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Henry VIII and his six wives

This novel deals with the King´s six wives. After the King´s death his sixth wife finds a box with old letters wich tell the story of what it was like to be the wife of Henry VIII of England.

1^st wife: Katherine of Aragon

She was from Spain and she first went to England to marry Henry´s brother Arthur, but he died and then she married Henry and was his wife and Queen for 24 years.

Henry divorced Katherin because he wanted a son, and she only gave him a daughter, Princess Mary. Years before, she had a son Henry, Prince of Wales, but he died when he was only seven weeks old. Henry divorced her although he broke with the Pope and the Catholic Church and that´s how the Church of England began.

2^nd wife: Anne Boleyn

Henry was in love with her for about seven years before they married. They were married less than three and a half years, because Henry soon became tired of her. He wanted a son and she only gave him a daughter, Princess Elisabeth. There were rumours about Anne´s lovers and Henry believed the stories because he wanted another wife. Finally he sent her to the Tower of London to be beheaded.

3^rd wife: Jane Saymour

She married the King just ten days after Anne´s death. She was quite and careful. She didn´t try to tell him what to do. She also gave him a baby boy, King Edward, but she died soon after Edward was born (twelve days later)

She was buried at Winsor, and Henry is now buried next to her.

4^th wife: Anne of Cleves

She was very ugly and was a German Princess. Henry couldn´t go to Germany to see her and he sent an artist to paint a picture of her. Henry fell in love with the beatiful woman in the picture and decided to marry her. She was really ugly but he couldn´t change the arrangements for the wedding. After six months he divorced her without any problems.

5^th wife: Katherine Howard

Henry still wanted to have another son. She was one of the ladies at Queen Anne´s Palace, although he was 30 years older than her. But Katherine wasn´t very clever and she had a lover about six months after Katherine married Henry. When Henry found out about this he sent her lover to prison and soon after he sent Katherine to the Tower. She would be beheaded in a few days.

6^th wife: Catherine Parr

She was very different to the Henry´s other wives because she was 31 years old and Henry was her third husband. Henry met her at a party at Hampton Court Palace.

They didn´t have any children. Catherine married a few months after Henry´s death and she had a baby girl called Mary.

In short, the only obssesion of Henry was to have a son and he was always looking for a wife who gave him a strong son to be the future King of England. But the lifes of almost all his wives were sad and dangerous.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (William Shakespeare)

Much Ado about nothing is a very popular love comedy of William Shakespeare. It´s happened in Messina, a town on the Mediterranean island of Sicily about hundred years ago. When the play begins, Don Pedro, the Spanish prince, and his friend are coming to Messina at the hause of Leonato, lord of Messina, because the war has finished.

The play is written in five acts with two or three scenes and is very important know the characters in order to understand the plot of the story.

The characters are:

• Leonato: lord of Messina

• Hero: Leonato´s daughter

• Beatriz: Hero´s cousin

• Margaret and Ursula: hero´s servants

• Don Pedro: Prince of Aragon

• Benedick: a young gentleman and friend of Don Pedro´s

• Claudio: a young gentleman and friend of Don Pedro´s

• Don Jhon: Don Pedro´s brother

• Borachio and Conrade: Don Jhon´s servants

• Father Francis: a Priest

• Dogberry: the head of the police

• Verges: a policeman

Much ado about nothing is a play in which the writer tells the story with dialogues between the characters.

The story tells two love histories between Hero and Claudio, and Beatrice and Benedice. One of the characters, Don Jhon try to break these loves, but at the end ,the love succeed and the couples will get married and will be happy for the end of the days.

Rafael Domínguez González

Martin Luther King

In 1963, Martin Luther King made a speech in Washington DC: “I have a dream”, he said. He dreamed of all the people of America, black and white, living together in peace and freedom. He thought that all men and women should be equal.

This speech was shown in TV all over the world and Martin Luther King became a hero to millions of people around the world. But there were many people who hated this man and his ideas. Five years later, in 1968, when he was only 39 years old, a white man shot him dead in Memphis. Many people cried when they heard of his death and others were very angry; there were riots in the big cities of USA. Martin Luther King had been a man who fought for freedom and the world lost a big man, a man who was a symbol of freedom and peace.

In 1929, when he was born in Atlanta (Georgia), most black people in America lived in the South. Slavery in America was ended in 1865, when the civil war ended, but black people in the South did not have the same rights as white people and they were poorer and they lived in worse houses than white people. Blacks and whites lived in different worlds. Black people had to sit at the back of the buses and they could not sit beside whites. They couldn't eat in most restaurants and there were different schools for black children and white children. Blacks and whites lived in the same places but they were kept away from each other. This was called segregation.

