My trip to Italy

Hello, everyone!! In this post, I will be talking about the amazing trip I made to Italy some years ago.

I went there with my school classmates five years ago. We decided, as it was out last trip together, that we would make the best of it so we thought about going on a cruise for six days and visit Italy. There we visited Rome, Pompeii, Naples and finally the island of Sardinia. I can assure you it was the best trip of my life.

As we had to get the ship, we went to Valencia by bus first. It was really tiring due to its eleven hours of journey. We arrived there at lunchtime, so after we had eaten, we went to visit the most important places in Valencia such as the Oceanographic and the ‘Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias’. We only stayed in Valencia for the afternoon, so unfortunately we couldn’t see much of it. At six o’clock it was time to take our ship and we were all really nervous and that only got worse when we saw that giant ship in front of us. It was amazing! The cruise had everything you can imagine: it had pools, jacuzzi, a disco, a really good buffet, a gym, and some areas where you could go to relax. It was really nice. And so were the rooms we had. They were a bit little but comfortable enough for us to sleep.

Our first day in Italy, we saw Rome and the most important places, like the Fontana di Trevi or the Coliseum, I really enjoyed being there! But the place I liked the most was Pompeii, which we visited on the second day. As I am a fan of archeology, that place was like a dream for me and I was thrilled when the tourist guides were telling us everything about the city, and how it was destructed by the volcano. They even showed us some photos of the bodies. As you can imagine, that was somehow creepy, but I still enjoyed my visit.

The third and fourth day we visited Naples and the island of Sardinia and I also liked the cities a lot but it was really hot so we couldn’t enjoy it as much as we wanted to! It was a pity, but it still was fun to visit them.

The fifth consisted in travelling back to Valencia and one thing I can remember perfectly is how the cruise moved when we were near the Baleares Islands! It was a bit scary and a lot of people got sick. Nothing happened but it still was something to remember. We got to Valencia at six o’clock in the morning. There was a bus waiting for us and we drove back to Ourense.

It was a really nice trip, but take my advice: If you go to Rome, be careful with the cars! They won’t stop even if you are crossing the street!

Hope you enjoyed this post! Let me know in the comments

Improve your English day by day

Hi! Like you, I want to learn English, and all of us know that there are so many different ways to learn it! For example, the secondary school classes of English where we only learn grammar and where we couldn't speak most of the time, are very different to the classes of our degree, which are more interactive and motivating. Don`t you think? So now, I am going to talk to you about a ludic way to learn English.

A few years ago, if you wanted to improve your pronunciation or your listening, the best way to do it was meeting with an English native or going to any English speaking country. Both of them are fantastic ideas, but maybe you don’t have enough money or time. Now, there are many options! As you know, nowadays all of us have access to Internet so we can watch TV series, films and listen music in English.

Instead of wasting your time watching TV series in Spanish, invest your time watching them in English. At the beginning, it can be a bit difficult, so I recommend you to watch again a film that you have already seen in Spanish. In my case, I have done this with my favourite TV series: Utopia, but you can choose your preferences. It is not recommendable to watch it with Spanish subtitles because although we don’t want, our eyes will be reading the text. Therefore, if you choose to watch it with subtitles take care of being in English!

Try to watch films or TV series from different places and pay attention to the different ways of talking. For example, the TV series that I had talked about, Utopia is from England so it has Britain accent, like Sherlock or Black Mirror, but if you watch Sons of Anarchy, you will notice that the accent is not the same because it’s American. Orphan Black is from Canada and 13 reasons why is from Australia.

   

Now, think about how many songs you have listened in English. Have you ever payed attention to their lyrics?  Do it! Look for the lyrics on the Internet, and besides of enjoying the music you will understand better the song and improve your English. It can be a bit boring but there are alternatives, for example in the page https://es.lyricstraining.com/ you can complete the lyrics of the songs while they are playing. Try it, it’s very funny!

If you introduce English in your day to day pleasure activities, you will notice that you will learn without realising it! 

A HOLIDAY TO REMEMBER

Hi everone! Today I´m going to tell you about my best holidays.

In summer of 2014 I went with my family to Pontevedra, as every year, to spend a few days on the beach. At first everything was going well, but the weather started being worse. The second day the weather was terrible and we had to come to a decisión: going back to Ourense, because we couldn´t stay there, or moving to another place.

