BLOGS IN 4TH ESO-by Pedro Sánchez de Diego

BLOGS OF 4º ESO

This school year we started a new activity in english class. This activity consisted on making blogs about different matters.

At the begining, students thought this idea would be a mess but our english teacher organized everything and to make and send blogs was easier than it appears at the start. The only problem we had was some photos did not arrive correctly.

This activity has been a good idea because it helps us to increase our knowledge about various subjects.

In particular, to blog helped me to learn a lot of english vocabulary but also to learn a lot of things that I did not know about subject blogs. Moreover, blogs helped us to increase our english grade.

The blogs we have made this school year have been about a lot of different matters, mainly travels and films.

I have made serveral blogs but my favourite is the Istanbul blog. I travelled to Turkey two years ago with all my family and I had very nice experiences so it was easy and lovely to write about it.

Finally, I believe that although it is difficult to write a blog in english (like this blog), in the school this year has had very good blog entries.

I hope everybody enjoys this blog.

WHO IS EMINEM?-by Natalia Borrueco

WHO IS EMINEM?

Eminem is the stage name of Marshall Bruce Mathers whose professions are rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor.

He was born on October 17th of 1972 in St. Joseph, Missouri; unfortunately, he had a really bad childhood, mostly because of his parents and his economic situation. He grew up in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Michigan without his father who doesn’t give a damn about him so his mother and his grandmother raised him. However, the person who truly acted as a mother was his grandmother, Betty Kresin, because Deborah Mathers-Briggs had too many problems with drugs. Eminem declares these arguments about his mother in consequence of what she told him; she blamed Eminem of the suicide of his uncle who had tendency to commit suicide even when the uncle and Eminem were best friends because they were the same age (his grandmother was pregnant at the same time his mother was). After this horrible event, Eminem lost contact with his mother and never ever saw her again.

The times when he was just a teenager were very hard but his ‘’bad luck’’ doesn’t end here.

If we talk about his sentimental life we could say that he had a girlfriend since he was 14 years old while the girl was only 12 years old. This relationship was full of fights but also with flashy reconciliations. They were married from 1999 to 2000, at that moment Eminem requested the divorce though they were together again at the end of the same year that they had broken up. On the other hand, Kim was the one who requested the divorce for second time in 2001. For Eminem this relationship was terrible but the only thing he doesn’t regret about it is his daughter Hailey Jade Mathers who was born in 1996. She is the main reason of his happiness so that’s why he fought for her safekeeping until he achieved it.

All of these experiences that Eminem had to face helped him to create the most incredible songs I’ve ever heard so I’m happy about his debut being the needle in a haystack because when he started, the world of rap was only for blacks so when a white man broke the rules everybody had his eyes on him just to see him fail, something that never happened, though. His career has had a lot of highs but less lows, some of them are:

®  The slim shady EP: This was his first album released with the company Aftermath and where he collaborated for the first time with Dr. Dre, a successful rapper by then. It’s also an album where he criticizes the album industry and develops his more personal style ; signed as a number one spot because of his talent and the suit by his mother who accused him of causing her emotional disorders.

®  The Marshall Mathers LP: this is an album number at one spot too when he hit, with a weapon, a men who was disturbing his wife (when he still had a relationship with Kim). He was convicted to have a strict control of drug use and the assistance of a psychologist as a prisoner for 2 years under parole.

®  8 Mile: this is a movie about Eminem’s biography where he acts too. Another fact is that the name of the film was selected because the street that separates the rich suburbs from the poor ones is called ‘’8 Mile’’, where he used to live.

TRAILER OF 8 MILE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axGVrfwm9L4

PERSONAL OPINION

From my point of view, I see Eminem as the best rapper that has ever existed because the lyrics of his songs are very well made and he is the typical rapper who can rap at the speed of light. If you don’t believe me, don’t worry I have proofs showed in one of his official music videos. But something that is very important for me is the expression of the feelings and thoughts, something that Eminem does in ever single word that comes out of his mouth when he does what he likes, to rap.

