POST 5: A PHOTOGRAPH THAT I LIKE

Say Cheeeeeeese!

Taking photographs is one of my hobbies and I’m pretty good at it, or so they say. I started to take photos when I was in my twenties with an old analog Zenit camera that someone lent me, so by now I have around ten albums with old prints, plus the photos I have taken with my digital camera. I couldn’t afford a good camera when I was young because they were so expensive, but nowadays they are a lot cheaper. I have had five cameras so far, and the latest is a digital one which allows me to take as many pictures as I want to, so I’m very pleased with it.

Do you enjoy taking photos? Do you have a camera? Do you collect printed photos? Are you a photolog freak?
This week you are expected to write about a photograph that you like. Make sure to include the following in your post:

·                     Who took it

·                     What it shows

·                     When it was taken

·                     Why you like it

Don't hesitate to include any other information you think is important.
Write at least 170 words.
Finally, add comments to at least 3 of your classmates’ blogs

Please, have a look at my sample post below.

Snap shooting around London.

I took this photo on my last trip to London, in July 2011, when I went to Camdem Town Market Place, which is a large market where you can find lots of things, such as handcraft, clothes, ethnic food, paintings, jewelry, rugs, antichs, -you name it-, therefore there are lots of things worth  a click.

This photo shows a very eclectic shop there, where, as you can see, they sell vintage clothes and  old pieces of furniture, along with some typical English pastries and beverages, and I took it while I was having a nice cup of tea.

I know that this is a rather simple photo, but I like it since it reminds me of the good time that I spent in that city and in that cafe, which is a very special place with a very pleasant atmosphere where they  play music from the 50s to the 70s, and where sometimes one of the owners plays beautiful tunes in the piano.

SESSION 5 / WEB QUEST 1: LONDON

 

Continuous Assessment 2 is the first of two webquests we’ll have this term.

Instructions:

You are going to spend a week in London evaluating tourist locations for an end of year study trip.

Here is a list of things you want to do while you are there.  Follow the links and fill in the table.

Half Day Outings

London Eye

http://www.londoneye.com/

The British Museum

http://www.britishmuseum.org/

The Tower of London

http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon/ (including Crown Jewels)

Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum

http://www.madametussauds.com/london/

The Natural History Museum

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/

The Tate Modern Art Gallery

http://www.tate.org.uk/

Full day

Kew Gardens

http://www.kew.org/

Camden Market

http://www.camden-market.org/

For each location say:

What day you will visit,

How much you will have to pay to get in,

Which Tube station you will travel to (nearest to location), and the zone it is in.

What will you do on the other days? (2 full days / 4 half days / 1 full day / 2 half days)

Search the web for other things to do in London.

What is the total cost?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> o <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
If you want to find the zone number click on:

London Tube Map:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/standard-tube-map.pdf

POST 4: LITERATURE AND BOOKS

When I was a kid my father used to keep all the newspapers he bought in a room, along with some magazines, books and the notebooks my brothers and I had worked with in the previous years, and also old cards and toys.  Everything in this messy little room (huge for a little six to eight year old boy like me) was laid on some improvised shelves my dad had built, and, for some unknown reason, he forbade us to get into it.  So being in that room was thrilling and exciting,  because we suspected something misterious was hidden in there, lurking somewhere in  the books or in the magazines.   That way, after  stealthily closing the door behind us,  we sat on the floor of this room and read most of the stuff that got into our hands and, without noticing it, we became magazine and book worms.
This week you have chosen to write about Literature and Books, so below you will find  a sample post and some questions to guide your writing. Please choose one or two questions to write the introduction and about the things you like reading, but answer all the four questions about a book you have read recently.

Introduction: Your reading habits. (Answer 1 or 2 questions)
-Are you a book worm or do you only read books from time to time?
-Did you read books when you were a child?
-How many books have you read in your life?

 

Things you like reading. (Answer 1 or 2 questions)
-What sort of books do you enjoy reading? Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?
-Who is your favorite writer?
-What is your favorite book?
-Who is your favorite character from literature?

 

Tell us a little about a book you have read recently: (Answer all questions)
-Did you enjoy it?
-How long did it take to read?
-Briefly, in one or two sentences, what is the story about?
-Who would you reccomend it to?

Make sure you write at least 140 words and leave comments on three of your classmates’ posts.

I want those two books! I answered decidedly when my father, who had taken me to a bric-a-brac street market,  asked me what I wanted him to buy me.  I was around six years old back then and, since we didn’t have a TV set at home, reading was my favourite thing to do, and I devoured  Disney cartoons, fairy tales, short stories and kid’s novels.  So, answering Dad’s question was easy. I still wonder were those two  books ended up.
Now I enjoy reading short stories and novels. I really like Julio Cortazar’s short stories, so I think I’ll start rereading  them one of these days, and I enjoy reading  both fiction and non-fiction novels.  I have read a lot of detective stories written in English lately, mainly by Ruth Rendell and P D James, but my favourite writers are some Latin american authors, such as, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Marquez and Isabel Allende.
I recently read a book called “A Special Relationship”, by Douglas Kennedy. It’s about an American  journalist in her late thirties who gets pregnant to a British correspondent she meets in the middle of a war. Everything is a bed of roses at the beginning, but suddenly things change dramatically and her life becomes miserable. It didn’t take me too long to read this novel  because the story is very catchy and is surprisingly well written, especially considering the fact that the author of this book is a man, but the main character and first person narrator is a woman; he is able to write as if he were a woman very convincingly.  I wouldn’t hesitate to reccomend this book to you.