April 1st: April Fool's Day

April Fools' Day is celebrated all around the world on the April 1 of every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day where everyone plays all kinds of jokes and foolishness. The day is marked by the commission of good humoured or funny jokes, hoaxes, and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, teachers, neighbors, work associates, etc.

Traditionally, in some countries such as New Zealand, Ireland, the  UK, Australia, and South Africa, the jokes only last until noon, and  someone who plays a trick after noon is called an "April Fool".

Elsewhere, such as in France, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Russia, The  Netherlands, Germany, Brazil, Canada, and the U.S., the jokes last all  day. The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness  can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392). Many writers suggest that the restoration of the January 1 as New Year's Day in the 16th century was responsible for the creation of the holiday.

The top April Fool's Day hoaxes of all the time.-

• The Swiss spaghetti harvest. On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast a  three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern  Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually  mild winter and to the "virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil."  The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show's highly respected  anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched  video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and  placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that,  "For those who love this dish, there's nothing like real, home-grown  spaghetti."The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response.  Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow  their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied,  "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the  best."

• The Left-Handed Whopper (1998): Burger King published a full page
  
  advertisement in USA Today  announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed  Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans.  According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same  ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty,  etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit  of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a  follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a  hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the  new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many  others requested their own 'right handed' version."

Big Ben Goes Digital (1980):  The BBC reported that Big Ben, in order to keep up with the times, was  going to be given a digital readout. The announcement received a huge  response from listeners shocked and angered by the proposed change. The  BBC Japanese service also announced that the clock hands would be sold  to the first four listeners to contact them. One Japanese seaman in the  mid-Atlantic immediately radioed in a bid.

  

If you are curious about more top April Fool's Day hoaxes, click here and read more.

22nd March: World Water Day

International World Water Day is held annually on  the 22nd of March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

An international day to celebrate freshwater was recommended at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The United Nations General Assembly responded by designating 22 March 1993 as the first World Water Day.

Each year, World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater.

The objective of WWD 2011 is to focus international attention on the impact of rapid urban population growth, industrialization and uncertainties caused by climate change, conflicts and natural disasters on urban water systems. It will encourage action by governments, organizations, communities, and individuals around the world to actively engage in addressing urban water management challenges. UN-HABITAT is coordinating the organization of this year’s event on behalf of UN-Water.

(Source:the official site of World Water Day)

Photos: (above) http://www.dowsers.info/toronto/waterday (below) ttp://www.collegehills.org/files/Images/Event%20Graphics/World%20Water%20Graphic

*Do you have any ideas as for how we as individuals can contribute to the management of water?...at home, at work,...

*Share them with us so that we can all help to save water! There's always a starting point and that could be today!

17th March is Saint Patrick's Day

Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated worldwide by Irish people and increasingly by non-Irish people (usually in Australia and North America). Celebrations are generally themed around all things Irish and, by association, the colour green. Both Christians and non-Christians celebrate the secular version of the holiday by wearing green or orange, eating Irish food and/or green foods, imbibing Irish drink (such as Guinness or Baileys Irish Cream) and attending parades. Primary and high schools also often dress up in green on st Patricks day.

The St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, Ireland is part of a five-day festival; over 500,000 people attended the 2006 parade. The St. Patrick's Day parade was first held in Boston in 1761, organized by the Charitable Irish Society. New York City's celebration began on 18 March 1762 when Irish soldiers in the British army marched through the city, and the New York parade is the largest, typically drawing two million spectators and 150,000 marchers.

The predominantly French-speaking Canadian city of Montreal, in the province of Québec has the longest continually running Saint Patrick's day parade in North America, since 1824. Ireland's cities all hold their own parades and festivals, including Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford. Parades also take place in other Irish towns and villages. The city's flag has the Irish emblem, the shamrock, in one of its corners.

Saint Patrick's Day, colloquially St. Paddy's Day or Paddy's Day, is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on March 17.

The day is the national holiday of Ireland. It is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland and a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Montserrat, and the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In the rest of Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and New Zealand, it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday. 