As you can imagine we chose the second option. So that day we went to Lugo. It was a quite long travel from Pontevedra, but at the same time it was exciting. First, we visitted Souto da Retorta, in Chavín (Viveiro). It´s a small but magnificent forest (also a protected natural area) full of huge and incredible  eucalyptuses. Here we saw O Avó (the grandfather), than being more that 130 years old and with a height of 68 metres, is considered the biggest tree in Spain. If you want to see some pictures you can take a look at this web. Moreover, in Lugo we went also to the Praia de Augas Santas (Beach of the Cathedrals) and to an abandoned fish farm in Ribadeo:

The fish farm (on the inside)

As Catedrais (Ribadeo)

The fish farm (on the outside)

I took a photo of an informative panel because the image was cute

The school was a ground floor house

Before telling you about the days I stayed in Asturias I want to talk about another place we visitted in Lugo too, between Viveiro and Ribadeo. My grandmother (my father´s mother) worked as a teacher for many years and my grandfather worked as a merchant, so they moved several times during his life, looking for the best for their six children. For this reason my father lived in different sites in Galicia. One of them is a remote village, hidden among the mountains, called As Oiras. Here I show you a picture of its school (nowadays they don´t use it), where my father studied when he was a very young child.

About Asturias I could tell you many things, but I will try to summarize. When you are between Galicia and Asturias this is what you see:

Do you imagine practising mindfulness here?

But also:

Cows... a lot of cows

And nice horses!

The first we saw when we left Lugo was the Navia area. The views here are amazing and I recomend you to see it! Later we visited two different villages.

Oneta is a small and very green village with incredible views and a nice waterfall:

My father had a shower here

Here there were many cows too

And Luarca, a village where the mountains and the sea melt away:

Luarca

Moreover we stayed in different towns and cities in Asturias. 

In Oviedo we ate in a kind of shopping centre called Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos (I know it doesn´t sound like a shopping centre, but believe me, it was) where there weren´t many people, but the structure of the building is superb. Click in the numbers to see diferent views of this place: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 

In Avilés we went to the beach, but it started raining and we had to left. In Asturias it rains a lot!!!

The thing I liked most in Gijón was the University:

And the most beautiful things of our holidays were the Picos de Europa and the Bufones de Pría. When we decided to see the Picos the Europa we couldn´t see the mountains because it was getting dark and the weather was quite foggy, but I can show you a picture of the Santa Cueva de Covadonga, which is a small church built directly in the mountain´s rock:

Those small people are my parents and my sister

I couldn´t  find any video in English about the Bufones de Pría, but you can see this one in Spanish which explains very well what this place is.

In Cantabria we could stay only for a few hours. We went to El Sardinero, the most popular beach in Santander, but I haven´t got any pictures, so if you´re interested in this amazing city you can check this web.

Finally, we spent the last days in Castilla y León. First, we arrived in Astorga, a village where there´s a bullfighting arena, something  that surprised me a lot, but not for good because I can´t stand cruelty to animals. Even then, I liked this village and I remember my father looking curious to some old and abandoned buildings which were on sale. Next day we went to León. We took a walk in the town and we saw the Cathedral. Our trip finished in Las Médulas (Orellán), a gold-mining site near Ponferrada where the views are amazing! Then, we went back to Ourense with great memories of the places we had seen.

It´s me!

Las Médulas

I hope you enjoyed reading my experience!

Dinner in NYC

Hello, Everybody!! How are you?? Today I will show you my favourite place in New York City to have a good dinner. The place is called Ellen´s Stardust and it is marvelous. Stardust is a restaurant very cool, the waiters ans waitresees are singers, ok first you must wait in the line 1h or 2h to entry when you can sit you can check the menu. Menu is mainly hamburguers of meat and nachos or you can order salads, I don´t eat meat but they changed burguer of meat for veggie burguer for the same price. The portions are very plentiful, we ordered a portion of nachos and two burguers and it was too much food… the bill was very expensive but there are a good reason, you can eat while waitresees and waiters sing for you. Many the waiters end up working as professional singers in Brodway. In the last two years the were 22 for Brodway. It is amazing. I recommended?? Absolutely yes, It is a fantastic restaurant!!!

My Erasmus Experience

I'm going to talk about my experience as an Erasmus student in Warsaw, the capital of Poland and all my adventures in that cold and cloudy city.

My experience in this city is full of first times. It was my first time in an airplane and living in a flat without my parents too. Therefore, when someone ask me about my Erasmus I usually say that was an unforgettable adventure. Nevertheless, the first week was the worst because I felt very isolated, sad and without knowing anybody there. I was far away (3.000 km) from home and in a country with people who, in general, don't speak English or speak it poorly.

When the first day of class began, all the Spanish students made a group, trying to compensate the lack of family. Of course, we also talked with Turkish people who were the other half of the class but between Spanish everything was easier because of the language. However, we learned a lot of Turkish traditions and we broke stereotypes.

In a month all the Spanish group became like a family. With the free time we had thanks to the university schedule, we planned trips to discover places in Poland and also in another countries like Germany and Belgium.

