My trip to Canada

Hi everyone! Me and my family are going to spend a month in Canada and watch the Olympic Games! Now we are in the house we'll live in. The house is beautiful and the family we live with are really nice. Our flight here was long and tiring. We got up at three o'clock, and drove about half past four. At seven o'clock the plane went to London / Heathrow from Landvetter. After a two-hour flight, we waited in Heathrow for about four hours. We ate an English breakfast and shopped a bit. Then at one o'clock our plane left for Canada. The air trip took ten hours and the plane was full of sports people. We quickly found our luggage and went by taxi to the house. Now I've had a shower and mom and dad have been drinking champagne with Sophie and Scott, the people we live with. They have two children, Portia and Ethan. We have not seen Portia because she is at camp, but she comes home tomorrow. Now I’m going to bed and sleep, you get tired after having been up for almost 24 hours.

Jueves Lardero

"Jueves Lardero" is a festival celebrated on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday. It's a festival celebrated in many places in Spain, but in Soria it is very important. Jueves Lardero is also the first day of Carnival. It began because people couldn't eat meat during Lent and as they couldn't store it either, they made a festival to eat everything they had before the forty days of vigil.

In Soria, we say: "Jueves Lardero, pan chorizo y huevo" which means ""lardy thursday" bread, chorizo and egg". Most people usually go to the countryside and eat this and other things (we can also make a chorizo-omelette sandwich). Young people also go out with their friends to some parks near the city and make camp-fires.
This year the weather wasn't so good (it had snowed the previous night and there was mud everywhere and it was below 0ºC) but anyway everyone went out to have a good time. At least, we were out until midday, when it started to snow, and we had to continue the party at home.

In the rest of Spain people have a holiday on Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, but here in Soria we have Jueves Lardero and the next day to celebrate. It has been like this since the seventeenth century.

After Jueves Lardero, young people dress up and parade in the streets at night. There are also some competitions in the old part of the city for the kids.

That's all for today. I'd like to know if you also celebrate carnival there in Sweden.

Numancia

Numancia is the name of a Celtiberian and then Roman town located next to Garray, a small village near Soria. It is famous because of its epic resistance to the Roman invasion.

After the Punic wars (2nd century B.C.), the Roman Empire conquered the Iberian Peninsula. When villages next to Numancia were attacked, their inhabitants moved to Numancia. The Romans got angry and decided to attack Numancia. For 20 years the Romans performed several campaigns (they even used elephants), but they were not successful.

So, Rome had to send their most important general, Scipio. He decided to besiege the town. He built 7 camps and a wall with towers between them surrounding Numancia. As they were starving, they had to surrender, but, before doing that, some of them committed suicide and burnt the town. The rest of them were made slaves. Numancia’s resistance became a legend.

After all this, the Romans built their own town on the ruins. Maybe the Visigoths maintained the town until the 6th century, when it was abandoned.

Soria’s inhabitants are proud of this story. The football team’s name is Numancia, every summer there is a theatre play about this and one of the most famous souvenirs from Soria is the Celtiberian horse.

Dance band music in Sweden

Hello! My name is Marcus Larsson, I live in Sweden, and I am going to
write about Swedish dance band music. A dance band is a music group that
plays dance music, which means music that people dance to. There
are many dance bands in Sweden, for example Sven Ingvars, Thorleifs
and Vikingarna, who are old dance bands, and young ones like Zekes and
The Playtones.

Dance bands often take the name of one of the members and put an "s" or a "z" in the end to get the band name. That's pretty unimaginative, in fact,
but that's how it is.

Dance band music can sound like rock'n'roll or like other music styles
that you can dance to. I like the rock influenced style the most.

In Sweden there is a competition and television show about the best
dance band in Sweden. It is called "Dansbandskampen", in English it
would be "The dance band fight". The band called "The playtones" won
last year and "Lars Kristerz" won in 2008. Lars Kristerz has had
one really great song called "Carina".

Thank you for reading. Have a nice day!

Marcus Larsson

TIME

The word time, as we know it, is a regular point in life. Time is always underestimated. There are two ways of underestimating time, you either got to much time or you don’t. People never have enough time. Maybe you are going to a meeting and you say ”I have enough time...” but the fact is you don’t. I think everyone has a special ”time limit” in life. Therefore you’re not supposed to waste it ’cause I believe that when a person does something bad, life reduces this ”time limit”. The time you’ve been given in life is perfectly matched with the duties every person has on earth. When I look at people on the street they always are in a kind of hurry. I think that we humans somewhere deep inside our minds know that our time here is short. Some of my friends say that time is just a word of use but I think it’s the knowledge of where we are in life. When people talk about life, what they have done or what they would like to do, I would like to think that they actually talk about time. Time is not a phenomenon it’s a purpose! Even the world has a ”time limit”. Even the scientists have discovered it. The only problem is that nobody can adjust the time every person has.

People think life is hard but “after the rain comes the sunshine”. It’s only a matter of time.

By Jesper Fredriksson

Hinojosa de la Sierra

Hello, my name is Lucia and I am the girl who was with Pernilla during the trip. I have to say that I am very happy to have met all of you, and I would like to go again for a visit.

Now, I wanted to make a brief description about my village, called “Hinojosa de la Sierra”. My village is very near Soria, the town in which I live, approximately 18 kilometres away. It’s a small village in which nobody lives during the winter. I usually go in summer, because it is when all the people arrive and when I meet my friends who live in other cities. Normally, I stay there during all the months of summer. I remember that when I was small, I preferred going to my village to going to a summer camp with my friends from school.

In my opinion, it’s a very beautiful village in which you can do a lot of activities. We have the river Duero which crosses on one side of the village, and in which I usually go for a swim. The water of the river is very cold, but when you get out you feel really relaxed. I also do more activities like going out with the bicycles to the nearby villages or playing football and other sports.

In the middle of August, the village has three days of holidays. The first day, there is a band during the night. The second day, there are typical traditional games, like cards or bowling. The last day, the people from the village have lunch in the main square where the entire village gets together.

The village has three important monuments, a palace in the entrance, a castle in the middle of the village and a gothic church.

In some aspects, I would prefer to live there than in the city, because it is a very peaceful place, surrounded by nature.

I hope you like my photo of the village.

My best wishes

LUCIA