Martin grew in this world and he saw how white people treated black people. He thouhgt that segregation was not fair. His father said: “Segregation is wrong but things will get better in time. We should be patient and wait. Change will come”; but young Martin did not agree with his father.”If you want to change this, you have to act”, Martin said. He often spoke in churh and at school about the need for changes.

Martin was an excellent student and when he finished his studies in Atlanta he decided to become a minister, like his father, but a teacher too. He went to Crozer, a college for ministers in Pennsylvania. There were white students at the college but Martin was happy to find that they were friendly toward him and he realized that black people and white people did not have to hate each other. In his last year at Crozer, Martin went to hear a talk about Gandhi, who had fought against the British in India using no-violence, no guns.Ghandi thought than love was more powerful than hate and Martin was excited by Ghandi's words. Could black people in the south end segregation without violence? He began to think seriously about this.

Martin continued his studies at Boston University and soon he was Dr. Martin Luther King. He fell in love with Coretta Scott, a young woman from the South, and got married to her. But he knew that his work was in the South so the Kings moved back there to fight together against segregation and to lead black people toward freedom. Martin Luther believed that no-violence was the only way to win the fight for black's rights and soon his policy of non-violent protest was becoming more popular. But most white people in the South still did not want to change and they were ready to fight to keep their way of life. There were organizations to fight against black rights (like the Ku Klux Klan) that used violence to frighten black people and stop then from fighting.

Martin Luther King work continued and he finally got that black people had some rights than white people. His dream became real. He would have been happy if he had seen Obama as president of USA.

Land of my childhood (stories from South Asia)

The book is based on stories about people from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, who reached turning points in their lives. Some of these stories are the following:

• Carapace.

  This story is about a young woman who chooses a husband leaving her childhood behind. She has to choose between two men. The first one is Vijay, her true love. He is older than her and works as a cook at the Beach Hut. He is always smiling and never eats. He'd rather see his food eaten by other people. He is very good at cooking prawns in front of the ocean. However, he is not able to commit to her. The second one is Anura Parera. He is from Australia.He earns a lot of money and has a house in Sydney. He is interested on her and he has serious marriage intentions. He can provide her with a good live with a modern house, a big car, designer clothes, expensive things and also his lifelong respect.

• The inspector of schools.

  This story is about a inspector who visits schools in dirty, smelly and distant villages and towns. Moreover every school has not enough books, local people do not care, lazy students and masters expect free meals and presents. The inspector wants to do his best making recommendations but they are refused by the Planning and Development Department which plan little and develop less. However, one day he visits one school set in the middle of a sugarcane field. Students are sitting on the ground and there are different levels. They have no rooms however. Local people don't want a school because they think children waste their time having fun when they have to help their fathers in the field or look after the cattle. Besides they are the best students he has found in three years on his job and it is worth providing them with a room, what can he do? He knows that his recommendation is going to be refused.

• The Kite-maker.

  It is about a man who wishes for peace in his village because of the war. For that reason, he makes a kite shaped like a dove with silver bells on it legs for “utraan”. It is a Hindu festival where kites are flown.

• The Stepmother.

  This story is about a boy who fights with his new stepmother. He hates her. He starts to do nasty things so that she punishes him and his father gets rid of her. Nevertheless somehow he begins to accept her.

• The Night Rain at Deoli.

  This story is about a young man who remembers a girl at a railway station. He meets her there when she tries to sell him a basket. But when he starts to show some interest on her, he has to get on the train because it is leaving. They meet twice. After that, he wants to find her to take her with him. However, she is not at the railway station any more.

• A Devoted Son.

  This story is about a parents who work very hard to give their son the best education and start in life. The son is pretty grateful and takes care of them making their last years comfortable and peaceful. Nevertheless, the end is not as peaceful as his father wants to.

• For a Horse Nail.

  This story is about a boy who needs money and sells his kidney to get it. However the person who receives it dies. He does not tell anybody he is ill.

CHEMICAL SECRET Tim Vicary

John Duncan is a biologist in his forties who starts working in a chemical factory after the death of his wife in an accident. He was living since then with his children in a small flat; Money was short at that moment since they had begun a new life because of his new job.
The main thing that the company produced was paint; one day John spilt some of the waste products on his legs damaging his skin and he discovers the pain these products can produce. Then he carried out some experiments in rats putting a small quantity of product in the water and the rat´s babies were born with some problems: no eyes, no ears, six legs…John made a report and went to the headmaster of the company, a businessman, who convinced him not to say anything. It was very expensive to put new machines to clean up the waste products before they go into the river and the factory was very important for people in town and for him and his family now. Finally nothing was done.
Some years later, Duncan’s daughter got married to a journalist worried about the environment who began to investigate about some problems with a strange disease in the river’s seals. Some months later, his daughter was pregnant and while John was in a trip his daughter and her husband sailed along the river one night to protest in front of the chemical factory where the waste products were being spilt. His daughter fell into the water and almost drown, however she could save her life. Some days later John came back to a Public Enquiry to talk about the damage of the factory in people health. Although he tried to defend his position, when he was told about his daughter news, he had to tell the truth.
After six months, John Duncan is living in a small flat alone. He´s very worried awaiting for the birth of his daughter´s child.
At the end of the story the child is born and he´s going to the hospital to see the baby for himself.

