The Banyoles Lake

According to the legend the Banyoles Lake, was formed like this

A story from the 8th century, tells of a great beast which lives beside the lake. It is the last descendant of the prehistoric beast that lived in that region. It lives in a deep cave and it is not good to disturb him.

According to what people said, the beast had a voracious appetite and it devoured the peasants' flocks. They lived hidden at home protected by walls. In fact, every night one man disappeared from his house.

One day, Charlemagne arrived there and, having heard about the beast, he decided to go to kill it. When the soldiers arrived there, the dragon came out of its cave giving off its foul breath and they began to cough because of the toxic cloud that formed around them.

After that, the peasants asked a monk to help. He had arrived with Charlemagne's troops, was called "Mer" (Sant Emerio).

The monk went to the dragon's cave and began to pray, after that they both went out and the peasants asked the monk to kill him.

The monk stopped them and told them it was harmless and it only ate grass and roots.

And when they asked him about the disappeared people he told them the truth: the disappeared people were fighting with Charlemagne who stole all the flock

The big monster went back to its cave and even today, if somebody tries to disturb it, it will give off its foul breath against them.

A book you really have to read....or watch.

Q & A by Vikas Swarup, is a picaresque Bombay novel. This wonderfully written book, tells us about the adventures and misfortunes of Rama, who has won a game-show.

The author, born in Allahabad (India), worked as a diplomatic in countries such as Turkey, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia and the United States. Since August 2006 he has been in Pretoria as India's Deputy High Commissioner.

This book has been translated into 33 languages and has won several awards such as Best First Book by the Commonwealth Writers' Prize or Paris Book Fair's Readers' Prize, the Prix Grand Public 2007 and others.

Q&A is about a poor teenager who wins a fantstic sum at a TV program, the Indian version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? After that, he is immediately arrested on suspicion of cheating in each answer to the questions of the program. So he relates his life experience, describing the people he has met, his sensations, his thoughts, his feelings, his fears,... Since he was a child until the present.

For example, in one chapter he explains how he knew the answer to the question:"Which is the smallest planet?": he was living in a guesthouse and new tenants arrived, a family with a daughter. The father was an astronomer and he was always speaking about stars, constellations, comets and galaxies while Rama was listening through the wall using a glass. One day, daughter found a cat and the father named it Pluto becuase now the cat was the youngest in the family. So that's why Rama knew the correct answer was Pluto. But Rama fell in love with the girl and to protect her he had to do something horrible.

I highly recommend this book because it is an entretaining novel, full of details from India's life and you will get hooked on it from beginning to end.

"My Hobby:Reading"

Hi, I didn't know what to write here so I have decided to post up an old interview

that I had made to my neighbour. Here it goes:

"My hobby is reading. I read story books, magazines, newspapers and any kind of material that I find interesting.

This hobby got started when I was a little girl. I liked reading novels, story books. But my parents didn't like that I read these types of books because they thought the most important thing and the best thing for me was to get good school results. And you know to get good results, you have to study hard and spend time on it. Reading would be a waste of time they thought. So I read books every night, secretly, when they had gone to sleep.

Now I read just about anything is available. Reading enbles me to learn about so many things that I would otherwise not know. I learn about the wonders of the world, space travel, human achievement, gigantic whales, tiny virus and other fascinating things of our world.

The wonderful thing about reading is that I don't have to learn things the hard way. For example, I don't have to catch a disease to know it can kill me, I know the danger so I can avoid it. Also, I don't have to go deep into the jungle to learn about the tiger, I can read all aboout it in a book.

Books provide the reader with so much information and facts. They have certainly helped me in my daily life. I am better equiped to cope with life. Otherwise I would go about ignorantly learning things the hard way.

So I continue to read. Apart form being more informed about the world, I also spend my time profitably.

It is indeed a good hobby."

Animals

This is an answer to my friend Mara who does think I hate animals: it i not true at all!

In my opinion animals are important for two reasons. The first one is food: we need animals to have something to eat.

And the second reason is pets. I think that all people should have a pet. And that is my case. I have a rabbit and I really get on well with him. For me it is more than a pet, he is a mate. He's called Bello and he runs freely around my room. He is well-behaved , he pees and poops in his cage.

If you are alone at home and you feel lonely, you can call him and he comes. Pets never get angry and they are always there. So that is why I think that all of us should have a pet.

