Spanish football

Hello!

My name is Maria Ramos, I am going to write about the sports in Spain. Here the most important sport is football. There are different kinds of football leagues, but the most important one is the football league of first division. The best football teams in Spain play in this one. Some important teams in Spain are: Real Madrid, F. C. Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid, Valencia, Sevilla and Villarreal. But the two biggest (because of the money managed by the football club) and important (because many people support them) ones are: Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona.

More than half of the population in Spain are fans of Real Madrid or F.C. Barcelona and the rest support other teams such as Atletico, Villarreal or Valencia. But there are also some people that support less important teams such as Numancia, Soria’s team, that this year are playing in the first division. My favourite team is Real Madrid because normally they play well and they have won many cups and different titles. This year they didn’t start the season very well, but I think that they are going to improve.

At the moment any team could win the league!

Maria Ramos

The Tuna

Hello people!

I’m Alba, I’m 15 years old and I’m from Soria. I’m going to tell you a tradition for teens here.

The people that are in 4th grade, like me, three times a year on specific days we dress as what we call “tunas”, or minstrels. This consists of giving ribbons to people, usually your friends and close family members, and then they paint and decorate the ribbons before giving them back to you.

You collect the ribbons and you put them in a layer all together. The tradition is to have 10 ribbons on each “escarapela” that we have on our backs. They are like three flowers, but there are some people who have more. The first three are embroidered, and on each one we put a name; on the first one the name of your high school, on the second one your name and on the third one “Aupa la tuna”. After we have all our ribbons, we to sing around all the shops and to the people so they give us some money and with this, we all have a party and dinner together.

That is the best party for teens but you can’t do it until you are in year 4.

Alba Moreno

Christmas Concerts in the Provinceof Soria.

Soria Symphony Youth Orchestra (J.O.S.S.) gave three concerts in the province of Soria this Christmas. The concerts were given on December 20^th, 21^st and 22^nd in the evening. The first one was given in Soria on the 20^th at 8 o'clock in the Avenida Theatre. The tickets cost 5 Euros and the benefits went to UNICEF.

1st Part;

• Franz Schubert: symphony nº 3 in D

Allegro Maestoso
Allegretto
Minuetto
Presto Vivace

2nd Part:

• Trish-Trash Polka, Opus 214, Johan Strauss (junior)
• The marriage of Figaro, overture, KV 492 , W. A. Mozart
• Kaiser Waltzer, O. 437, Johan Strauss (junior)
• On the beautiful blue Danube, O. 314, Johan Strauss (junior)
• Radetzky March, O. 228 Johan Strauss (senior)

The concert on the following day was given in the centro cultural of Olvega at 7 o'clock and it was free. The pieces played were the same, but many people went to see it too.

The last concert was given in Burgo de Osma, in the Centro Cultural San Agustin at 20:30. As the wind instrument musicians were missing, the concert was only for strings. The pieces played were:

1^st part:

• Intermezzo from the opera Goyescas for string orchestra of E.Granados
• Concert in D for violin and orchestra of Felix Mendelsson:

o Allegro

o Andante

o Allegro

2^nd part:

• Adagio for strings of Samuel Barber
• Quintet for clarinet and strings in A, KV 581 of W. A. Mozart

o Allegro

o Adagio

o Menuetto & Trio

o Allegretto con variazioni

All the concerts were directed by Vicente Alberola. He also played the solo clarinet part in the quintet by Mozart. It was a greatly played. The solo violin part of the concert in D of Mendelssohn was also greatly played by Teimuraz Janikashvili Kobulash. The best of all is I appeared in the photo of the local newspaper (in the left corner). It appeared in the Heraldo de Soria on 21^st December 2008. You can listen to us playing at this link.

Running.

In this blog, I will like to write about my last trip. I train in an athletics club in Soria with some other people. The 2nd of January, some of the guys from my club and I travelled to Northern Ireland. We stayed in a hotel in a small village called Antrim, located next to the biggest lake in Ireland and only 25km from Belfast.

We went to Ireland to run in an International Cross Country Championship that took place 3rd January in this village. During the competition I talked to lots of people. I also met the family which I had been living with during the week that we had been there the year before; it is the second time we have travelled to Ireland to run the cross.

That same day after the competition we were invited to have dinner with the major of Antrim, the president of athletics in Northern Ireland and some important athletes that had been running in the cross. The next day we visited the Giant’s Causeway, a very beautiful natural landscape on the northern coast of Northern Ireland. It is an area with about 40,000 stone columns, all of them with the same hexagonal form. They are the result of a volcanic eruption that occurred many years ago.

On the 5th, we went to Newcastle and we had a walk along the sea cost. Then, we had dinner iat a golf club. A friend of ours that is an athletics trainer in Northern Ireland is member of that golf club. The last day we went to Belfast to see the city and do some shopping before taking the plane to return to Spain. It is a nice town and its centre, around its big town hall, is quite new and modern. We spent five fantastic days in Northern Ireland, the Irish people treated us very well and we had a lot of fun.