María Alonso Vacas

HUCKLEBERRY FINN ( Mark Twain)

Huckleberry tells us his story in first person. He begins explaining that he´s the best friend of Tom Sawyer and they had lived many exciting adventures together.
In this book, Huck tells his own adventures.His father is always drunk and he was sent to live with widow Douglas, where he could wear clean clothes and go to school, altough he didn´t like it.
There, he met Jim, miss Douglas´ slave, and they became very good friends. But, Huck didn´t stay in this house very much, because his father took him. He wanted the money that they´ve found ( Tom and he) from a robbers gang some time ago. Huck did not remain too long with his father because he decided to escape down the river.
In his escape, he met Jim that had run from mis Douglas´house, because he was going to be sold. They lived many adventures together, until someone discovered Jim and turned him over the family ( they had offered a reward). It was then , when Huck met Tom by chance, and they both planned to help JIm, the slave, to escape and to be free-
Unfortunately, Tom was shot in his leg, but he was very happy, because this was a very important event to tell to everyone.
Finally, Jim was free, not only for Tom and Huck´s help, but Miss Douglas had died and she had written that she wanted him to be free.
A happy ending for Jim ans as well as for Huck who could get his money because his father had died. In spite of the money, he decided to be free and lived as he liked: no beds to sleep, no new clothes to wear or good manners to learn.

By Conchi Griñón

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

The pit and the pendulum

The pit and the pendulum is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe.

The story is about a prisoner that has been sentenced to death during the Inquisition.He narrates how he received the sentence and lost consciousness.Upon waking up, he realizes he is in a dark place where he can´t distinguish anything.
At first, the prisoner thinks that he is in a tomb, but he discovers that he is in a dungeon, maybe, in a dungeon inToledo.He tried to explore it by placing a hem of his ropes against the wall, but he fainted.

When he wakes up, he finds food and water nearby.He tries to measure the room again and counts one hundred steps.

While he is crossing the room, he slips on the hem of his robe and discovers a pit with water.He almost falls into it.

After loosing consciousness again, the prisoner wakes up and drinks more water. After drinking, he falls asleep again and imagines that the water had been spiked.

When he wakes up, the next time, he discovers that he´s bound to a wooden board by ropes.
He looks up and noticed that a pendulum is swinging slowly back and forth and it is descending towards him .He panicked but was able to attract rats to his bonds with meat left for him to eat and they started to chew the ropes.
The prisoner was free.

Then, he sees that the walls have become red-hot and begun moving inwards, driving him into the center of the room towards the pit.

As the prisoner begins to fall into the pit, he hears voices.An arm catches and rescues him.The French Army has taken Toledo and the inquisition is about to finish.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland was written by Lewis Carroll. Why did L.C. decide to write this fantastic book? Because he had known a little girl called Alice Liddell. If L. C. hadn't known this girl perhaps he wouldn´t have written his book. Before L. C. had told her a lot of tales, legends and sotories, so L. C. thought to write the book for her. Alice and her sisters some days went to L.C.'s home to hear his marvellous stories.

L.C. lived in the second half of de nineteen century. Education in England was very restrective in that period. Thier families Alice's and L.C's families had a religious atmosphere because thier parents were church pastors. On the other hand I think the book is opposed to social and family conventions so L.C. could write his famous children book but I don't believe this is understood by of all them as it contains many social and politic aspects very difficult to understand.

L.C. bases his play in the trends of period: nosense with unreal characters, a big fantastic and an absurd world and strange ideas. Maybe the best aspect of this book had been that never moralize and never teach what children have to do. This book presents childhood as a centre of the literature no as a its excuse. Also the book has got many logic and mathematics games, we don't forget L.C. had studied maths.

I could write about: Alice, The White Rabbit, The Caterpilar, The Queen, The King, The Cheshire Cat, The Pot Tears, etc. In the same way I could say who stole the tarts but I think everyone could speak about Alice´s Adventures because all of us read the book when we were teenagers and many of us have taken our children to the cinema and we saw the movie or the musical.