And also we learned a lot of Polish culture, cuisine (Pierogi, my favourite dish that I highly recommend), history and a little bit of Polish.

I hope you find my experience interesting.

Do widzenia i dzięki za przeczytanie!! (Goodbye and thanks for reading)

IF YOU ARE GLUTEN FREE PERSON CHECK IT

This is a typical dish in Britain but it has a change, it´s gluten free so all can enjoy it preparing and eating. It´s easy to prepare you only need this ingredients and a few friends to finish the meal.
let´s start: 

Ingredients

• 800 g potatoes
• 1 small head of cauliflower (600g)
• 1 bunch of fresh coriander (30g)
• 1 x 1.2 kg whole free-range chicken
• 2 tablespoons tikka curry paste

Once you have all the ingredients, let´s see the method...

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Wash the potatoes and chop into 3cm chunks. Trim the cauli stalk, remove any tough outer leaves, then chop the cauli and nice leaves the same size as the spuds. Finely slice the coriander stalks (reserving the leaves in a bowl of cold water). In a 30cm x 40cm roasting tray, toss the veg and coriander stalks with a pinch of sea salt and black pepper, and 1 tablespoon each of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

Sit the chicken in the tray and rub all over with the tikka paste, getting into all the nooks and crannies. Place the chicken directly on the bars of the oven, scrunch everything in the tray and place exactly underneath the chicken to catch the tasty juices. Roast for 1 hour, or until everything is golden and cooked through, turning the veg halfway. Sit the chicken on top of the veg to rest for 5 minutes, then sprinkle over the drained coriander leaves and serve, tossing the veg in all the tasty juices before dishing up.

Why traveling is so important

For most of the people, traveling is just the fact of visiting a new city or country and look the monuments. However, for me is more than that. Traveling is the whole experience of tasting the local food, study the culture of the population and meeting new people. When you travel, you get also to know yourself.

When we travel we feel freedom, adventure and happiness. 

Did you know that traveling has benefits? Some of them are:

Maybe you are afraid of traveling to a country in which they speak a language that you don't know, but don't worry. This is the best way of learning a new language. When you are completely immersed in a new country you learn the language easier, because you are totaly focuse on that. This method is one of the most chosen by students to acquire a new language. 

• Reduces stress and anxienty.
• Increases your communication and social skills.
• Opends your mind and expands horizons.
• Makes you happier.
• Avoids the risk of depression.

While we travel we are able to see things out of ordinary that help us to think beyond cliches and prejudices. We become more cultured.

Which kind of trip should you choose? Well, that depends on you and what you want to experience. These are some are some types that you can select:

• A trip alone.
• A journey where your family comes from.
• A couchsurfing experience.
• A volunteering.
• A trip through your own country.
• A backpacking trip.
• A camping trip.
• A cruise.

It doesn't matter if you travel by car, airplane or boat, the important thing is to learn from the new experiences!!!

LEARNING ENGLISH TROUGH AUDIO-VISUAL MEDIA

Using audio-visual media like videos with songs, films and cartoons is a good way to learn or to improve our English as adults but also for children. At this post I’m going to talk about the case of children.

    We have a lot of audio-visual means, (a lot of them free), to learn English and I think using them in class is a good way to make the language learning more attractive for the students and it is a very useful tool to improve their comprehension. There are for example, a lot of free videos with songs for studying and going over the alphabet, the numbers, verbs, actions etc. made for different ages and levels that are very useful, for improving the pronunciation of the children. Besides, some of those videos can be subtitled or are already subtitled.

     We can also see cartoons and subtitled films at class, that in my opinion are very useful materials for learning English, mostly if we put the subtitles in English, but in this case it will be easier to start with the mother tongue of the pupils due to we are working with small girls and boys.

    I think that those tools have a big utility for us like pre-primary teachers because at early ages, children have a big capacity for learning and this is why childhood is the best stage to introduce new languages to them. Kids loves watching films and cartoons, so why not doing it in English? Some people could think that this is too much for young boys and girls but in many other places, like Portugal, people use to see television, above all films, in their original version with subtitles since they were kids and it is proved that with this simply method they have a very good comprehension and it is easier for them to learn a new language. With pre-primary students we have to be careful because they can’t read yet, so, for example a whole movie in English would be too much for them but we can start with cartoons that have some words or some sentences in English and then make it more complicated.

     When the kids can read, we could continue using different types of audio-visual media in class to improve their English, specially their comprehension but also their speaking and pronunciation too, for example listening to some song, watching films and after asking them questions about those films, etc. Besides, they can use those resources also at home, which is a good reinforcement. 

Here you have some interesting links:

I hope you liked my post. You can make any comment if you want!