní)
Derretir margarina en cacerola mediana. Una vez derretida, retirar del fuego. Agregar las tres tazas de azúcar, batir bien, el chocolate en polvo, sal, huevos,vainilla, harina y luego las nueces picadas.
Verter en asadera rectangular, forrada con papel mantequilla aceitado.
Hornear en horno moderado por MEDIA HORA. (no mas) Apagar el horno, dejar semi abierta la puerta unos cinco minutos y luego dejar afuera para enfriar.
Cubierta
Derretir a baño maría 150 gramos de chocolate Ambrosoli Pastry Choc(cobertura semi amarga) con unas dos cucharadas de crema, hasta que esté cremoso. Esparcir y dejar enfriar. Cuando esté frio, cortar en cuadrados del tamaño deseado con un cuchillo pasado por agua hirviendo.
These were a great favourite too!
Another great favourite of mine! I seem to have something about bears!
This is just too wonderful. If I had small children I’d show this to them.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Dr Seuss is one my my favourite authors. His creations appeal to all ages. Here is a showing of Green Eggs and Ham, which is really great. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too!
Some people are prepared to try anything, but I confess that this is not my cup of tea!
For people going for FCE at the end of this year, click on the FCE link in the menu on the right. There are lots of links that will provide useful practice for this exam. Practice a little every day, get into the habit of doing a task as often as possible. Don’t leave everything to the last moment. The key to success is practice, practice and more practice! Good luck!
This site provides you with a compendium of useful English words and phrases for all sorts of writing requirements. Congratulatins to Martin, who created it.
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~mfp27/improveyourwritingability/
Snake Massage
Massage is the manipulation of soft body tissues with physical and functional purposes and there are over eighty recognised styles of massage, which include accupressure, Shiatsu, Ayurvedic and Swedish massage. Some of the benefits of massage are pain relief and a reduction in levels of anxiety and depression. It is done on special massage tables or ergonomic chairs, and special oils or aromatherapy substances are used in the process.
A new type of massage is being offered at an Israeli health and beauty spa. Ada Barak’s snake spa, in Talmei Elazar, northern Israel, uses California and Florida king snakes, corn snakes and milk snakes for the massages. Ms Barak believes that physical contact with the reptiles can be a relaxing experience. Once people get over any initial misgivings, they find physical contact with the snakes to be stress-relieving. The size of the snakes depends on the type of massage - the larger ones are said to alleviate deeper muscle tensions and the smaller ones create a ’fluttering’ effect.The snakes’ slithering causes a rubbing sensation on the body. All the snakes used are non-venomous, but if the idea of snakes is too much, a rodent-style massage where mouse and rats are placed on the bottom of people’s feet is offered instead.
The Flintstones
The Flintstones, which is an animated American sitcom that ran from 1960 to 1966 on ABC television, is about a working-class Stone Age man’s life with his family and his next-door neighbour and best friend. Fred Flintstone, his wife Wilma, strong-willed and level-headed, their daughter Pebbles and a dinosaur pet that barks like a dog live in Bedrock, next to Barney Rubble, his wife Betty and their abnormally strong adopted son Bamm Bamm.The Rubbles also have a pet, a cross between a dinosaur and a kangaroo, named Hoppy. Fred and Barney work at a quarry, and their boss, Mr Slate, has a fiery temper. Wilma and Fred argue often because of Fred’s laziness, and because Fred sometimes flirts with other women. Fred Flintstone’s exclamation ’Yabba Dabba Dooo!’, shouted in the opening credits as well as any time Fred became happy or excited, is widely known.
At least two Flintstones-themed amusement parks exist in the USA, one in Custer, South Dakota and another in Arizona. Both have been in operation for decades.
Rollercoasters
Think about riding your bike to the top of a hill, pedalling like mad, then taking your feet off the pedals and hurtling down the other side. A rollercoaster works the same way. The coaster is only powered at the very beginning of the ride, when the train is pulled up the first hill. When it goes over the top of the hill, the only thing that propels the train is the weight of the train itself, pulled downward by gravity. There are no cables that pull the train around the track. When you are plummeting down a steep drop, the various bits of your body are weightless, each falling individually inside your body. This is what gives you that funny sinking feeling in your tummy, like the sensation you get when you’re in a lift going down quite fast.
Rollercoasters started off as ice slides in Russia more than 500 years ago. They were long, steep wooden slides covered in ice. Riders walked up a ladder to the top of the slide, as high as 70 ft (21 m) up, then got into sledges made out of wood or blocks of ice and shot down the slope. The sleds would crash-land in a sand pile.
The following link will take you to all sorts of English language quizzes. Just select and choose from the list offered.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/youmeus/quiznet/archive.shtml
There’s also an archive of past quizzes. Have fun!
Mazes are complex tour puzzles with branching passages through which a route must be found. The link above will take those of you who like a challenge to a site which offers all sorts of interactive mazes to solve. Have fun!
You may ask yourselves, What or who is a pegman? It looks rather like a clothes peg, the old-fashioned wooden kind of peg people used to attach their washing to the clothes line. But this pegman refers to a new application Google maps is setting up, available in only a few countries at the moment. It is called Street View, and it permits you to virtually sit on the street wherever you want in the world.
Below is a short video explaining how it works. If you click on the link, you'll be taken to a site which gives your more information.
If you want to investigate zoom properties of Google photo navigation, click on the following link:
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/07/zoom-photo-navigation-in-street-view.html
I would like to recommend a very good tool for those of you who enjoy writing.It’s called Penzu, and can be accessed at
http://www.penzu.com/features.
Enrollment is free and it permits you to write an online journal, insert photos or images into
your writing tasks, and also share your writing with others. Have a look at it and try it out.