Juan José Matilla Álvarez, November, 2010

one-way ticket

In " One-way ticket", there are three short stories.These stories happpen in a train.
The first story is THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES.
There were seven people in the carriage of a train: a young man with his wife, they were going on holiday, a man with a brown hat, a tall dark man and a woman with two little children,boy and girl.
The young man and the man with the brown hat were talking all the time. The tall dark man was reading, the young woman with green eyes was thinking about the tall dark man and she wonder about him.The two children were playing, talking or eating, they were very bored.
At Plymouth station, the dark man left the train and two women and a man came into the carriage. They had a bag of apples. The bag broke and the apples went all over the carriage.
When the people sat down the young man asks: Where is my wife? The little girl said that she got off the train whit the dark man.The young man couldn´t understand and the man with the brown hat said that he should forget his wife.
The second story is SOUTH FOR THE WINTER.
A young man called Tom tell his story. He never stays in a country for a long time. He likes to move on and when he needs money, he gets a job. In Europe, he can pick fruit most of the year. He likes to go to the south for the winter.
He was in Venice for October. He left Venice and went to Trieste.
At the begining of the story, he was on a train to Trieste at 9:00. There wasn´t many people at first.
At Zagreb, he saw two girlas but they didn´t come into the carriage. Then, he went to sleep. When he opened his eyes, the two girls were in the carriage. One of them knew all about him.
they talked for a long time and they decides to meet in Bulgaria the next Saturday.
The boy and one of the girlas decided to go to the restaurant and the other girl stayed in the carriage.
At Bela Polanka the girls got off the train.
A lot of policemen came into the train and they came into the carriage where Tom was. They told him to come with them with his bag.
At the police station there were a lot of young people, they opened their bags and they returned to the train.
Tom opened his bag and there was a lot of money in it. Tom said that it wasn´t his bag but the police didn´t believe it. Now, he´s in prison.
The third story is Mr HARRIS AND THE NIGHT TRAIN.
Mr Harris likes trains. At the begining of the story he was on a train for Helsinki to Oulu in Finland alone in a carriage. He was going on holiday. It was midnight.
A man and a woman came into the carriage, they shouted. The girl wanted the diamond necklace, it was a present from her mother-in-law and the boy didn´t want to give it to her.
The girl took a knife and killed the boy, they were brother and sister. Mr Harris run to the corridor tolook for help and when he returned to the carriagethere was no man, no woman and no blood. Mr Harris was very surprised. the guard asked to him if the name of the girl was Elena. The guard said that Elena died about 80 years ago, after she killed her brother, she jumped off the train and died at once. It was near there.
The guard sais that they were ghosts, they often came on the night train that time in September.
Mr Harris went with the guard and he told the story to him. When Mr Harris returned from his trip, he went by bus.

New York

It is said, New York is one of the most exciting city in the world. Every year, is visited by twenty million people from all over the world. Tourist know many streets, avenues and buildings before they come. Although New York is more famous, Albany is the capital of New York State.
It is called ¨The Big Apple¨, due to the fact in 1920s and 1930s jazz musicians in the United States, all wanted to work in New York and they said: ¨There are a lot of apples on the tree, but when you take New york city, you take ¨The Big Apple¨.
Lots of famous singers, actors, etc, live or have lived there. Usually, when people think of New York, think of Manhattan, but New york has got five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.
The Manhattan Island was the home of the Native American people called the Algonquin Indians, four hundred years ago. In 1626 the Dutchman Peter Minuit, gave the Indians about twenty four dollars for the island, and built some houses, and it was called: the little town of New Amsterdam. In 1664 the British took the town and changed its name to New York.
In (1775-1783) there was the War of Independence, between the British and people from North America. Finally, the British left and U.S.A had, its first president: George Washington. In 1790, millions of people from all over the world, came to America, nowadays seven and half a million people live in New York.
Travel is easy in Manhattan, subway trains are the main transport in New york. Although they are dirty and noisy, they are cheap and quick too. Another very well known transport is yellow taxis, called yellow cabs; even there is also a ferry too, to see and learn a lot, about the city.
New York is famous for their skyscrapers. Empire State and the World Trade Center had been the tallest buildings until a nasty attack in September the eleventh, when planes crashed into the two towers, of The World Trade Center.
The Statue of Liberty ( a present made by France) is all a symbol of the city, Wonderful views can be seen from it.
Places as Chinatown and Rockefeller Center must be mentioned too, where you can find interesting shops, restaurants and cafés.
A quiet place to get away from the noise of the city, is Central Park, with beautiful gardens and a Lake.
There are more than sixty museums in Manhattan. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the biggest, others are special and original like Museum of moving Image or the New York City Police Museum.
Shopping, eating and going out at nights are other ways of entertainment.
Many theatres take place on Broadway, ¨ the city never sleeps¨.
Americans love sports too; baseball, ice hockey and tennis. They make New York, very famous by their two baseball teams: the Mets and the Yankees.
Finally, parades are very celebrated by New Yorkers, there is always one in some part of the city most months of the year. ¨St Patrick´s day Parade¨ is the biggest. American´s Independence Day and Halloween Parade are known all over the world and even one of this, has left some influence, in many countries.

