ANIMALS, ANIMALS

You can explore the animal kingdom at this BBC website. Learn new vocabulary while you find out interesting facts about your favourite (or not) animals. Unfortunately the videos do not work outside the UK.
Guess the animal:
1.- They are elusive, nocturnal, pig-like creatures that live on a diet of ants and termites. They have long extensible tongues and flexible tubular snouts - perfect tools for sucking up over 50,000 insects in one sitting, which they then swallow whole.
2.- They are insects which glow.
3.- They are nocturnal birds of prey. They hoot.
4.- They are cold-blooded reptiles which come in many shapes and sizes. Some change body colours, other can lose body parts and grow them again and there's one which can even walk on water.
5.- They are in the same great ape family as the chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - with which they share a common ancestor. A behaviourally, socially and culturally diverse species, they are the only known species to build fires, cook food and clothe themselves.

Here's just the beginning of the film the Ant and the Aardvark. You can watch the rest on Youtube.com if you like this. Enjoy!



Other interesting links:
Animal Diversity Web
Natural Perspective

MY STUDENTS page update

I've finally posted your tongue twisters. Please, have a look! You can leave your comments here.

Carnivals around the world

On today's Guardian there's a travel piece on the best parties before Lent and they mention Cadiz. Check it out here!

Please check out my new page, My Students, where you can read what my amazing students write. I'll be updating it regularly (hopefully)

LOVE POEM 5

Sir Edward Burne-Jones

 Variation on the Word Sleep  by Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun and three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary 

Margaret Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. While she may be best known for her work as a novelist, she is also a great poet. In 2008 She received the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature.

LOVE POEM 4

Sylvia Plath Self Portrait 1951

 Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932–February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Her haunting and personal poems and her tragic life story have placed her in the pantheon of contemporary American poets.

LOVE POEM 3

"A Very Short Song"

Dorothy Parker

Once, when I was young and true,

Someone left me sad-

Broke my brittle heart in two;

And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,

Love is but a curse.

Once there was a heart I broke;

And that, I think, is worse.

 Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) represented one of the most accomplished feminist and successful literary writers in women’s history. She became known as one of the most brilliant writers from the early 1900s. As a woman before her time, she represented a select few women who became independently successful with her witty and satirical writings. Her works paved the way for other realist writings by intellectuals, and other writers, which transformed American thought.