PROOF (crucial moment when we can appreciate his skills: 4:26): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGs_qK2PQA

MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE BLOG-by Laura Rodriguez

       My experience with the blog

This course, our English teacher proposed us to do a blog in which we could speak about whichever topic we wanted. I liked the idea because last year we were doing many writings and they were about things in the book. Nevertheless doing the blog we have spoken about recipes,teams of sports, Nigeria,the prom trip at the end of the course etc,but we could have learned more writing and surfing the Internet,instead of using so much the book.

Thanks to the blog I could raise the grade in English,it has helped me very much.For next year the blog should continue  because it is very interesting and entertaining!

REAL MADRID-by Fidel Obama

In this blog i want to talk about Real Madrid , my favorite football team.
Real Madrid is a professional football club based in Madrid ,Spain  , the club wears a traditional white kit . 
They are my favourite club , I have always been a Real Madrid fan since I was little kid , although my mother and my uncle support Barcelona , the biggest rival. Since the beginning I chose Madrid , because I have passion for them. They are the best team in the world and they have the best players in the world. They have won a lot of trophies in the last years , and the most special trophy , the Champions League, which they call "LA DECIMA" , .

The stadium is called Santiago Bernabeu , and has a capacity of 81,500 seats.The club is the most valuable sports team in the world , with a net worth of € 2.5 billion , and it's the world's richest club , with an annual revenue of € 540.5 million per year. Also, it's one of the most supported clubs in the world , with fans in America , Europe ,Asia , Oceania and Africa.

Throughout its history Real Madrid has had the best players , from Di Stefano , Puskas, Kopa , Rial , Gento , Santillana, Hugo Sanchez  to Ronaldo , Raul , Figo , Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo , they are all legends of the club.

Real Madrid also has a foundation thats helps the poor and least favoured children all over the world , teaching them team effort and spirit through football.

Real Madrid is the club with most trophies , with 32 home leagues , 19 kings cup , 10 champions league , european record , 9 supercups, 1 league cup , and 1 intercontinental cup .

They are the greatest club in the world and I am going to support them forever until the end.

thanks , signed , Fidel obama , EG.

TORONTO-by Paula Heras

TORONTO

Next September 12th, 6 students from our school will go to Toronto, one of the most famous cities in Canada, to take part in a linguistic and cultural exchange.

While I was reading all the documents about the legal information of the exchange, I realized that I didn’t know much about this part of Canada.

These are a few things I’ve been gathering about it:

BASIC INFORMATION

Toronto is the most populous city in Canada, so as the capital of the province of Ontario.

In 2011 it was the fourth most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,615,060 people.

It’s located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of the Lake Ontario.

POPULATION

As I said before, Toronto is well known as the most populated city in Canada with an actual population of about 2,8 million people.

Toronto is and has been an important destination for immigrants to Canada, it’s one of the world's most diverse cities.

There are over 200 different ethnic origins among its population, such as India Chinese, Japanese, Indian etc.

Despite this, English is still the primary language spoken by most of the Torontonians, although there are over 140 different languages spoken in that part of North America.

MUSIC

Toronto is well known too for its important musical, theatrical and other cultural activities.

There are lots of famous singers that are from Toronto such as the famous rapper Drake, the group The weekend.

Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen, both of them very popular in the pop music world are from Canada too.

MAIN ATTRACTIONS

1. Canadian National Tower that is the most famous landmark, a 553 metre tower and observation deck.
2. Ripley's Aquarium of Canada
3. The city hall, one of the most beautiful city hall in North America.
4. Casa Loma
5. The sports centre
6. The hockey hall of fame
7. Etc

I can’t wait to be assigned my host family and finally go to Canada in September!

MY OPINION ABOUT THE USE OF BLOGS IN ENGLISH CLASS-by Bosco Juliussen

My opinion about the use of blogs in our English class.

This year we have been taught how to use blogs in our English class. A blog is a way to inform and communicate with other people or a group or with many people on internet. Blogs are now commonly used as a way of communication and also as advertising.

