New Year celebrations

2009 IS COMING!
All around the world, people of different countries and cultures celebrate the New Year coming. It is one of the oldest festivals. People welcome New Year with their family and friends. It is a time to think about the past and make new resolutions for next year.In Europe, America the New Year is celebrated on the first day of January but not all New Year celebrations take place on the same day or in the same way! Sometimes this is because people in different parts of the world use different calendars. China and Israel keep a lunar calendar. It is based on the movement of the moon around the Earth. Some countries celebrate in the spring when new crops begin to grow or in autumn when the crops are harvested. Adults and children have many different ways of welcoming the New Year. Wouldn't it be fun to travel around the world and celebrate the New Year all year long?

While we wait until we have enough money for the journey, we can know about New Year in other countries reading about it.


In Scotland it is called "Hogmanay". There is a big party in the street on 31st December. One of the most important traditions is "the first footing", after midnight people visit their relatives and friends to wish each other Happy New Year. They think it is lucky if the first person they visit is tall and dark. They take with them a piece of coal or some shortbread to eat,it is a very old tradition when they heated their homes with coal or they had little to eat.


In Holland, people think that something of the shape of a ring is lucky because it shows the complete circle of the year. For this reason they eat doughnuts on New Year's Day to bring them luck, on this day they put their Christmas trees in the street and burn them.

In the USA , food is important in New Year celebrations, they think that certain food bring them luck. Depending on the region they live they eat pork which represents prosperity, rice or cabbage which represents paper money.


In Venezuela, people think that it is lucky to wear yellow underwear. If they want to travel next year, they a suitcase and have a walk around the house. At midnight they eat twelve grapes for good luck. Another tradition is to write their wishes in a letter and burn it.

Now you can add some of these traditions to your

New Year Celebration

I wish you all HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A Christmas story

How the Trees Kept Christmas

One Christmas Eve the trees in a wood were very unhappy. They wished very much to keep Christmas, but they did not know how to do so.
"We look so brown," said one.
"And so bare," said another.
"If we only had our pretty green summer dresses," said a third, "then we should be decorated and could keep Christmas."
"Hush, children, hush!" whispered North Wind in quite a gentle voice for such a rough fellow. "Make haste and go to sleep."
"Hush! children, hush!" softly murmured a sleepy little bird. He was roosting on one of the branches of the unhappy trees.
So the trees dropped off to sleep, one by one, while a little star twinkled peacefully overhead.
But while they slept something happened. And when the trees awoke they found that someone, perhaps North Wind, had, during the night, cast over each of them a lovely soft cloak of spotless feathery white.
"How beautiful we are!" said the trees. "Now we can keep our Christmas!"

More Christmas Stories

Advent Calendars

CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLD

Advent Calendars have contributed to create excitement before Christmas, the traditional ones reveal a nice picture or surprise like chocolate hidden behind the cardboard door from 1st December to Christmas Eve. Nowadays, you can find different types of advent calendars in the internet. There is one quite interesting if you want to know how people celebrate Christmas all around the world, their traditions and the way they wish Merry Christmas in different languages. You only need to have a look at the numbers.

Christmas recipes

Christmas recipes

Do You like cooking? Have some fun in the kitchen with your family while you know some traditional Christmas recipes.

Here there is an easy recipe.

Turn on some holiday music, turn off the TV and spread the sprinkles, candies and sugars out for this fun event.
Ingredients
3-3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter or margarine, softened (not melted!)
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
Cooking Instructions
Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium sized bowl. Set aside.
Beat butter or margarine, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl with electric mixer until fluffy. Gradually add flour mixture and stir with wooden spoon until thoroughly mixed. Cover dough with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for two hours.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out circles with a cookie cutter or other round object, such as a glass or round plastic container. Place circles 2” apart on ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake for 6-8 minutes, checking after 6 minutes. Cookies will be done when edges are lightly browned. Do not allow cookies to get too brown. Remove from oven and allow cookies to cool on cookie sheets for 5 minutes. Remove from cookies sheets to aluminum foil on a flat surface and allow to cool completely.
What You Do
Bake your favorite sugar cookie recipe (try Amanda’s Sugar Cookies, above), or purchase a package from the store.
Using a butter knife, spread white frosting on top of each cookie.
Let children decorate the cookies with sprinkles, sugar, and candies.
To make holly berry cookies, place two red candies or jelly beans toward the top of the cookie and draw on leaves with green decorator gel.
For sugar stars, trees and other shapes, gently place a miniature cookie cutter on top of the cookie after it’s frosted. Carefully sprinkle a small amount of sugar into the cookie cutter with your fingers, being careful not to let the sugar fall outside. Gently remove cookie cutter.
You can completely cover a cookie with decorative sugar by holding the frosted cookie upside down and dipping the frosted end into the sugar to coat.
Use red decorator gel to write “Ho Ho Ho!” on your cookies.
A snowman can be made from candies and fruit roll ups. Cut a strip of fruit roll up, about ½ thick, and twist it into a rope. Place the fruit roll up around the top of the cookie as ear muffs and add jelly beans for the muffs themselves. Decorate face with colored candies.
Use cherry raisins to form the petals of a poinsettia. Place a colored candy in the center.