A land of my childhood

LAND OF MY CHILDHOOD
This book contains nine stories. They are told by characters from India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Some of these stories have something in common, they refer to turning points in their lives. In addition to this, all of them tell experiences of their childhood.
In the first story “ Carapace” a girl has to choose between two men. Anura Perera is a wealthy Australian man, and he is the person chosen by his mother. He represents safety, luxury, journeys and in short, all what a woman needs to be happy. However, she falls in love with a cook who works in a Beach Hut. This boy, Vijay, doesn’t want any commitments, just spending time in the best possible way. She would have liked for him to have marriage intentions, but he didn’t. At the end, she probably decided for Anura.
In the story “ The Inspector of schools” is expressed the bad conditions of schools at that time. The inspector was impressed by finding out a school in the middle of a sugarcane field, without a roof to protect from weather conditions. In spite of this, he finds a good master and a group of children eager to learn and help to have a place where they could study. He was saddened when he realized he couldn’t do anything to get a decent school.
“The intelligence of wild things” is a story in which a woman remembers his brother as a child. At that time, in India, there were a lot of troubles. Owing to this, her mother decided her children had to go to the States. The daughter married an Indian man and lived in California. On the other hand, the son was a shy boy, very attached to his mother. He didn’t want to go abroad because he thought India wasn’t so dangerous for him as her mum believed. However, his mother persuaded him and finally he left. He went to a college in the American east. It was very difficult to adapt to his new life. His sister knew that, but she couldn’t help him because of her husband. Some years later he lost contact with his mother and her sister went to see him and they remembered their childhood and so they could make up for lost time.
The next story “ The kite-maker” refers as to how wars can divide families. It’s about a couple whose son had disappeared. The man, Ahmed Bassoal, started to make a wonderful kite, shaped like a dove with bells in its wings, to keep on hope in life. On the other hand, the woman was pretty disappointed and depressive. When he was trying the kite, the wind became very strong, and the kite flew away. Some days later, somebody knocked at the door and turned up their loving son. All was thanks to the fact they’d recognized the broken kite. Finally the divided family was together again.
A boy didn’t accept his father married again. This story is related in “ The stepmother”. He didn’t even give her an opportunity. He was always annoying and bothering her in order that she may punish him. Then he would have a good reason to tell his father she wasn’t a good mother for him. On the other hand, she didn`t react as he expected and looked for a suitable solution, neither unfair nor rough. Eventually, he noticed she was not such a bloody person as he thought.
In the following story an eighteen-year-old boy met a girl at Deoli station, on the way to his grandma’s. He only saw her twice, and they hardly spoke some words; but he never forgot her. He tried to find out who she was or if something happened to her. However, nobody could tell him anything about her.
“A devoted son” is the story of Rakesh . He is a great doctor who comes from a humble background. Apart from being famous and wealthy, he was a good son. He even agreed to marry a girl who his mother had chosen for him. He took care of his father until the end. He always behaved like people expected him to do.
“Missiya, the wild one” tells the life of a bold, beautiful girl who lived in a little village in Sri Lanka. The child who tells the story had a close relationship with her. She devoted her life to the world’s oldest profession. So, all women in the village hated and cursed her. However, men watched her lovely body and good looks. However when she got pregnant and her baby was born , she had to kill her own child, because a fatherless boy would never be accepted in that society. She kept her boldness all the time , even when the policemen carried her away.
The last story” For a horseshoe nail” tells how poverty can make people to do incredible things. In the village of the character most people sell their kidneys to get money. This is what this Indian man did to help his family.
Isabel Agudo

DRIVE INTO DANGER

Mark Miles and his son Andy have a company of trucks. Kim Paker is the daughter of one of Marks`s drivers, she is working in the company in her holiday.

One day Kim had to drive a truck because Gary Slater, one of the company´s drivers was ill. She had to go to France and Andy went with her because he could speak French.

Gary told Kim and Andy where and when they should stop the truck, after that Gary phoned someone to tell him what Andy and Kim looked like and where they were making stops.

When Andy and Kim came to the motorway, the ticket went under the truck and Andy discovered a box there. They thought that in the box there were some sandwiches and they put the box into the truck.

Then they stopped for a coffee and saw a fat man taking something out from under the truck.

Andy and Kim continued their journey, Kim looked in her mirror and saw the fat man in a car behind the truck. Andy opened de box and discovered about fifty paper bags, they thought that they would be drugs and the man was following them to get the drugs. Kim stopped suddenly and the car ran into the back of the truck.

Andy and Kim left the motorway and drove until a rubbish dump, there Andy threw the parcel of drugs into the skip. Suddenly, two men came in a white car, they had a gun. Andy jumped out of the truck and ran to the white car. Kim opened the door suddenly and the mirror hit the man with the gun, he lost his gun and quickly Kim got the gun. She ordered the two men to go up the ladder and the two men jumped down into the skip. Quickly, Kim took the ladder awaY.