In class we were asked to write about a subject of our own choice and sometimes about a given subject like in the case of Nigeria. By writing blogs we learned to think about a subject and formulate in writing our ideas and the content that we wanted to communicate. We learned new words and phrases that we had to look up in order to build our sentences. It was a good way of making an outline of what you wanted to say and then trying to write it down and making an interesting article. Recently we were taught how to use a mind map and this was very helpful in making the outline of the content that I  wanted to include in the article. Every student sent their blog to the teacher and she evaluated the content of the blog and our mistakes before making it available to the group.

The blog is a quite effective way to communicate with others.  As it contains   personal opinions people are more interested in reading  it, as well as it motivates other people to write their own opinion and comment on the subject.  In this way experiences are being shared and one can learn from another  about using the English language  as well as the things that other people have been going through or places that they have visited. It can inspire other people to travel and tell them what to do or not to do. Even though it was a lot of work to  make it,  personally I have learned a lot from writing the blogs as it forced me to think, remember things from the past and to make an outline of what I wanted to write about and finally I was learning new words in order  to express myself properly.  And not least important, it was fun.

SCRUBS-by Lola García Romeu

Scrubs is an American television series that began airing on October 2, 2001 by the NBC network. The creator and executive producer of the series is Bill Lawrence.
The series focuses on the personal and professional lives of the various characters working at Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It offers talkative characters , pranksters with fast dialogues, and with images that are presented as reveries of the main characters. This last feature originally focused completely on the main character, doctor John Dorian (aka J.D.).

Characters 

Dr. Jonathan Michael "J.D." Dorian (Zach Braff): Doctor of the hospital of the Sacred Heart. "J.D." is the narrator of the episodes of the series. He and his best friend is Turk, whom he has known from High School, have a pretty immature relationship, but very sincere due to their individual games. He has the habit of daydreaming, imagining situations that are very exaggerated and unrealistic. Despite some flaws and being very insecure, he is a very competent doctor who loves his work.

Dr. Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke): She is a physician specialized in Endocrinology, hospital intern and intimate friend of J.D. She was born in Connecticut, where her father was an important Chief of medicine. She is a person with many defects: she has cold hands because of her poor circulation, she doesn’t like to be touched, she has panic attacks, is claustrophobic, and she also has phobia of germs and phobia of phobias, but those things do not prevent her from being an excellent doctor.Dr. Christopher "Turk" Duncan.

Dr. Turk (Donald Faison): He is one of the surgeons at the hospital. His best friend is "J.D” whom he has known since High School.He is very competitive and he always wants to win at everything. He is an excellent dancer and very athletic, he is usually seen playing basketball outside of the hospital in his spare time.

Carla Espinoza (Judy Reyes): She is a nurse at the hospital. She is also Turk’s wife,whom he had a long courtship with until they ended up marrying. She is friend a of J.D. and she protects and defends him when Dr. Cox bothers him without any reason,. She tends to tell people their faults and she gives them advice. She doesn’t accept jokes about herself, so when someone dares to do so, Carla reacts very exaggerated and ends up humiliating that person.

Dr. Percival Ulysses "Perry" Cox (John C. McGinley): He is the Chief of internal medicine at the hospital, having to teach new inmates. That’s why "J.D." saw in him a mentor and went to him every time he had a problem, while Cox made it clear with enough irony and sarcasm his displeasure towards him. He is a proud doctor and very direct with people, though very intelligent. Despite hos hard nature he always wants the best for his patients, even when it is against what his superiors say

DOES BIRTH ORDER DETERMINE YOUR PERSONALITY?-by Lucía Fernández Cuesta

Ever wondered if your personality was decided at birth? Some days ago I read an article which maintains that the order in which you were born can not only have an effect on your personality, but also your chances of academic success.

From my point of view, birth order does not really dictate your personality. Although it might have a strong effect on parent's expectations, it has nothing to do with children's personality.

According to this article, first borns tend to be higher academic achievers and they also tend to have a stronger sense of responsibility while youngest children tend to be academically-able, creative and resourceful. However, there's a long list of examples which can prove this isn't true at all. For example, Taylor Swift is the oldest sister and she's really creative.