Christmas recipes http://recipes.kaboose.com/holidays/christmas-recipes/christmas-recipes.html

Boxing Day

Do you know what is Boxing Day ?
It is a holiday celebrated in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada on December 26th, which is also St. Stephen's Day.

Why is it called Boxing Day?
Boxing Day is so called because on this day it was the customary for tradesmen to collect their Christmas boxes or gifts in return for good service throughout the year. Also, it included giving money and other gifts to charitable institutions, and the needy.

Boxing Day origins

There seems to be two theories on the origin of Boxing Day and why it is celebrated.

The first is that centuries ago, on the day after Christmas, members of the merchant class would give boxes containing food and fruit, clothing, and/or money to trades people and servants. The gifts were an expression of gratitude much like when people receive bonuses, from their employer, for a job well done, today. These gifts, given in boxes, gave the holiday it's name, "Boxing Day".
The second thought is that Boxing Day comes from the tradition of opening the alms boxes placed in churches over the Christmas season. The contents thereof which were distributed amongst the poor, by the clergy, the day after Christmas.

How is it celebrated nowadays?
Today, Boxing Day is spent with family and friends with lots of food and sharing of friendship and love. Government buildings and small businesses are closed but the malls are open and filled with people exchanging gifts or buying reduced priced Christmas gifts, cards, and decorations.

To keep the tradition of Boxing Day alive, many businesses, organizations, and families donate their time, services, and money to aid Food Banks and provide gifts for the poor, or they may choose to help an individual family that is in need.

Happy Christmas, and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

for more information click: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/boxingday.asp

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/boxingday.html

http://www.calendar-updates.com/info/holidays/canada/boxing.aspx

Madonna's Hung up

Practise English, listening to this song, you can sing, too.

http://www.musica.com/video.asp?video=620
Hung Up - [Más Vídeos de Madonna]
Time goes by so slowly (x6)
Every little thing that you say or do
I'm hung up
I'm hung up on you
Waiting for your call
Baby night and day
I'm fed up
I'm tired of waiting on you
Time goes by so slowly for those who wait
No time to hesitate
Those who run seem to have all the fun
I'm caught up
I don't know what to do
Time goes by so slowly
Time goes by so slowly
Time goes by so slowly
I don't know what to do
Every little thing that you say or do
I'm hung up
I'm hung up on you
Waiting for your call
Baby night and day
I'm fed up
I'm tired of waiting on you
Every little thing that you say or do
I'm hung up
I'm hung up on you
Waiting for your call
Baby night and day
I'm fed up
I'm tired of waiting on you
Ring ring ring goes the telephone
The lights are on but there's no-one home
Tick tick tock it's a quarter to two
And I'm done I'm hanging up on you
I can't keep on waiting for you
I know that you're still hesitating
Don't cry for me
'cause I'll find my way
you'll wake up one day
but it'll be too late
Every little thing that you say or do
I'm hung up
I'm hung up on you
Waiting for your call
Baby night and day
I'm fed up
I'm tired of waiting on you
Every little thing that you say or do
I'm hung up
I'm hung up on you
Waiting for your call
Baby night and day
I'm fed up
I'm tired of waiting on you

THANKSGIVING IS COMING !

It is on the 4th Thursday of November in USA. It is a very important festivity which started to be celebrated when the Pilgrims, the founders of America, left Britain on the boat Mayflower in 1620 and arrived on the north-east coast of America.
It was winter and they didn’t have food, homes. It was very hard time and many Pilgrims died. The Wampanoag Indians, Who lived there, helped them. They taught them how to grow corn, hunt, etc. Before next Winter they had food and homes.
The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford thought it was a good idea to celebrate a dinner with the Indians to thank them for their help and thanks God for everything. The first Thanksgiving Dinner lasted three days.
Nowadays American families meet this day and have the Thanksgiving meal together. Most of them start the meal with a prayer to give thanks to God.
They prepare roast turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, pumpkin pie, etc.




Now it is time to work with vocabulary and have some fun .














Can you help the Pilgrim
find the turkey
for
dinner?

for more information about this American festivity click http://www.holidays.net/thanksgiving/

http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/

short stories

Have some fun reading a mystery story!

A Haunted House
Virginia Woolf

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly couple.

"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."

But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. 'The Treasure yours."

The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.

"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning--" "Silver between the trees--" "Upstairs--" 'In the garden--" "When summer came--" 'In winter snowtime--" "The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."

Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years--" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure--" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

if you feel like reading more stories click on http://www.englishclub.com/reading/short-stories.htm

Shakespeare's plays

If you are interested in watching more videos click

MALTED UNITS

Excellent material to work with and learn English from 1st of ESO to Bachillerato. Have a look at it.http://malted.cnice.mec.es/unidades/index.html