After that Andy phoned the police, in a few minutes a French police car arrived, four policemen jumped out and arrested the two men.

Andy and Kim finished their job happily.

The silver sword

This is the story about a family in Poland during the Second World War.
The father was Joseph Balicki. He and his wife had three children: Ruth, Edek and Bronia.
In 1940 the Nazis took Joseph away to a prison in the South of Poland. Fortunately, he was able to escape after two years and he went back to Warsaw to look for his family.
When he arrived to Warsaw he found out that his wife had been caught by the Nazis, his old home had been destroyed and the children had dissapeared.
On day Joseph found a small silver sword among the ruins of his house that belonged to his wife. Then, he noticed that a small boy was looking at him. The boy was called Jan and he used to live in the ruined house. Jan asked Joseph for the sword because he thought that it would bring him luck.
Then Joseph made a deal with Jan. He would give Jan the sword but Jan had to promise that if he ever met Joseph's children, he would tell them to go to Switzerland, where Joseph and his wife had decided to meet each other if they were ever separated.
After this, Joseph went to Switzerland.
Meanwhile, Joseph's children were living in a cellar at the other end of the city. They had been looking after themselves since they lost their mother.
Two years passed and the children didn't know anything about their parents. One day, they met Jan. Ruth recognized the silver sword and Jan told her about her father's plans.
For this reason, the children decided to travel to Switzerland to meet him. They ran a lot of adventures and, eventually, they arrived to a refugee camp near Lake Constance.
However, the camp official didn't let the children go across the lake to Switzerland without a proof that one of their parents was already there.
Ruth sent a letter to the I.T.S. (International Tracing Service) explaining all their adventures.
A few days later she got an answer. The I.T.S. had also received a letter from Joseph telling the story of the silver sword that he had given to Jan and describing the children. This proved that the children's parents were in Switzerland.
Finally, Joseph went to the camp and picked them up. All the family was reunited after many years.

"THE DEATH OF KAREN SILKWOOD"
SUMMARY

The book is a true story, about a young woman, called Karen Silkwood, who died in a car accident. But many people didn´t think that Karen´s death was just an accident.
She was working as a secretary but she was tired of her kind of life, when she found a new job at a nuclear factory where the pay was better. She had a meeting with the manager of the factory and she started to work to work the following day.
She met different people at the factory and soon she had some new friends. She met Drew, a man who worked at the factory, too. They began a relationship.
She was happy with her life but later, she started to discover some strange things in relation with the safety of the factory. She was decided to change things there so she got into the Union Committee, a worker´s association. She had always a notebook and she asked a lot of people questions about the factory and wrote the answers in it.
The Committee wrote to the Union Leaders in Washington, because the safety of the factory was getting worse. Karen went to Washington to have a meeting with the Union Leaders. She told them what was happening. The managers of the factory were changing the negatives of the photographs of the fuel and uranium rods. But the Union Leaders needed proof. Karen had to steal the negatives from the laboratory and she did it. She put the negatives in a brown envelope. When she went to have an interview with the Union Leaders and a journalist of the Times, her car crashed and she died.
The brown envelope has never been found.

SUMMARY OF UNDER THE MOON

This history is of fiction science, happened in the year 2522.
Kiah and Rilla are working in ship OM-45,they watch on their computer the AOL.
The AOL is artificial ozone layer, it was built in year 2222 because the ozone layer was breaking up.
Kiah and Rilla saw that the AOL is breaking also.Then,they went to see to captain Seru to tell that was happening.But captain Seru didn´t hear them because she and Adai had seen the same thing two years ago and they told the Earth Commander, then the Earth Commander sent Adai to colony moon.
After talking with Captain Seru, they decided to talk with the Australian Commander, Zadak, and with Adai for help.
Kiah and Rilla went to see Zadak but he didn´t help them.
Then, Kiah and Rilla went to see the Earth Commander,he was the richest man of the earth, and he could help them to save the AOL.
But the Earth commader didn´t want to save the AOL, because he only thought about Mars.
The Earth Commander was angry and sent Rilla and Kiah to the prison. When Zadak knew that they were in the prision,he went to kill the Earth Commander.But he killed to Earth Commander´s wife, then Earth Commader´s guards killed him.
The Earth Commander was angry and sent to Rilla and Kiah to the prison. When Zadak knew that they were in the prision,he was to kill to Earth Commander.But he killed to Earth Commander´s wife, then Earth Commader´s guards killed to him.
The Earth Commander was very, very angry and he decided to finish with the Earth and kill Rilla and Kiah.
Before the Earth commander could kill them, Adai came back to the Earth to save Rilla and Kiah, because he was the Kiah´s brother and all went to the moon´s colony.

