The Poet and the Women

Hi! I’m Estefanía and I am writing again to tell us you my last trip I made with my class. This happened the 13th of April, the second day after Easter holidays.

My class and half of the people from 1st of bachillerato who are studying Latin like us, went to Zaragoza to see a theatre of Aristophanes called “Thesmophoriazusae” or “The Poet and the Women”.

Well that day we Left Soria at 8 o’clock from the high school by bus and we arrived at Zaragoza at 10.15 more or less. We were late for the 1st theatre and museum so we had to go to the other 3 museums we had reserved to visit them. There we could observe the primitive theatre built for a long time ago by the Romans when they conquered our peninsula, and that is still preserved up to our days.

We spent the whole morning going from one building to another up to the time we had lunch. Afterwards the let us go shopping or whatever we wanted until the theatre of Aristophanes began.

It started at 5.30 and it lasted for one hour, it was quite interesting and funny so everybody liked it. Once it was over we went to the Square “El Pilar” to visit the cathedral and finally at 7.30 we left the city to come back to Soria.

This was an unusual activity that our teacher of Latin prepared for us, it was an entertaining trip and I wouldn’t mind going on another.

Thanks for reading about it

The crazy videogames player

Hi, I´m Javier and I´m going to talk about an article I read some days ago, this article talks about the effect of the videogames on children´s behaviour.

The article says that young people who play violent videogames, even for a short period of time, become more violent and aggressive.

Moreover these chidren try to imitate the characters of the videogame with their friends , this imitation can cause serious illnesses, these videogames could also affect the children academic task because if the child was always playing games he wouldn´t do his homework and it could cause a worse relationship with parents.

In contrast I think that a simple game can´t affect so much the children´s behaviour .because most of the children have a limit with the videogames and they also do sport or meet friends instead of playing videogames.

On the other hand, I read another article which said that playing videogames helps the children to develop their skills such as the visual attention, so videogames perhaps aren´t so terrible.

The Bullfighting Debate

Several demonstrations have taken place all around the world. More and more people are against bullfighting because they consider it a cruel act. This activity means killing an animal just for entertainment.

However some others think that it is some kind of art and that’s an essential part of our culture that shouldn’t disappear. Furthermore, in some regions they declared bullfighting, National Heritage.
That’s right, but just because of that should we keep on practising it? The evolution of our society is obvious why shouldn’t we de the same with this barbaric activity? Romans had gladiators, people killing each other, something unbearable nowadays.

On the other hand the abolition of bullfighting would affect local festivities like the San Fermines or even the San Juanes, here in Soria. What’s your opinion? Think about it.

Carnival

Three weeks ago the streets of the cities, towns and villages were full of colours, life and splendour. We were celebrating carnival. It is known that this festival invites you to dress up as whatever you want. So, if you go for a walk on these days you willl see pirates, witches, princesses, ancient Greeks or Romans, superheroes... which are some of the typical costumes. You can also find policemen, soldiers, flies, bees, or even original costumes as tomatoes, famous statues, chewing-gums... I think this is the best moment to show your imagination and creativity to impress other people. It isn’t difficult because the most stupid thing you find could be the funniest idea. Now, all of you have enough time to think about the one of next year. Come on, don’t be boring!!

THE WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES

I’m Marta, from Soria and I’m going to write about the Winter Olympic Games now that they have just finished. This competition has taken place since 1924, when the first ones took place in France. Before this, the first multi-sport event especially for winter was the Nordic games, held in Sweden in 1901. Like the summer Olympics, they are held every four years, but they don’t coincide with each other. However, fewer countries participate in these games compared with the summer ones. Maybe this happens because many of the sports that are played in the Winter Olympic Games are quite strange or, at least, not very well-known. There are lots of types of skiing, like alpine, freestyle or cross-country. There are also other sports, like snowboarding, skating, hockey, curling and skeleton. These two last ones are new sports that have been added to the Olympic Games in the last years. Anyway, they have become quite famous in these games and lots of people know now about these sports.

As always when we talk about sport at these levels, we also have to talk about doping. It was in 1967 when the International Olympic Committee started to make drug testing protocols. The last Winter Olympics, hosted in Turin in 2006, were famous because of a scandal involving blood doping. This caused the suspension of 12 cross-country skiers. Other three skiers tested positive after the Olympic Games took place and their medals were taken.

This year, the Winter Olympic Games have taken place in Vancouver, Canada. United States is the one that won most medals, with 37, followed by Germany, with 30, and Canada, with 26. Sweden is in the eighth place, together with China and France, with 11 medals so you can be happy. On the other hand, Spain has not won any.

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.