Merry Christmas

Our students would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2016.  They wrote these lovely Christmas cards:

To Be Or Not To Be

 There you are!: "To be or not to be". At the moment we are here. Let it be.

(William Shakespeare. 1564-1616)

Here is the soliloquy by Laurence Olivier in the film Hamlet (1948)

"To Be Or Not To Be" Soliloquy.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

                       (From William Shakespeare's Hamlet)

There´s nothing between life and death. We were never asked to come to this life but we could have the power to put an end to our lives if we wished. So what´s the point of living all that suffering and struggle we are bound to stand? What makes us stick to Earth if there could exist something better?

Read Hamlet´s soliloquy and get to your own conclusion. You can read some Spanish translations by clicking here.

(Thanks, Elena, for your inspiring comment).

Angelines.

Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914).

The festivity of Thanksgiving is celebrated in The United States the fourth Thursday of November.

American Thanksgiving holiday has its origin in 1621 when the Plymouth settlers celebrated a feast after a successful harvest. The feast continued to be celebrated sporadically through the years in autumn or at the beginning of winter. Though it has a religious origin, today it is considered as a  civil tradition.

The First Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1899).

Squanto was a Catholic Native American living with the Wampanoag tribe. He taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn. Squanto spoke the English language because he had been  a slave in England.  The Wampanoag leader, Massasoit,  helped the colonists by giving them food during the first winter after their arrival in Plymouth Rock (Massachusetts).
So, after their first hard winter the pilgrims decided to celebrate the good harvest they had had, which lasted for three days.

According to James Baker, vice president of research, the event ocurred between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11, 1621.  There were 50 persons who had come on the Mayflower out of 100 who had landed, and 90 Native Americans who were invited as guests.

Adapted from wikipedia for Secondary Education students.

You can learn a bit more  about Thanksgiving by watching this video:

Angelines.

Verb "to be"

Click here to practise the use of the verb "to be"

Now you can watch this video to learn how the verb "to be" is pronounced.