Just to have fun!!!!

The new coment of Luis («cute-man»)inspires me and I remember something we can consider great because now I am sure that somewhere there is people who speaks (sings) badly in English......

Tulibu Dibu Douchoo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo


Enjoy it!!!!!

Kisses

Europe is a country?

This really happened in the show "are you smarter than a 5th grader?"

http://www.koreus.com/video/blonde-europe-pays.html

Play and learn English!

http://miniclip.sapo.pt/games/word-sailing/pt/
An easy way to improve your vocabulary with this simple word-puzzle game!
It's fun and easy...try it if you wish to! "Word-Sailing!"

Are companies responsible for people being fat?

This question was recently raised in one of our classes and I must say, it brought on an interesting discussion. I was reading some articles on the internet from Time magazine and I found this one which is somewhat related but with a twist. It has to do with companies in the States that are now forcing employees to take responsibility for their health.
Read it and tell me what you think :)

Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2008
Mandatory Health
By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

If health-care reform lags slightly behind American Idol as a water-cooler topic in your office, it might be because you're one of the 160 million — or 3 out of 5 non-elderly Americans — whose employers pony up for your insurance. That cushy deal is changing, thanks to Americans' Oreo-eating, couch-hugging, nicotine-clinging ways. Soon the boss may tell employees to get healthy — or get lost.
The health-care contract between American workers and their employers began when Franklin D. Roosevelt left health care out of his New Deal. Labor restrictions, tax breaks and accounting rules induced employers to offer private health insurance to workers. In 1940, 21 million Americans were enrolled in company-sponsored health plans; by 1950, 142 million. Privatized health insurance seemed like a glorious triumph for capitalism. Keep government out; let industry thrive!
Then costs exploded. Health-care expenditures in the U.S. totaled $27 billion in 1960; in 2005, $2 trillion. Oh, workers paid their part, in the form of premiums and co-pays. But as benefits grew more generous, employees' contributions shrank, from 48% of all health-care costs in 1960 to 15% in 2000, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Employers balked. So, along came managed care, as well as a jumble of other cost-tamping innovations, including high-deductible plans and health-savings accounts.
The latest innovation may wind up having the biggest impact of all: a crackdown on workers' poor health habits involving both the carrot and the (cancer) stick. See, American workers today are about as fit as caged hamsters with all-day access to the nut bowl. Our collective obesity, inactivity and refusal to part with the smokes have led to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Who foots the bill? The boss. Who gets the blame? The boss. More than half of us cite work demands for our refusal to put down the Ho Hos and do a push-up. Eighty-four percent of Americans say we'd get healthy — honest — if only the boss insisted.
The boss is insisting. Verizon Wireless, Microsoft and Dow Chemical dangle cash bonuses for workers who lose weight or stop smoking. A growing number of employers assign "health coaches" to monitor workers' diets and lifestyles. Two-thirds of companies offer so-called wellness programs. Office-furniture maker Steelcase is marketing a treadmill equipped with a computer: a hamster wheel with e-mail.
Some bosses are done being nice. They're firing workers for smoking, and they're screening job applicants for nicotine. Your home is no haven: Gary Ross of San Francisco was canned by a telecommunications company for using legal, medically prescribed marijuana to ease chronic back pain from injuries sustained in the Air Force. In December, a state court upheld the firing. With costs rising, count on employers to keep truffling for ways to save a buck. Count on higher premiums and deductibles, tighter restrictions on treatments, more intrusive screening and monitoring. Don't be gobsmacked if genetic testing figures into employment sooner or later. Or if want ads begin to ask for — along with fluency in Java — a clean bill of health.

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken soup is chicken soup, I believe in any country. It´s something that you eat when you´re not feeling well and it always makes you feel good, right down to your soul. Well, I just wanted to share with you a book called precisely that, "Chicken soup for the Soul" by Jack Canfield. It´s a book with inspirational true stories and I know that when I read a story from it I always put the book away with a smile on my face and with a warm feeling in my soul. If you don´t want to buy the book, just search it on the internet and you can read some of the stories. I was going to choose one to place here but I decided to let you read some of the stories and maybe choose one that you like or who knows, maybe even add your own story here and we can have our own version of Chicken soup for the Soul :)

Let's take a coffee

Hi to all

with this post I leave a message, it is a well knowne (?) story but I think that we can always remember it time to time.

It is easy to forget some of the most important things in our live as well to ignore the simple friendship daily acts .

