The Cambridge Speaking Exam

Hi guys, how are you?
Well, today was my speaking exam! In my point of view, it was quite nice!
I was a little bit nervous but I hope this hadn't influenced in the result.
For those who don't know the exam I'll explain it here.
In the room, there is two examiners. One in the back who doesn't ask anything to you and just write somethings  down and the other which is the one who interacts with you. Doing the exam with you, will be another student, who in my case was a Korean girl, whose name is Yonji.
In the first part, she asks you about your daily life and about what you do in your country and other things to know something more about you. In this part you don't speak with your partner.
In the second part, she will ask you separately to discuss about 3 pictures, comparing and contrasting them, and answer two questions about it. Like in the first part, you don't interact with your partner.
After you have answered your questions, the examiner will ask your partner a question about the three pictures that you had. And the opposite way is the same.
In the third part, you'll have to discuss with your partner about a group of pictures and answer two questions about them. This is the part that you have to interact with your partner and usually when you have to find an agreement about one of the answers (what could be a little bit difficult).
After that, they will start to ask you questions about the main subject of the exam (mine was professions). So they asked if it's important to being updated with the latest news, and another questions that I can't remember at the moment.
After that you're free!
It's like a heavy weight that was removed from my back. But I now that the real problem will come next week in the writing / reading / listening / use of English (this is the hell!!) exams.
I hope I'll managed to do my best on those!

Tomorrow I'll take another exam: BULATS. This is an exam focused on Business vocabulary. But in these case, I receive the results just after I have finished it. So wish me good luck!

Good Luck!

Hey guys!
I just came to wish good luck for all my friends that are taking any exam!
I hope we all are going to pass it!
Cheers!

6 Months

Today is making exactly 6 months that I left Brazil. Six months that I left my family and everyone that I knew there. However, in less than a month I will be back there. And will be the time to leave everybody that I know here in Bristol and come back. In Brazil, I have some goals I need to achieve like graduate from my University.

Today is Gabi's last night. We are going to meet for stay with her this last night. I would like to write some things about it but it won't be possible now. But for sure, later I'll!

See you guys later!

Dragon's Den

Today's business class was one of the most exciting!

There's a programme in the BBC called Dragon's Den. The main point of the programme is that there are five entrepreneurs who are looking for good ideas to invest. So the candidates come to the programme and present their ideas for the Dragons and hopefully receive an offer for a part of the shares of the company.

Today we watched one of the episodes which a guy called Levi Roots was trying to get some investments for a mass production of a sauce, which he named as "Reagge Reaggue Sauce".

If you want to watch it, take a look in this link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/entrepreneurs/leviroots.shtml

Resuming, he received an offer from one of the Dragons and went back home happy. However we knew that, we didn't know if the company was really successful in its journey of producing the sauce.

Than the teacher Jeff, took us to the class and asked whether the company was successful or not for the us (the students). I had a hunch that it wasn't that good at all but I waited to see.

Suddenly the teacher showed us this:

Hahahahahahaha "Ohh shit!" was the first comments of the class after he had shown the bottle. Jeff gave us some Cheddar cheese to try the sauce, which is really tasty!

Well, his company now worth £8m! Now the company is selling its sauce for the whole Sainsbury empire (for the Brazilians is like a Carrefour, it's possible to find everywhere!) and with Dominos Pizza for big deals for a "Reagge-Reagge Pizza"! hahaha

Where can an idea take us? What will answer this question is your entrepreneurial vision of the business and the possibilities to do it!

 If you want to take a look at the company's website http://www.reggae-reggae.co.uk.

See you later!

Bad Chef!

