Superheroes

When Laura was a little girl we lived in Florida. She went to the Montessori Kindergarten in Merritt Island in the afternoons and when she got home she could hardly wait to turn on the TV and watch "Superfriends".

Don't you just love Superheroes? I especially like the capes.

We could have done with Superhero several times this week; lots of things going wrong, misunderstandings - and the dreadful news from Borneo that a disgruntled employee had poisoned the water treatment system with cyanide: many fish died.

But we never let our heads hang and in the Quest to improve your English I have found the answer:

GRAMMARMAN

http://www.grammarmancomic.com/

It's great!

The last roses of summer

Good afternoon all, slightly later today as we whizzed to the fleamarket in Thedinghausen to buy games for your lessons - successfully I'm glad to say.

The news is so weird these days, isn't it? Single persons make strange pronouncements which are then flashed around the world, causing chaos and mayhem.

Anyway, good old VOA will certainly help you improve your English. Visit and explore this site, you will find links to grammar/vocabulary sections as well as interesting news stories.

www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home

Back now to the Thanhäuser Markt (this time by bike), promised His Nibs a Currywurst...

The Battle of Britain

Oh gosh, had the website chosen and the text partly written (mentally at least) for you this morning - when we listened to BBC Radio 4 while munching our broetchen. The news from the UK has been full of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain the last week or two, and today seems to be The Day. So, still in my slumberwear, I leapt to the laptop to quickly find some info for this week's students.

I stumbled upon

http://vimeo.com/cambridge

And wow wow wow!

Vimeo is a video-sharing site and lo and behold Cambridge University has a portfolio of fascinating videos there, you can even download them...

Have a great week!

Guten Appetit!

Well to keep you busy right from the start, I just read and loved:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/weekinreview/05gilbertson.html?ref=world
It's a great article about what different countries troops take with them to eat. You can click on Great Britain, Germany, Ukraine... fascinating.

Some weeks ago Laura-on-Borneo told me she was leaving work early to fetch Anya from Kindergarten, "To avoid the Ramadan traffic jams". Sabah is of course part of Malaysia, an Islamic state. Sabah itself has a mix of Islam, Christianity, and all sorts of other religions who all seem to get along just fine.
This week Ramadan was brought a bit closer to me when I was bleating in one group about not being able to drink tea or coffee in the morning (due to Lyme Disease medication) and one especially dear student looked at me. In that moment I remembered she is Moslem and asked if she is fasting. What a silly question, of course she is. In discussions this week à propos Thilo S., it struck me that I really do not know very much about Islam, or Islamic beliefs or customs.
So, for a tiny introduction I took a look at


http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/religion/Islam.htm





... maybe you will enjoy that too.