"Fear" by Raymond Carver modified by me

Fear of failing hard.

Fear of staring up at night and see no stars.

Fear of not waking up.

Fear of finding nothing but darkness.

Fear of becoming blind.

Fear of loneliness.

Fear of an endless flight.

Fear of madness.

Fear of being trapped.

Fear of the world splitting up.

Fear of the lack of common sense.

Fear of losing my head.

Fear of being worse than everyone else.

Fear of having no bed.

Fear of losing faith in people.

Fear of wars and hate.

Fear that they will solve their problems just too late.

Fear of false freedom.

Fear of intolerance.

Fear this day will end without learning anything new.

Fear of waking up to find the truth.

Fear of not loving and fear of not being loved back.

Fear that what I believe is a farce.

Fear of fear.

Fear of love.

Fear of fear.

I’ve said that.

Interesting facts about Stonehenge

The Stonehenge monument may not be an icon that immediately come across your mind when talking about the United Kingdom, but it is, for sure, a real gem from our ancestors located in Wiltshire, England.

There are many theories about its function but remain subject to debate. Some experts suggest that Stonehenge was used for ancestor worship, while others think that it was a place of healing or had multiple functions. There is also the thought that it represented peace or unity between Britain’s Neolithic people.

On September 7, some researchers found the one that could be the largest Neolithic site of the world only three kilometres away from Stonehenge. This place is buried and they discovered it by mapping the earth beneath the famous monument.

There is also something very funny about Stonehenge, and it has nothing to do with its function or with archaeological matters, but with its “owner”. By the early twentieth century a man called Cecil Chubb bought the whole place at an auction in Salisbury. His wife wanted him to buy a set of curtains, but he maybe thought that paying about 6.600 £ for the place was a better present for his wife. The thing is that he gave Stonehenge away only three years later, becoming of public ownership. He only wanted that people could visit it without paying too much. As a result of his generosity, the Prime Minister gave him the title of First Baronet of Stonehenge.

The history and the mystery that surround this ancient place make of Stonehenge a point that everyone should visit once in a lifetime. I am looking forward to go there when I have the chance to travel to the United Kingdom. 

Class Activity. Describing a picture

The picture shows the Giant's Cuseway, a beautiful area in Northern Ireland. As you can see, it is made of basalt columns that were created as a result of the volcanic activity sixty millions years ago. Because of that, it has a reddish colour. It is an isolated place, so the weather is cold a unstable, as we can notice from the big waves hitting the columns in the picture. I would personally like to go, as it seems a unique place.

Some thoughts about dubbing in Spain

Some days ago I watched Django Unchained for the second time. The first time was at the cinema when the movie was released. This second time was on TV and at first I was a bit reluctant because of the endless ads interrupting the film. But the thing is that it got better, obviously not because of the ads but of the option I had of watching it in O.V. It also got better because I had already watched it and I could focus on little details.

The first time I really liked the film despite the dubbing. It is not bad on some of the characters of the film, but I think it is awful on the African-American slaves. It is awful enough to notice it, and when you do that it means that there is something wrong about it.

So the second time I was curious about how the American southern sounded, and wanted to hear the quite different accents of the characters. This made me enjoy even more the film: listening the German accent of the co-protagonist in contrast to the African-American accent of his colleague was the icing on the cake that I needed on the first watch.

It is not only about diversity, it is about acting. I think that the way actors talk is like fifty percent of their performance, maybe even more, and we just ignore that whole part by dubbing every film arriving in Spain.

Furthermore, dubbing has also had a huge impact in the English learning of this country. I know some friends from the centre and north of Europe that speak an almost perfect English just because they watched animated cartoons in English when they were children. I am not saying that dubbing should not exist, I think Spanish dubbing is maybe the best of the world in terms of quality, and I can also understand that many people are not interested in watching a film in O.V or subbed, but from my point of view the television and cinema industry should focus on gradually showing more content in English so that Spanish people approach at least the average English level of Europe.

Now that we are aware of the importance of English language around the world we have to invest in updating and improving our media system to make people be in touch with this beautiful language.

My favourite brainstorming way

Last Friday we learnt how to get ready to write. Firstly, we chose some topics from a list and narrowed them into several more specific topics, trying to make them not too limited or general. Then we gathered some ideas by using three types of brainstorming: making a list, freewriting and mapping.

   · Making a list consists on writing ideas in the form of words or phrases that are linked to the topic.

  · By freewriting, we wrote about the topic almost without thinking: just whatever came into our head.

   · Mapping is about writing the topic in the middle of a map, then connecting ideas to it, and so on, until making some kind of concept map.

From these three ways of brainstorming, the one that helped me the most to approach the topic and gather ideas was making a list, and maybe the reason is because it is the one that allowed me to actually brainstorm, that is to say, gathering a bunch of ideas related to the topic without even thinking how to connect them like in mapping, or developing a text that makes at least some sense like in freewriting.