MARTIN LUTHER KING

     Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a Baptist minister and he became a civil rights activist early in his career. In this summary I am going to point to some of the most important events through his life until his death, for example:

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by Nixon and led by King, soon followed. The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.

In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King led the SCLC until his death.

The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia in November, 1961. In December King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention.

The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the SCLC to promote civil rights for African Americans. Its goal was to end the city's segregated civil and discriminatory economic policies. The campaign lasted for more than two months in the spring of 1963.

King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, segregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. The most important march was to Washington for jobs and freedomm, which took place on August 28, 1963. The march was a resounding success and more than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event.  At the time, it was the largest congregation of protesters in Washington's history. King's "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.

 Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And also, in 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. This concept of non-violent resistence was influenced by Gandhi and Gandhi's success with non-violent activism against the British control in India.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee where he had travelled to support the black sanitary public works employees while he was staying at the Lorraine Motel. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War.

A dubious legacy summery

A DUBIOUS LEGACY

A Dubious Legacy is a story about a man called Henry Tillotson, who had been
away at war when his father died. One day, he received two letters when
he was in Cairo. One letter was from Jonathans (John and Jonathan had been his
friends since childhood), who told him that the girl he loved, called Calypso,
married Hector early in the war for his money. The other letter was
from his father, who told him he was dying and asked for his help. There was an
English woman in Cairo, called Margaret, who had been married to a German,
but at the moment she was divorced. There was a possibility that the British
sending her to prison and he very much wanted to help her, so he asked him to
save her by marrying her. So, they married during the war and Henry brought
Margaret to Cotteshaw, a farmhouse in the country.
When Margaret got to Cotteshaw she made it clear that there would never be
any questions of love, sex or friendship and she chose to spend most of her time
alone in bed and her only hobby was to redecorate her room.
James Martineau and Matthew Stepheson were Henry’s friends who, one day,
meeting in a London street, discovered that they had both been invited to
Cotteshaw for the coming weekend: then, they decided to go with Antonia and
Barbara. They spent a nice weekend, in spite of being really difficult to get on
well with Margaret, even James got engaged to Barbara and Matthew to
Antonia. Later on they got married and had children and grandchildren. They
went to Cotteshaw at weekends, as paying guests. The Jonathans rented part of
Henry’s garden. The weekends visitors also paid a rent for the rooms they used.
In the end, Sussie, Antonia’s daughter, tried to help Margaret and decided to
teach her to swim but Margaret, panicking, drowned.
By no means Henry was the sad and disappointed man people might have
expected him to be.
Some years later, when Henry was dying because he was old and ill, Antonia
and Barbara decided to visit him and Antonia confessed to Barbara that she
had slept with Henry from time to time and asked her if she had done the
same, she answered she didn’t, but… that wasn’t true. Then… who was the
actual father of the children…?

The History of the English Language

The history of the English language started with arrival of three Germanic tribes . These tribes were Angles, Saxons and Jutes, at that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. This tribe spoke a similar language called Old English, with different sound and words to today's English. Old English was spoken until around 1100.

In 1066, William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy that was from France, invaded and conquered England. The Normans brought with them a French language, and during this time Old English and French mixed words and sound called Middle English.

In the 16th century began the most important change for English language became and many new words and phrases entered the language. This was at the time of William Shakespeare,the invention of printing and the first English dictionary was published. After that Modern English began wich grew to become today's vocabulary.

Now, English is probably used for about a quarter of all the people in the worldand it's often call the world language.

John Charles

Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp

SUMMARY

The title of book that I have read is ,Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp.

The book tells us the tale of a poor boy , Aladdin. He lived in a city in Arabia, near the market and he lived with his mother in a poor house.

Aladdin was a lazy boy and he didn´t like to work , because his mother was always angra with him .

But , ONE day his life changed, because he found an old man called Abanazar. He said to Aladdin that he was his uncle , but he was lying because he was a bad magician from Morocco.

Abanazar said Aladdin ; Don´t worry!, you will be a rich man , soon.

Abanazar and Aladdin went through the hills and arrived at a cave, then Abanazar gave aladdin ONE MAGIC RING and with it , Aladdin could go into the cave , where aladdin found a old enchanted lamp .

In that moment, Abanazar was angry, only, he wanted the lamp and when Aladdin understood that Abanazar was a bad man, then Aladdin didn´t give it to him.

The magician was very furious and he closed the cave and Aladdin didn´t go out.

But, Aladdin was CLEVER , and he went out with the help of his magic ring. Now he had got his Enchanted Lamp and his Magic Ring.

In the Lamp lived a jinnee and he gave Aladdin gold and jewels, now, Aladdin is a rich man and he can marry with the Sultan´s daughter.

But some time after, Abanazar wanted to recover the lamp and he went near to Aladdin´s palace and he changad ONE new lamp for the old lamp, he took the princess too and they went to Morocco.