Apart from the things that we did there I would like to write about some differences between Ireland and Spain. The first and probably the most important one is the time it gets dark. In winter, in Ireland the sun disappears at 5; at that time it is completely dark. There is no one in the street and all the shops are closed before six. Because of this, the meals they have are also different. They have a good breakfast early in the morning, they have a sandwich or something like that at one o’clock more or less and they have dinner at 6, when they usually return home.

In Spain, we are used to very different schedules. We have a normal breakfast but then we have a proper lunch at 2 or 3. As it gets darker later, there aremore people on the street and all the shops are open till eight so we have dinner much later. The food they eat is different as well. The meat they cook is normally chicken, beef or turkey, but they don’t eat lamb or pork. Fish isn’t usually cooked in Ireland either. Their food isn’t better or worse than ours but, in my opinion, Spanish food is more varied and we have more typical foods from our own country.

Earl “the Goat” Manigault.

I am going to talk about the best street basketball player ever, Earl “the Goat” Manigault.

Earl Manigault was an American street basketball player. For many people the best basketball player ever, even though he never played professional basketball. He went to prison and was addicted to heroin…

He spent his childhood in Harlem, in New York. Manigault set the NYC junior high school record by scoring 57 points in a game in the late 1950s. However, he started to go around with the wrong people and ended up in prison. At the age of 17 people started to talk about this legend. He was like any other boy from his neighbourhood , trying to survive day by day.

The legendary Rucker League would have been the place in which he was intended to get himself known. This summer competition combines the best players ion the playground with some of the most renowned professional players: Lew Alcindor, Earl Monroe, Julius Erving, Connie Hawkings, Jackie Jackson or Helicopter Knowings. That's when he got the nickname "the goat," due to his spectacular jumps (say his vertical leap was 1.35 meters high).

Another theory says that the name comes from the inability of one of his teachers to pronounce his surname, which resulted in the nickname, The Goat. In any case, the fact is that from 1.85m Earl could reach an unimaginable elevation.

In his worst period he went to prison because of heroin possession and stealing.
The word that describes his life is to overcome. He overcame his addiction to heroin and he never needed to steal anything again. n the last years of his life he spent his time on a project against heroin called "Walk Away from Drugs".

Kareem Abdul Jabbar, one of the best players ever, the day of his retirement was asked about who he thought was the best player ever and he said that it was probably Earl Manigault

The Double Dunk

The Goat made the best dunk ever. This dunk was incredible, and nobody had done one like it before and probably nobody will ever do one like it in the future. The dunk consisted of throwing the ball with his right hand, taking it down with his left and throwing it down again with his right hand. All this in the air.

There are some films and a book about his life if someone is interested in learning more about his life:
-Rebound. The Story of Earl ‘Goat’ Manigault (FILM)
-More than a Game (FILM)
-Double Dunk (Editorial Holloway House)

Urban legends. Do you believe them?

As “wikipedia” says: “an urban legend is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them. Like all folklore, urban legends are not necessarily false, but they’re often distorted, exaggerated,…”

Some years ago, urban legends were transmitted by word of mouth, and sometimes even the newspapers or radio programmes echoed the legend. It was the typical “a friend of a friend of mine has…”

Nowadays, the best way to find and send urban legends is the internet. Searching io the web you can find any urban legend you want. There are urban legends for everyone: from dark, unknown murders to some stupid action of a company that lead to going bankrupt.

TV has also made the most of urban legends. Shows such as Urban Legends, Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, and later Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed tried to test people and see if they could guess which of the legends were true. Usually, they gave scientific facts to prove why the legend could or could not be true.

More recently, the Discovery Channel show: Mythbusters has reached our screens. On this TV show a group of engineers and scientists try to examine all types of urban legends and show if they are true or not.

Let’s see some two the most famous examples:

I’m sure you’ve heard at least once about the crocodiles of NY’s drains. It is said that in the 30’s it was usual to buy crocodiles or alligators brought from Florida. When the animals reached a respectable size and they changed their “innocent” activities for more dangerous behaviour, they were thrown down the toilet by their owners. This urban legend reached its height in the 60’s, when people really thought they lived over a world of alligators and crocodiles. It is said that some expeditions were sent to the drains to search for and kill the alligator colonies of New York. This legend changed slightly in other countries like, for example, the snakes that were thought to be in Santiago de Compostela’s drains.

Another great and most well known urban legend is that of “the girl at the bend in the road”. This phenomenon has been told throughout Spain, and more countries. Some people have even reported this ghostly apparition to the police. It is said that the girl warns the driver about the danger of the bend in the road were she was killed. Then, there are two versions of the same story. In the first one, the drivers turns his head back to look at the girl, and crashes. The other version says that he drives carefully until there’s no danger, and when he turns his head back the girl has disappeared…

As I said before, an urban legend doesn’t have to be false( it’s been proved that the alligators can survive one or two weeks in the drains, but then they’re killed by infection) although some of them are changed. Anyway, there are still lots of urban legends that haven’t been proved true (or false), and it’s in your hands to believe them or not.

