Quote of the day

Nice Quotes

“A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.” Albert Einstein

Everlasting love

What is it about you?

That makes my stomach turn
My heart beat fast 
My mouth curl 
Is it your beautiful smile?
Your sexy lips
The sweetness of your voice
Or just what whisper me
The many things we had and shared

The sunsets

The candlelight dinners

Our passion and love
The ways we talked and laughed

Were only dreams before we met

Now turned into reality

How I wish this will last for eternity
By by Gary R. Hess

Happy Valentine's day!

Funny Quotes

I know I've got a degree. Why does that mean I have
to spend my life with intellectuals? I've got a lifesaving
certificate but I don't spend my evenings diving for a
rubber brick with my pajamas on. --Victoria Wood

Nice to meet you!

Hello, my name is Douglas Watson. I was born in Inverness, Scotland. There, before leaving, I worked as a sales manager for a multinational company. I also lived and worked in London for three years.
In 1998, I decided to move to Brasil, I lived in Rio Grande o Sul for five months. I then left RS and went to live in Florianópolis, where I stayed for eight years. I began to teach English in Floripa and worked for various schools there, including CCAA, British & American and Words. After two years, I started to teach privately, and have been doing this since then.
I recently moved to São Paulo (Moema) and I intent to begin teaching here.

Hope you can come back and visit again sometime.

D.W.

You will have to read this a few times!

Mark Twain's plan for the improvement of English spelling

   

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. 

The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. 

Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. 

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. 

Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. 

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. 

   

The First Christmas Card

Today, we send millions of Christmas cards every year. But in fact the Christmas card is a relatively modern invention.

In the Middle Ages, European wood engravers produced prints with religious themes. But the first real Christmas card, as we understand the term today, was designed in London, England in 1840. It went on sale in 1843. The designer was John Callcott Horsley, a well known British painter and member of the Royal Academy. He designed the card at the suggestion of his friend Sir Henry Cole, who was the first director of the Victoria & Albert Museum. Horsley produced 1,000 cards and offered them for sale at 1s (one shilling) each. They were printed on stiff card and coloured by hand, with the greeting: "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You". The card shows three pictures: in the centre, a family party; to one side the hungry receiving food; to the other side the poor being clothed. Puritans immediately denounced the card, since it showed people drinking in the family party. But with most people the idea was a great success and the Christmas card quickly became very popular.

Christmas cards were not the first greetings cards. Since 1796, with improvements in printing, merchants had been sending cards to their customers offering "best wishes" for the new year. In many countries, Christmas cards gradually became even more popular than New Year's cards.

As Christmas is the birthday of Jesus Christ, cards often show scenes of His nativity. Others show images associated with Christmas such as wintry scenes of snow-laden pines, Father Christmas (Santa Claus), stars, candles or holly. The traditional greeting written on a Christmas card is "Merry Christmas", but many other greetings are also used, such as "Happy Xmas" or "Happy Noel".

English Checker

• denounce: declare publicly to be wrong or evil
• greetings card (BrE) greeting card (AmE)
• His: his (a capital H is often used for God or Jesus)
• holly: a plant with prickly green leaves and red berries laden: heavily loaded or weighed down
• Middle Ages: period of European history from AD 1000 to 1453
• nativity: birth of a child
• the Nativity: the birth of Jesus Christ
• Noel: Christmas (from the French)
• pine: an evergreen tree with needle-shaped leaves
• puritan: person with very strict moral beliefs
• the hungry: hungry people
• the poor: poor people
• Xmas: Christmas (informal, X = initial chi in Greek Khristos)