Personally, I believe that I'm pretty responsible and I'm always competing with my sister in order to be the one who gets the highest marks. Actually, I do get higher marks than she did when she was my age!

To sum up, birth order does not dictate your personality at all. If you can relate to anything said on this article It's just a coincidence.

Lucía Fernández-Cuesta Donat

MY FAVORITE TV ACTRESSES-by Marta González López

MY FAVOURITE TV ACTRESSES

In this month’s post, I’m going to talk about the TV actresses I admire the most. I think I look up to the following actresses because they have something in common: I have discovered them while they were playing intelligent, strong, and independent women with a complicated background who never give up.

MADELEINE STOWE:

She was born in Los Angeles on 18^th August 1958. She is best known for playing Miryea Méndez in the 90’s film “Revenge”, Cora Munro in “The Last of the Mohicans”, Kathryn Railly in “Twelve Monkeys” or Victoria Grayson in the TV series “Revenge”.

I discovered Madeleine Stowe watching the show Revenge, in which she plays the evil and powerful Victoria Grayson, matriarch of the millionaire Grayson family. The show has been on air since 2011 and it has finished this year its 4^th season. It takes place in The Hamptons (NY), where a young woman named Emily Thorne plans her vengeance against those who ruined his father’s and her own life, which are principally, the Graysons.

Since I started watching Revenge, Madeleine has become one of my favourite actresses due to her ability to embody strong and independent women, her intelligence and beauty. I also think that she hasn’t received enough credit for her work, though she is a great and loved actress.

STANA KATIC:

She was born in Hamilton (Canada) on 26^th April 1978. She is a young actress who has found a huge success thanks to detective Kate Beckett, which is the character she plays in the acclaimed show “Castle”. Her role may sometimes be difficult to perform because Beckett is a complicated woman whose main objective in life is to find her mother’s murderer. However, she will not be able to accomplish this without the help of the handsome novelist Richard Castle.

Castle and Kate become partners solving cases; at first, Kate couldn’t put up with him, but later, she realizes that she is in love with him.

Besides from “Castle”, she has also worked in films such as “For Lovers Only” and “CBGB”. In addition, she has won many awards like the “TV Guide Award” for best couple with Nathan Fillion (Richard Castle) or “People’s Choice Awards” for best actress in a TV drama.

I truly admire Stana Katic, because of her personality, style and also, because she has always fought to achieve her dream of becoming a successful actress.

LANA PARRILLA:

She was born in Brooklyn (NYC) on 15^th July 1977. She is known for her roles in “Miami Medical”, “Spin City” and “Once Upon a Time” among others.

I first saw her in Once Upon a Time, which is a TV series that has produced four seasons till the moment. Its plot it’s a bit confusing. It tells the story of every fairytale character, trapped by a curse, in our world. Lana plays Regina Mills/The Evil Queen, from Snow White’s tale, character with whom I fell in love, not because of the wickedness, but because her endless seek for a happy ending and her willpower to become a better person.

Lana Parrilla hasn’t had much professional success. However, her personal life seems rather wonderful, she has just married Fred Di Blasio and she counts with thousands of fans over the world.

She has become one of my idols due to her personality, kindness and goofiness.

ELIZABETH MITHELL:

She was born in Los Angeles on 27^th March 1970. Some of her most-known roles are: Juliet Burke in “Lost”, Carol Newman in the film “The Santa Clause”, Erica in “V” and Ingrid in “Once Upon a Time”.

For me, I will always remember her as Juliet, which was my favourite character in “Lost”, where she played a fertility doctor who travels to the island for a job offer. She soon realizes what really is going on there and who can or cannot be trusted. With the arrival of Oceanic 815 passengers, everything changes. She even falls in love with Sawyer.  However, “Lost” is not a fairytale and doesn’t always have a happy ending. Therefore Juliet must make really hard decisions so as to be happy.  