Have a nice moondream.

From MPK’s quill

Interesting links for urban legends

English pages
http://www.Snopes.com (all urban legends)
wikipedia(information and definition)
http://www.ehow.com/how_2130830_tell-story-urban-legend.html (how to guess if it’s true or false)

Spanish pages
http://leyendasurbanas.org (some urban legends and more)http://www.ionlitio.com (some urban legends, comments and different versions)

Join Our Club!

During the last season the rugby club of Soria, The Ingenieros CR, reached the 4th position in the regional league, but this season our local rugby team is not doing so well in its matches. Soria rugby club has lost most of the matches they have played this year, they have only won one in seven matches. This is not good for team morale, a team known in Castilla and León for having tough members, a group of strong, well built players that make up a hard defence. They are usually near the goal line but they just can’t go much further due to the "undertrained and overweight" members (called "Fatties" among the members of the team), who just can’t reach the high speed of the wing members.

They don’t need much more help because last season we reached a good position. Also this year, even after losing these matches, the best teams in the league are making much fewer tries against the Ingenieros than against any other. It just doesn't make much sense.

So our local team needs two things that I want to ask for.

1. People who interested. So, if anyone wants to play rugby here in Soria, please, go the training sessions to learn to play and enjoy playing. You don't need to play matches, but just play, learn, and enjoy! And
2. The other thing is that, for people that don’t want to play because its' too dangerous (which is not really true), can just go to watch the matches that take place here in Soria.

For people who are interested in our local rugby team here is some information:
-The training sessions are at the football pitch in San Andres onTuesdays and Thursdays, from 20:30 to 22:00.
-The local matches are played in the ‘old Pajaritos’ on Saturdays at 16:00 approximately.
-To know the dates of local and away matches you can visit: http://www.rugbycyl.org/main.htm
and here you can also see the classification and news about rugby in Castilla and León.
-The local team’s webs are:
http://rugbysoriano.forogratis.es/foro/ http://www.rugbysoria.es/

Lovely London

This summer I was in London for 4 days from the 4th to the 8th of September. I enjoyed this trip to the capital of England a lot and I liked all its monuments, parks, culture and customs very much.

During my stay I saw lot things like historical monuments, beautiful parks and busy places where local people met. I saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly Circus, Tower Bridge, the British Museum, the National Gallery, St Paul´s Cathedral, Harrods, Shakespeare´s Globe Theatre, Trafalgar Square, The London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, the Princes Diana Memorial, Southwark Cathedral, Borough Market, Camden Town, etc.
All of these places were very beautiful. Now I’m going to describe some of them.
Big Ben is known in almost all the world as the famous clock of the tower of Parliament.
Westminster Abbey is a very beautiful gothic cathedral with a lot of different chapels. It has a corner dedicated to poets where there is a statue of Shakespeare. There you can also find the coronation throne and the tombs of many English kings and queens.
Shakespeare´s Globe is a beautiful theatre with pretty paintings and amphitheatres. It also has a museum were you can see clothes, weapons, the secrets of the theatre, and you can go around the outside listening to its history.
The National Gallery, one of the most important museums in Europe, exhibits paintings from the XIII to the XX century. You can see some paintings like “the Sunflowers” by Van Gogh, “the Virgin of the Rocks” by Leonardo Da Vinci, and many more paintings by artists like Velazquez, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Monet, Michelangelo, Botticelli, etc.
In St Paul´s Cathedral there are tombs of many famous people like Alexander Fleming, Lord Nelson, etc. In the cathedral you can go through 3 different galleries; one called whispering gallery 30 meters from the ground floor, another called the stone gallery 53 meters up and the last called the golden gallery 85 metersup. From the last oneyou have a very good and beautiful view of the city.
Hyde Park, it is one of the biggest parks in London, covering 140 hectares. It is a very beautiful place that is open from 5 in the afternoon to midnight.
Piccadilly Circus, it is a very busy place in London, it is full of shops and many people walk through these streets of the west of the city.

Welcome Bloggers

Welcome!!!

Hello!

we are students in year 4 in the high school “Virgen del Espino” in Soria, a small city near Madrid, the capital of Spain. When we started school at the age of 3 we started a bilingual programme and since then we have been learning Spanish and English at school . One of the proyects for this year is to do a blog, and after spendin some classes choosing a name, we finally decided to call it blog and roll. This year we will spend many hours on this blog, making it interesting, funny and nice for you. We will talk about interesting topics and things we think you will like, so we hope you visit our blog and give us your opinions, share your interests and let us know about any doubts you might have.

So please enter our blog and comment all you want!