Well, today it isn't my day!
I wanted to eat a pizza tonight so instead of going to Dominos where the pizza is really nice I decided to buy one in Sainsbury.
So I bought two frozen pizzas and came back home.
I put one in the oven and waited. After maybe 15 min I went to take a look and the pizza was ALL BLACK! hahahaha
I took it off the oven and let it out. But suddenly, the fire alarm went off!
As a security procedure, we had to go outside but I knew that the problem was my burnt pizza. So I went outside and met like 20 people complaining about who was the guilty one! hahahahahaha
I just apologized for them and waited until we were allowed to enter again the building.
Yeah.... I know... sorry guys! hahaha

Brazilian Joke

Today I have to show a very funny video that my friend Stella made with her Japanese friend. Probably if you aren't Brazilian you'll not understand it.



Hahahahahaha
Now a English joke: Do you know the difference between the Snowman and the Snowoman?
.
.
.
The Snowballs!
See you guys later!

Fixed pairs and Speaking Exam

Today's post will be different. Yesterday I was taking a look in my files, gathering some expressions for my mock exam that happened today. And I found a really nice list with some expressions called "fixed pairs".

These expressions are made of two words that go with an "&" in the middle. These words might not have any meaning alone, but together they do.

I've selected some of them to put up in the blog so you can take a look and learn some of them.
Bits & Bobs - small things that you usually find lost in a drawer (general things).
Movers & Shakers - the powerful people, usually Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc...
Short & Sweet - much quicker, easier and nicer than you expected.
On & Off - When something happens during a period of time but not continuously.
Ins & Outs - the details of something.
Sick & Tired - fed up with something.

Well, I think the list is this. I have some more expressions but for now, this will work. In the next posts I will try to put them in the text so you can understand the context that they are used.

As I said, I had the mock speaking exam today. Was really well. Sometimes was a little bit to speak because we (me and Won Ho) had already had that picture before but now the questions were different.
On the whole it was short and sweet. Although we had 3 minutes to speak about some pictures, there was a time that we had already finished it and we were trying to find something to say. Unfortunately, this is what I have to avoid in the exam because it's when you say stupid things.
After the exam, the teacher said that both of us would have passed the exam without problem.

Take care everyone!
It's my cleaning day and the kitchen awaits me!

What a week!

This week was so full of everything! A lot of happy moments and some sad ones.

It was my friend (Claudia) birthday. We had dinner in a restaurant and afterwards we went to drink in a park. We had a lot of fun that night! 

This week I received two really bad news. One here in England and one from Brazil. Those news have something in common: both of them are related to the health of a member of the family of a good friend.

I'm not going to say their names in respect of them, but what I'm going to do is to declare here my support for them. You'll know if you're one of them.

On Thursday in this following week, I'm going to have my mock speaking exam. I will make a group with Wonho (a guy who is from Korea and is in my class), and we'll be examined by a teacher that I never heard about it. The whole speaking exam must not take more than 20 minutes. So I have half of this, expecting that me and Wonho are going to share the twenty minutes, to convince the interviewer that I deserve an A! hahahahaha Really hard job actually!

This weekend was Gabi's last one in Bristol! She is going back to Brazil on Saturday. So me, Gabi and Stella went to the Browns to have the last English Afternoon Tea and scones. In fact, we just had the scones and decided to not drink the tea. We spoke about a lot of things, about how we changed since we arrived here in Bristol. After the Afternoon Tea, we went to the same park that I've been with my friends in the picture above. We stayed there for a couple of minutes and headed back home.

Gabi, I wish you all the best! I'll miss you here truta!

See you later guys!

Editing: Scone is like a mini cake that you open it and put cream and strawberry jam! It's very nice and typical English one.

Autumn Walk

Welcome back guys!
Yesterday, my ex host-sister, Holly, invited me to go for an Autumn Walk around Bristol. She arranged with Ash (one of the her sisters) and some friends of them. So we met at the Suspension Bridge around midday and went to the Ashton Court which is a private park but open to the public.
The view was awesome! In the Autumn, the leaves fall and change colors from green to yellow. It's so different because the ground is covered with leaves and its colors contrasts with the colors of the leaves which haven't fallen yet. I'm putting up some pictures as you can see what I'm talking about.