DECISIONS IN OUR LIFE-by Patricia Valencia

Decisions in our life

I want to talk you about our current situation at school. These days, we have to choose the different school schedule for the next year and, whether it seems a difficult decision or not, our future will depend on it. Choosing between a literature kind of career and a science career isn´t something to joke about, as you will spend the rest of your life worrying on something related to that.

The decision depends on your taste and you are free to do it but you must be sure that that's what you want to do.

BYE BYE SECONDARY SCHOOL-by Blanca Bonmatí

Bye bye secondary school:

Hi! Or maybe I should say goodbye? This post is the last post I’m going to publish here, so I’m going to use that goodbye opportunity as a goodbye to secondary as well.

I’m still remembering my first day at secondary, everything was new:  new teachers, new timetable, and the biggest change for us (the girls) NEW UNIFORM after 9 years we substituted our old pinafore dress for news skirts-belts.

The first course went by very quickly and without realizing we were beginning a new course, a course marked by substitutes and the first experience with exchanges. Furthermore we learned to play the flute and we could give our first concerts.

When it seemed that everything was becoming more stable we came across the third course. Again new teachers, new timetables.... in addition to a new corridor, which means more responsibilities at the same time. We had more subjects but, as a result, we had more innovation: excursions like English cinema where we had our first underground school experience.

Finally we came to the last course where we proposed ourselves to do everything that we could do. When Christmas was  coming the famous ‘’Auto’’ (Jesus- Maria tradition) list of characters was full, however Maite and Jose Maria tried to give everyone a character. A couple months after we had the ‘’Convivencias ‘’ there we lived an amazing class experience that I would love to repeat (football match, cooking time with ‘’Uncle Aure’’, the first night together etc.).Meanwhile, the weeks were passing we had some Canada and USA visitors (We really miss you).After that, we only thought about our coming prom trip, which I told you about in my last post (thank you Beatriz, Manuel, Aurelio and Maite). When we came back from Easter, we had the spring festival where, after many rehearsal hours, we dance altogether YMCA.

Now we are finishing that last secondary course with a lot of good and no pretty good memories nevertheless when we look back into these years I’m sure that we’ll smile.

Finally, I only want to say thank you and goodbye!!!

SPECIAL FOOD-by Ignacio Renobales

It is hard to me to think about one special recipe or a good one, because, to be honest, nowadays I believe my favorite food is our traditional Spanish food rather than a foreign country one.

In my opinion, the high quality of this food is mainly due to the amount of cooking we do in the country. I spent two summers in the United Kingdom and one special thing I saw there was the lack of own food. There were lot of different culturul restaurants such as Chinese, Turkish, Arabic or Italian and only a few 'pubs' in which the served the typical English food, the well-known 'fish and chips' or the 'pie' for instance. Obviously, in Spain there are different restaurants and Italian restaurants are very common for example but the leading food is the Spanish one and you can find it in any corner.

It is said that you have to be in a country to know exactly the type of food they eat so that might be the reason of picking the Spanish food as I haven't been in too many different countries yet but I don't think I would change my mind in the future as the Spanish food is fabulous.

THE BLACK LAGOON BOARDING SCHOOL-by Clara Pastor

“The Black Lagoon Boarding School”

The Black Lagoon Boarding Schoolis a Spanish TV series, its genre is drama and thriller. It has seven seasons, it started in 2007 and finished in 2010.

In general terms, it is about a group of friends who live in a boarding school, in a forest really far from the city, but this is not a normal school, this school has a lot of secrets and so as the people who live there, in this boarding school occur weird things… Do you want to know more about this fascinating series? Keep reading!

Let’s start from the beginning.

It all began when Marcos and Paula (he is 16 and she is 6, they are siblings) moved to the boarding school because of the disappearance of their parents.

When they arrived, odd things started to happen, things that nobody can explain, they do not know what is going on or what they have to do but one thing they know for sure is that they must not trust anyone, each person can be a threat.

If you want to know what happens, watch it! I am not going to say nothing else for do not doing a spoiler…

Now I will describe the main characters.

