Renoir

Today I have seen the movie Renoir, as the french famous painter. They were 111 enjoyable minutes of good cinema. The story is about this painter Renoir when he was in his last stage of his life, the old age. This old man was still on painting at that age, and he was still doing it very well, although he had a bad hands and knees condition, thus he was always sitting in a wheelchair. He lived with his younger son, and his maids that helped him do almost everything, his wife was dead a time ago. He also has two older sons, but they were gone to the war as soldiers .One day arrived a pretty girl to his house saying she wanted to be his model of paintings and he granted the request when he saw how beautiful she was. Then, one of his sons returns from the war for an injury, saw the model’ girl and fell in love. The girl wanted to be an actress and asked the young man for help her. But the young man recovers from his injury and plans to return to the war. And the story goes but I do not want to tell the end, so I recommend this movie, you will not regret.

You can see it in these page: http://www.veocine.es/colabora/renoir

Embarrassed moment

Today I had an “epic fail”. First I woke up too early in the morning, 4:30 am, because I needed to study for a presentation for my class of Socioeconomics Structures of Mexico, then I wore formal clothes; tie, shined black shoes, Dockers pants, well groom and got ready to go to school at 7:00am, the presentation would be at 9:00 am, but when I got in the classroom I saw a partner of my team without wearing any formal clothes. He never told me that the presentation changes to another day! I felt so embarrassed and frustrated in that moment, additionally later came another partner of my team to the class, and when he saw me wearing in that way, he realized that I did not know that the date was moved, so he laughed at me.

I admit that it was my fault by never being sure of the date of the presentation and asked before during the weekend to confirm. So I was formally in a common day although it was no necessary, but I looked good.

Idioms

The last week we had an exam of Analysis and Dissertation of texts for second language. The topics were synonyms, cognates and false cognates (false friends), vocabulary in context and orthography. I did not feel pretty sure with some synonyms and false cognates; I know that I failed in some false cognates and surely in some synonyms. The most I can remember were the synonyms of Pledge and Elude that are Promise and Avoid, but I had difficulties with many. In false cognate I failed pretty good particularly with the word Idiom, I fell into the trap, I put Language in place of Expression, but I found in the dictionary that also it is synonym of Language, Jargon and in Spanish ,according to the Larousse, also is “Idioma”, so I am not too bad.

Here are some examples of Idioms or the natural manner of speaking to a native speaker of a language:

A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush:
Having something that is certain is much better than taking a risk for more, because chances are you might lose everything.

A Piece of Cake:
A task that can be accomplished very easily.

Graveyard Shift:
Working hours from about 12:00 am to 8:00 am. The time of the day when most other people are sleeping.

That was for me, because I work in that timetable. 

Here are more examples of idioms: http://www.idiomsite.com/

First Festival and Meeting of Indigenous Languages in Baja California

Two weeks ago, the days 11th and 12th of October, I assisted to the event of First Festival and Meeting of Indigenous Languages in Baja California, here in Ensenada in the Riviera Cultural Center. The reason of this meeting was to talk about and discuss in a forum three main topics: To revitalize and fortify the Indigenous Languages in B.C., Situation of Indigenous Languages Rights and Instruments and Necessary Legal Rules for the Development of the Indigenous People.    There were formed several groups of talking, where I had the opportunity to participate in the first topic in a little group of six people. There were people from Tijuana, students from the National Pedagogic University, also an Elementary Bilingual School Teacher, a Psychologist and an Autonomous University of Baja California teacher from our locality. We discussed two questions: “Why revitalize, fortify, preserve and develop the native languages?” And “How revitalize, fortify, preserve and develop the native languages?” The answers were  revitalize, fortify, preserve and develop the native languages because it is our culture and we cannot lost our traditions. The ways to develop were to make that more people talk in native languages and try to spread the language with help of various kind of media like magazines, radio and television. Also teach the language in the schools and produce literature.  It was very interesting to hear the different points of view of each participant. .