It became a feast day in the Roman Catholic Church due to the influence of the Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding in the early part of the 17th century, and is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. The date of the feast is occasionally, yet controversially, moved by church authorities when March 17 falls during Holy Week; this happened in 1940 when Saint Patrick's Day was observed on April 3 in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and happened again in 2008, having been observed on 15 March. March 17 will not fall during Holy Week again until 2160

Americans celebrate the holiday by wearing green clothing. Many people, regardless of ethnic background, wear green-coloured clothing and items. Traditionally, those who are caught not wearing green are pinched, though this practice is in fact alien to those who actually come from Ireland.

Some cities paint the traffic stripe of their parade routes green. Chicago dyes its river green (see picture on the right) and has done so since 1961 when sewer workers used green dye to check for sewer discharges and got the idea to turn the river green for St. Patrick's Day. Indianapolis also dyes its main canal green. Savannah dyes its downtown city fountains green. University of Missouri Rolla - St Pat's Board Alumni paint 12 city blocks kelly green with mops before the annual parade.

(extracts from "The Free Dictionary") 

And now watch some videos...

Ceilidh 15th January

We really had a wonderful time at the Ceilidh last Thursday and everybody enjoyed it very much! 
Here you are a video and some pictures of the event.

Thank you all for coming!

Scottish Dancing at the EOI

Remember him? 
David Vivanco came to our EOI for a Ceilidh in 2008 and 2010, and we had a really good time then.

The big news is that he's coming back on Thursday, 15th!!

Watch this video to see what the activity will be like:



And look at some pictures taken at that Ceilidh. See if you can spot someone you know!

 

Black Friday

Black Friday is the name given to the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping  season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early and  offer promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season, similar  to Boxing Day sales in many Commonwealth Nations. 

 Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many non-retail employers  also observe this day as a holiday along with Thanksgiving, giving their  employees the day off, thereby increasing the number of potential  shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year  since 2005, although news reports, which at that time were inaccurate, have described it as the busiest shopping day of the year for a much longer period of time.

The day's name originated in Philadelphia,  where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive  pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after  Thanksgiving.  Use of the term started before 1961 and began to see broader use  outside Philadelphia around 1975. Later an alternative explanation began  to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point at which  retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black".

Watch this video below and see how much you can understand ;-)

27th November: Thanksgiving Day

Do you remember Kiran telling us about this celebration?

Thanksgiving Day is a communal celebration marked as a sense of gratitude people feel for all the good things in life. This is done by offering prayers, gifting your near and dear ones. 

The fourth Thursday in the month of November is marked for the yearly celebration. The tradition of Thanksgiving continues till date in the form of Family Reunion and Feasting.

Family feast is an important tradition during Thanksgiving. The entire family sits at the table during dinner and offer prayer to the Lord Almighty for his continuous grace. It is also a time for relatives living in different places to come together and celebrate.

The traditional stuffed turkey adorns every dinner table during the feast. Pumpkin pie, Cranberry sauce, Corns are some of the dishes cooked everywhere to mark the day. Though historians don't have an evidence to prove that turkey was eaten during the first Thanksgiving dinner, but the thanksgiving celebration will be incomplete without it.

THE HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN

On the eve of the 1st of November, Halloween is always celebrated. Halloween is not just costumes and candy; it's a cultural holiday rich in tradition.

Find out more about it in this video from National Geographic.

TED TALKS to practise your listening skills

Click on the image below to access this interesting website I told you about yesterday in class. 

You can search videos by the topic you are most interested in, activate the subtitles in English while you are watching, get the transcript or even download the video. 

It's a really amazing option to practise your listening skills!

Some proverbs and idioms

Click on the image below to log on that website and learn some useful proverbs and idiomatic expressions. 

176th anniversary of Mark Twain's birth

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His travelogues (a film or piece of writing that describes travel in a particular country) were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

He lacked financial acumen (the ability to think quickly and make good judgments), and, though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.

Twain was born during a visit by Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well. He died the day following the comet's subsequent return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."

(source: wikipedia)