Marcos (Martiño Rivas)

He has a little sister and he is a very loving brother, mainly because their parents are missing so they only have each other. He is also very brave but, sometimes, his feelings, does not let him think clearly.  He just wants to know what happened to his parents and if it is connected with that school.

Vicky (Elena Furiase)

She was awarded a scholarship so her family is proud of her, she is smart and also cowardly. This boarding school is very expensive, only the richest families can afford it, and therefore she feels poor and uncomfortable

Iván (Yon González)

He is rich, rebellious and rude, but he takes care of the people who are important for him. He does not give up and he is close to his friends.

Roque (Daniel Retuerta)

He is shy, confident, melancholic. His mates make fun of his height but he just moves on with his life.

Carol (Ana de armas)

She is cute, loyal, supportive, and a good friend. She is not scared about what they are going to find out. She just wants to continue looking for new information.

Paula (Carlota Garcia)

She lives in her fantasy world, she is naughty and she loves being with her best friend, Evelyn.

Julia (Blanca Suárez)

She has a strong mood, she does not like showing her feelings. She arrives to the school in the second season.

CANOEING-by Belén Mañá

Hello! In order to continue describing all the strange sports I’ve practised, this month I am writing about another activity that I like to do.

I started doing this activity five years ago but, as it’s difficult to find some place near to do it; I only do it like three times a year (or even less).

But... which is this activity? Let me explain my last experience doing it and I’ll tell you what it is.

As I wrote some months ago, during our stay in Gran Canaria, one day my uncle and I went to do this activity. We drove for more than an hour while I still didn’t know what we were going to do because my family had told us it was a surprise. Eventually my uncle parked in a tiny village, just in front of a group of people dressed with neoprene wetsuits. At this moment I realised what the surprise was: we were going canyoning!!

Canyoning consists on walking down a river following the riverbed, and using every slide that the water has carved into the rock or descending the waterfalls either jumping or using ropes. 

We put on our neoprene wetsuits too and as soon as the group was ready, we hiked up a mountain in 15 minutes, we ate a piece of fruit and we started the adventure:

We started out descending a cliff.

After that, there were some slides which are, in my opinion, the funniest things of canyoning. In the cliffs you are insured by the rope and you can stop if you need to. You descend slowly but surely and looking usually at some amazing views. But when you are falling over a slide you can’t stop nor go back once you’ve started, and that’s always thrilling.

Continuing our route we found more cliffs (one of those was more than 50 metres high!) and, although people think cliffs are the most dangerous things when practicing these kind of sports, these are actually quite safe and easy to go through. You just have to tie the rope to the harness and control the speed you want with your hands.

After this, there were some jumps in small waterfalls. To do this, it’s indispensable that there’s enough water at the bottom so you don’t break your legs if you jump. These jumps are really fun too. Although these ones were quite short (less than 8m high) and I’ve jumped higher ones (up until 11 metres), it’s always a bit scary when you’re on top of the cliff. It is because the height seems to double or triple when you are at the top and there’s usually no other way to move forward unless you jump. 

After 6 hours, we arrived to the final attraction: “The Relocator”:a mix between a cliff and a slide. The guide told us that it’s name’s because it relocates your vertebrae. He explained to us what to do: we had to descend with the rope and then drop it, and let us slide... but being careful not to hurt our spine...!!! “It doesn’t seem too difficult” I thought. So I started descending with the rope, and then the guide said “Now! Drop the rope!”.  I thought “How am I supposed to do that if I am 15 metres high and the wall is completely vertical?” I finally did it, but I took a couple of minutes until I found enough courage to do it and luckily, I didn’t break any bones!!! But unfortunately when I went down I realised that the lake was full of tourists clapping and cheering at me... Is it necessary to say that it was really embarrassing??!!

This is the last time I’ve gone canyoning, for now, but as the summer is getting closer I think I won’t delay much doing it again with my club.

As we live in Madrid and it’s a huge city, there are not many rivers to do it, so we usually go to Guadalajara, Cuenca, Zaragoza, León, etc.

Although it seems a weird sport there are more companies and clubs doing it than what you think so... why don’t you try it?!