So please always remember to have a coffee with your friends

The story:

One day a professor went to his philosophy class and without a word we starts to fill a large and empty glass pot with golf balls, in the end he ask to class.
- what do you think is it full?
All the students agree with the fact.
However the professor took some other small balls ( berlindes) and starts to fill the empty spaces between the golf balls. Again he asks the same question, and the answer was the same .
Then we took a box full of sand and he starts to fill again the pot, the sand has cover all the empty spaces on the pot, and he asks the same question and the answer of course was the same FULL!!!.
However the professor goes out side the class room and when he came in he bought a coffee cup and he starts to fill the pot, and the coffee was drain by the sand.
The students start laughing.
Then the professor says :
- The pot is your life, first of all there is You, your family and friends, the most important for you(Golf Balls), then you have all the other things, you job, you club, you car, your house (berlindes), then you have a lot of small things, but if you have put the sand first, we could not have put the golf balls and the small ones.
Our life is like the pot so please do not lose all your time with the small things, enjoy you family, enjoy your friends, lock to you, go study, be your best friend, do your favourite sport, and there always be time for the small things.
In the end a student asks.
- Professor and about the coffee? What that represents.
- I am glad you ask, it is only to remember us that there is always time and space to have a coffee with our friends.

THE END

Related with the dinner, last week-end I was talking with Carlos and Isabel and I am going to organize a camping party with a spectacular trip on a canoe in Aviz a quite nice village in Alto Alentejo, and I was thinking that it could be nice that we all go on this week-end to have some fun.

5 and 6 of April will be the dates to the party, of course is going to have Barbecue, songs and games around the fire camp and lots of fun.

I hope that all of you can come, of course that we need to rent the canoes but that will be a not expensive cost and in the next days I will give you , more information.

Don’t forget your family and/or friends.

Tell me if you would like to participate.

Bye

Wanna laugh???

DICIONÁRIO INGLÊS-MADEIRENSE-PORTUGUÊS...... rir um pouco?

CAN'T - Significa que não está frio
Exemplo: O café está can't.

CAN - Usado por quem sofre de amnésia
Exemplo: Can sou eu ?

TO SEE - Onomatopéia que representa tosse
Exemplo: Eu nunca to see tanto na minha vida

CREAM - Significa roubar, matar.
Exemplo: Ele cometeu um cream

DARK - Significa generosidade, dar.
Exemplo: É melhor dark receber

ICE - Expressão de desejo.
Exemplo: Ice ela me beijasse

MAY GO - Pessoa dócil, afável.
Exemplo: Ele é muito may go

MONDAY - Vocábulo usado para ordenar.
Exemplo: Ontem monday lavar o carro

MUST GO- Significa mastigar
Exemplo: Ele colocou a pastilha na boca e must go

NEW - Sem roupa Exemplo: Ele saiu de casa new.

PART -Lugar para onde mandamos as pessoas
Exemplo: Vá para o raio que o part !

PACKER - Prefixo que indica bastante
Exemplo: Eu gosto dela packer-amba

PAINT - Artefato para pentear o cabelo
Exemplo: Empresta-me o paint

RIVER - Pior que feio
Exemplo: Ele é o river

SO FREE - Expressão que denota sofrimento
Exemplo: Como eu so free para ganhar este dinheiro !

HELLO - Esbarrar
Exemplo: Ele hello o braço na parede

GOOD - Bolinha usada para jogar
Exemplo: Gosto de jogar bolinha de good

YEAR - Partir
Exemplo: Eu tenho que year embora

FRENCH - Parte dianteira
Exemplo: Sai da minha french!

WINDOW - Usado em despedidas
Exemplo: Bom, já vou window

From Açores to the World...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCwRbw22n9k

No comments... Its one BIG portugues artist!!!

This guy needs english lessons...

It aint (isn´t in correct English) over till it´s over...

Somebody once said .... "it aint over till it´s over". In that case I think it was about the results of a baseball game, in this case I´m commenting to Eden about the English training course finishing. Well, we´ve just started the third module so we´re not finished yet. However, upon completing the course the idea of a party sounds great to me. For those of you who don´t know me very well, I´m always ready for a party :) And, I do intend to keep writing in the blog.
I was even going to suggest to all of you the possibility of opening up this blog to others. I have some former students as well as friends and aquaintances who I think might be interested in contributing. So who knows, maybe we should think of expanding.

I´d just like to add a little something. By chance this weekend I saw two of my students from Luis Simões, curiously at the same place, with their children. I was also with one of my children. It´s nice to sometimes run into people out of the usual environment. Carla and Anabela, it was really nice to have met your kids, they´re beautiful!

Hello :-)

It has too much time that i wrote for our blog.
Like my other colleagues, i was very busy and i hadn't a lot of time to write. We had to study for the test and it was hard, but it has done and the end of the course is near. I'm going to have many longings... It's true!
Ana, I wait that after the end of our course you keeps on writing in our blogue, and I'm liking that in the end of the course we were gathering all the groups and we were doing a dinner of end of course. What is what you think?
It is an idea!! :-))
Bye bye people...