When Aladdin Knew it, he cried. Then he began to rub his magic ring and with its help, he went to Morocco.

In the end, the bad old magician died, because he drunk some sleeping-powder. Then Aladdin and his wife were free and they returned to Arabia and they were happy.

Mercedes Mogío Meneses.

Dancing with strangers

SUMMARY
`DANCING WITH STRANGERS´
BY Mª CARMEN CUENCA GARCÍA


1st story: EKATERINA

A South African man is coming back home from another country. His flight stops in Athens and he thinks it’s a beautiful place to stay because of its ancient culture. In the airport he meets a poor young Greek girl who is going to fly with him. She’s very sad and seems helpless. They sit together in the plane and she starts speaking in Greek. He doesn’t understand her but looking at her eyes and her face, he can imagine what’s she’s trying to say. She’s engaged to a rich Greek man who lives in Johannesburg but they haven’t met yet. The South African man tries to say to her that she should think about coming back home and living her own life but she says she can’t. When they arrive to South Africa she meets her engaged man. He’s an old fat man but she decides to get married to him because it’s her duty.


2nd story: BREAKING LOOSE

An African man and an Indian girl meet in a pub in her home town in Africa. She’s with her friends and it means that she mustn’t dance with a stranger but she does. He’s a professor at the university where she’s studying Literature. They start a forbidden relationship against her mother’s will: he’s not Asian and he’s older than her. His father is more open-minded and let her continue seeing him…but he dies and she has to be strong and determined to break away from family, friends, old customs and old ways.


3rd story: REMEMBER ATITA

Atita is a young African girl who comes back to her home town to try to find her friends. She always says they were as in that old song ´Five green bottles standing on the wall’ because she’s got a photo in which they are sitting on a wall, smiling at the camera when they were little girls. While she’s looking for them, she meets a boy who sleeps in the streets since his family fear for his life because military men kill people in their homes at night. Atita sleeps next to him on the floor of the shop veranda every night. After some days looking for her friends she finds one of them. She’s at the hospital and she doesn’t recognize Atita. She can’t talk but Atita visits her every day. Some weeks later Laker can remember at last and tells her about one of their friends. Laker saw some soldiers shooting her and that’s the reason she couldn’t talk anymore. But now Atita is near and she´ll be happy again.


4th story: A GATHERING OF BALD MEN

A man who sells insurances to old black people looks at himself one day and notices he´s got a bald patch on his head. He’s very worried and gets nervous. His wife doesn’t make light of that but then she remembers some men who kill themselves for that reason. He goes to work but instead of this he enters in an old pub and drinks a lot. A man comes in and tells him he knows about his thoughts. He’s got the solution: he´ll help him to kill himself. He says he’s blind but he’s going to drive his car. He does it and the police stop them. They know this crazy man-who is not blind- and decide to let them go. The new friends open an agency where they work telling people that to be a bald man is not a misfortune and they get lots of money.

SUMMARY: THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE

The story surrounds the double murder of Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter in the Rue Morgue, a fictional street in Paris. Newspaper accounts of the murder reveal that the mother's neck was very deeply cut, and when they tried to lift her, the head fell off and the dead body of the daughter, head downwards and it was difficult to pull the body out because the chimney was so narrow. The murderers occur in an inaccessible room on the fourth floor locked from the inside. Chairs and tables were broken and lay in pieces everywhere, on the floor were two bags, which contained nearly four thousand francs in gold. Neighbours who hear the murder give contradictory accounts, claiming they hear the murderer speaking a different language.

The first investigation conducted by the brigade of investigations, do not give any results, demonstrating the impotence of the police to clarify the facts.

Mr Dupin and his friend, the unnamed narrator of the story, read these newspaper accounts with interest. Mr Dupin decides to investigate on his own and after intense and brilliant research, offers an extraordinary explanation.

ESSAY

Hi everybody:
Please, when you write your essay go to ESSAY page.
It´s very easy: just click on it

Henry VIII

Enrique VIII y sus seis mujeres, toda una vida en la Historia de Inglaterra y tengo que resumirlo en 200 palabras, ..... ya veremos.

Se acaba el puente

Hola a todos!!!!!!!!!
Como ya imagino estareis todos practicando inglés y redactando ese pedazo de resumen pa colgarlo en el blog.
Como yo soy inutil de primer nivel pruebo con esta nota a ver si me enterao de cómo se hace....Suerte y al toro!!

Hello

Hello everyone, finally, I could get in to the blog...now, I´m prepared to write the sumary, well, first I have to do it and give it to Alastair to correct it. I hope I do it this long weekend.Have a nice day, in spite of the weather.

primera entrada

Hola a todos los "paleros". Good three days free

hello

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RAFA NADAL Y ROGER FEDERER

THIS IS THE NATURE

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Programa de Aprendizaje de Lenguas Extranjeras

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