Guardian Angel

I am not quite sure if you have ever thought about a guardian angel. A guardian angel is an angel assigned to protect and guide a particular person. In my opinion everyone has a guardian angel, with no exceptions.

Today I got in a car accident. The accident occurred on a highway where there was heavy traffic. The traffic was one reason for it why the accident happened in first place. I was on my way to visit my aunt because it was her birthday. Since the sky was dark, the lights from the other cars were bright and annoying. I stopped at a crossing on the highway. Besides that another car stopped right behind me. The driver of a third car didn’t see us or was not focusing on the street. The consequence was that he recognized us too late. He had an excellent reaction and passed me on my left side. His car fell in a field. The good thing about the whole story is that nobody got hurt. Furthermore the cars are all in proper condition.

I think I had at least one guardian angel with me when the accident occurred. The feeling that someone was watching over me and trying to protect me when the accident occurred makes me again more believe more in guardian angels.

Guardian angels are not just in our mind. Often we give someone a guardian angel as a gift. There are made in different shapes as well as different colors and from products materials, but the thought behind this present will always be the same – that the person who receives the gift will be safe and protected.

St. Martin's Day

Who is Saint Martin? Saint Martin of Tours is one of the most revered European catholic saints. This catholic saint was born in 316 A.D. in Hungary. Almost every child knows the legend of Saint Martin. The legend is that he saved a homeless person from freezing to death by giving him half of his cloak, which he cut in two with his sword. 

 I went to the St. Martin’s Day celebration on November 11th with my little nephew. My little nephew is going to turn two in December. He is a charming little boy. I definitely love to spend time with him. He is a little bit too young for creating his own candle-lit lantern for St. Martin’s Day, therefore my cousin let him borrow his lit-candle light since he was not using it. The candle-lit lantern was made from colorful transparent paper. Normally the children build the candle-lit lanterns before November 11th. In the evening of St. Martin’s Day there is a candle-lit lantern procession, which are most of the time organized by the local kindergarten. The local kindergarten in my town did a really great job preparing an amazing evening. The evening started with the lantern procession during which all the kids carried their self-made, lighted lanterns and sang many wonderful traditional songs dedicated to St. Martin. The songs were really good and my little nephew loved listening to the songs, singing along with the kids, and watching the procession. The kids did a really great job. At the end of the procession was a buffet with sweet pastries and roasted goose, which is a traditionally served. The roasted goose is traditional on St. Martin’s Day because when Saint Martin did not want to become Bishop therefore he hid near some geese. The people searching for him heard the loudly cackling geese and found Saint Martin and ordained him Bishop of Tours.

 

 

Cambridge Dictionary

Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class this week, I have decided to buy the Cambridge Advanced Dictionary. For me as a language learner it is important that a monolingual print dictionary has a section with basic grammar rules as well as useful information for improving my writing. I have found these things in the Cambridge Advanced Dictionary. The dictionary also provides the phonetic transcript of a word which can be very helpful to get the pronunciation of a new word right. To learn a new word, further information such as the usage and explanation of the word as well as synonyms and antonyms is needed. There are also common mistakes mentioned; for example, many people mix up the words lend and borrow. All these can be easily found in the Cambridge Advanced Dictionary due to the clear structure of the dictionary. The Cambridge Advanced Dictionary of English really got my attention because it has everything a dictionary should have, in my opinion. That is the reason why I decided to buy this monolingual dictionary.

Dinner in the dark!

Friends of mine and I had a dinner together last week. The dinner was special and can not be compared with anything I have done in my life before. For my last birthday I got this dinner in the dark as a birthday present from my friends. I have to say this is one of the best presents I got in my whole life. The dinner was organized by the charity for the blind in Graz. The reason for such events is that they want to shape the awareness of the concerns of blind and visually impaired people. Therefore the waiters were blind and the dinner took place in a dark room.

I was surprised how hard it is to get along in the darkness at the beginning. But after a while my eyes got used to the darkness and also my mind. For me it was a new experience to make conversations without seeing the expression on the face of the person you talk to. The main challenge I thought would be to eat. But I was surprised how well  it worked out. We were not informed about the menu that made the whole dinner more interesting. My friends and I were discussing about the things on our plates. It was really hard to figure out what we were actually eating. During the dinner we all got kind of used to the darkness and as time passed by we got better in eating and drinking.

In my opinion the waiters were just amazing. The name of our waitress was Moni. She did a great job during the dinner and helped us with everything. After the dinner we had a chance to talk to her about her being blind. Moni is blind since she was 24 years old. She knew that she would be blind one day since she was a little girl. I think it is remarkable how she lives her life. Moni has a wonderful husband and a lovely child and she is glad that she is able to do a lot of dailylife things by her own like groceries shopping.

This experience was incredible and I recommend to you guys to try the same one day. Everyone of us knows that there are people how are not so lucky to see but we never put ourselves in such a position. Therefore this dinner is perfect to get to understand blind people better.

MISTAKES - Learning for Life

I don't even know where to start. I am really upset about myself. Probably the best thing to start with is to tell the story from the beginning on.

In my English class we had the pleasure to write a letter to Fiona (our English teacher) about everyone's individual type of learning a language. This letter was supposed to

help her to get a better understanding of our learning type. I thought I tried my best and wrote a nice letter. Well, as we got  our letters back I was totally upset about myself. Fiona didn't correct my whole homework because I had a bad spelling mistake. Such a mistake could be easily avoided by a spellcheck. I was so mad at myself because this is definitely not a mistake what should happen and it was my own fault. Therefore my work was graded as failed. Actually I think it is not bad if you fail because it means you need to improve your knowledge. In such a case the grade is not due to my writing skills it is because I am to stupid to spellcheck my own work again. The consequence right now is that I will read over every single piece of my work at least twice in order to guarantee that mistakes of this kind will never happen again. The only thing I can do for now is to let you guys have a look at the improved version of my letter.

Dear Fiona

I want to tell you more about me as a language learner. First of all it is important for you to know why I am so ambitious to learn languages. To know different languages it is important to understand and communicate with people across the world.  This is essential due to the fact that globalization has changed the demographics of society and made the world seem smaller than ever before. My motivation to learn English and Russian is to work in an international company once.

For me it is important that if I make mistakes, someone corrects my writing otherwise I will repeat the mistakes over and over again. These mistakes should be corrected by the language teacher to give the student the opportunity to develop one's language skills quickly. I had a bad experience in high school with my language teacher. My English teacher has never corrected a single piece of my work. I guess that is part of the reason I have difficulty expressing myself in the right way.

My goals for this term are on the one hand to know more vocabulary and on the other hand to improve my writing style. Both I need to develop myself in order to be able to express myself in a better way. To achieve this goal I read the BBC News or the New York Times everyday and try to kind of remember all the new vocabulary. Moreover I am going to order some English novels instead of reading German novels as usually. Beside that I definitely want to write or even skype more often with my friends abroad. I hope you got an idea about me as a language learner.

With best wishes