In addition, it is also amazing to see wild animals in their natural habitat, so all in all animals are part of our life and we need them.

Family Liaison Worker.

Hello, this is just to introduce you something which is pretty strange here in spain: Family Liaison Wroker.

A Family Liaison Wroker works as an assitant to answer any question you may have about every day life. They usually have years of experience with working with children and families and they are able to assist you with any information you may require both school/ home related.

They can signpost you to relevant outside agencies that may be able to support you.

They use to work independently so you can speak with them in confidence.

One of thier roles is to support the schools, Teacher and Assistants with childrens PHSE developement which has been most successful in other schools.

As a parent my aunt is aware of the ups and downs of being a parent. It is one of the hardest jobs to do at times!

Family Liaison Workers are here to offer you help and support so you can feel free to contact them. Do not think your issues are not important. However small, they will do their best to help. they are always interested to hear about your ideas on courses.

William Shakespeare: plays and theatres

William Shakespeare was fascinated by plays from an early childhood. When his father became High Bailiff of Stratford, he and his family used to see plays whenever actors came to visit the town. This was how William Shakespeare developed his taste for the theatre.

In the 1580s, William Shakespeare reached London where he started to learn his acting skills. He chosed to work in a theatre because there were lots of mini jobs to do, such as keeping rich people's horses, sweeping the floor after the plays and reminding actors when to go on stage. Later William became an actor himself, finding it so fun to be in a play that he decided to write his own play scripts.

William Shakespeare played in important part in developing history plays where he clearly enjoyed mixing tragedies and comedies, high life and low life.

For example, he could transform love to a tragic theme like in "Romeo and Juliet" or turn it to pure force as he did in "The Merry Wives of Windsor".

William's ideas came from old stories, poemes as he wrote in verses and real events like in Macbeth he used the power of witchcraft to please James I, an adept of sorcery.

He became the most favourite writer in London. Sadly a plague hit London and he had to stop writing for two years between 1592 and 1594 as all the theatre were closed. Instead he wrote 154 beautiful short poems called sonnets because they only had 14 lines; 126 sonnets were adressed to a young nobleman, the rest to a mysterious dark lady. "The Rape of Lacrece" was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton who paid apparently 1000 pounds.

William Shakespeare was selective about the actors he employed. The only female he had, played the lead role of Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet". In his other plays all the parts were taken by men, with boys or youth playing as women and children.

Theatre companies had between 8-12 "sharers" who run the business and played the leading charcters like Burbage and Shakespeare himself as Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Liar. Shakespeare's company was called "The Lord Chamberlain's Men" then later changed its name to "The King's Men".

Comic parts went to Thomas Pope or Will Kemp (both clowns) until he left the company in 1599 and was replaced by Robert Armin who had a beautiful voice so Shakespeare would write songs for him to sing in his plays.

William Shakespeare's play writing career probably ended when the Globe theatre burnt down in 1613 and was completely destroyed from a cannon shot during Henry VIII. He had written 37 plays.

Goth subculture

• The goth subculture is a contemporary subcuture which began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. the gothic rock became its own subgenre within post-punk, and that followers of these bands started to come together as a distinctly recognizable movememtn gothic rock. as opposed to punk, gothic rock combines dark, often keyboard-heavy music with introspective and depressing lyrics.

However, by the 1990s, the term goth subculture had become more contentious.

the ideology of this subgenre is inspired by the romanticism and neoromanticism and it is based far more on aesthetics and simplified ethics than politics.

During the late 18th and 19th century, feelings of horror and supernatural dread were widespread motifs in popular literature; nowadays we can see that this process in the modern horror films.

• The mass media has made reports that the have influenced the public view that goths, or people associated with the subculture, are malicious; however this is disputed and the goth subculture is often described as non-violent and, contrary of what some people think, goths are usually not supportive of violence, but rather tolerant.


• Goth fashion is stereotyped as a dark, sometimes morbid, style of dress. Styles are often borrowed from the Elizabethan, Victorian or medieval period and often express Catholic or other religious imagery such as crucifixes or ankhs.

Today we do accept more this subculture as we see in dark films like the famous Interview with the Vampire and all the Anne Rice's saga.

And also we are somehow attracted by this genre, which is a kind mysterious for us, so it is more common to hear about new gothic bands in the music field.

After all, no matter which culture it is, we will always have new other cultures that will interest us and that we can like or not.