We were really lucky because this day the weather was so good! We stayed around 3 hours in the park enjoying an unusual sunny time in this part of the year. In the park, there are some wild deer living.
It's so strange because they are free in the park and the hart have really big antlers. I was thinking if anytime happened that one of them attacked a person but Ash told me that they are really shy and run when you approach.
After all, it was a really nice Autumn Walk around the park. After staying here for 6 months, it was the first time that I was there!
See you later guys!

Viewers

I was just checking my audience with the blog and for my surprise, the second country that most visits my blog is: Russia! Editing: Just to make it clear, I have more viewers from Russia than viewers from the UK! It's fascinating how far I can reach with this blog and how many people I have met because of it. So, just for curiosity, if you are a frequent reader (or just felt in this blog by accident), could you post a comment telling what do you think about the blog and where you from? Any suggestion will be nice too! Thanks!

International Food Party, Brazilian Situation and Smiles

Today I have time so I will make a big post with a lot of things that I have to update. Yesterday was so F***ING funny! Maybe, it was the funniest White Harte ever! For those that don't know, The White Harte is the famous pub that we go every Thursday because they have 1 pound 1 beer! So half liter for just one pound! It's a big deal! Continuing, we stayed in a table maybe with 15 people all of them were from the ELC. Everybody was so drunk and laughing because we had been playing that drinking games for hours! It was the day that the main programme of the night was in White Harte. Lets speak about the International Food Party that happened on Wednesday. Can you imagine like 25 nationalities, being represented by 100 different dishes? Yeah, the Party was like this! I ate all different types of food and from different countries as well. Korea, Switzerland, Qatar, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, China, Brazilian (of course) and there you go... So around 200 students inside a big room with their dishes displayed in long tables just waiting for the bell to ring so that they can start to eat everything that is in front of them. Here is a picture just before the ringing of the bell.

If you have really good eyes, you can see me just next to the shoulder of the guy wearing a dark red jacket in the center of the picture. I was quite surprised with the taste of some dishes. Actually because some of them, didn't look very good but were really nice! After the Food Party we went to the same pub that I have salsa classes but this time just for a drink with my friends and we finished the night in MBargo. Well, I have promised that I would say about the Brazilian situation and I will do it now. After staying this 6 months in England, I realised how different it's from Brazil. Here I can walk in the streets without worrying about anything. I take a bus and keep listening to music without being afraid of anyone. And this is something that I will miss in Brazil. My brother told me that he was robbed by a guy carrying a knife. He was really lucky because the guy didn't hurt him and he just robbed the money. The point is that São Paulo is that extreme and not every city in Brazil. But the sad is that it continues to happen. And sometimes I get very upset with this and I'm sorry about that. When I said that I don't want to come back to Brazil is that I don't want to start to live with worries again. I don't want to be afraid of being robbed or something like that, but I know that the place that I will live in Brazil until I finish my university it's like that so I just have to know how I'm going to cope with it. This is it! Lets talk about something happy. These week there was 3 smiles that make me feel really good. So I'll describe each of them now. On Wednesday, we had the International Food Party and there I meet the Andrea's daughter who I nicknamed as "baixinha". Andrea is the social assistance in the school. She is Brazilian but has been living in England for more than five years. Her daughter is 8 years old and really shy. She can speaks Portuguese with a weak accent. We played the whole night and I taught her to say "truta"! It was a really nice and fun night. When Andrea and baixinha were leaving the party, she looked at me, smiled and said: "Vai embora comigo pra gente poder brincar mais?" and this was the first smile that made my week. On Sunday I had dinner with my ex-host family and the daughter, Sophie, cooked some cupcakes for us. I was so pleased because she only cooked them because of me and it was so nice, it really was! So I thought to thank her in another way: I asked her if she was accepting orders and ordered 14 cupcakes to take it to my class on Friday. She said that she would make it for 50p each of them and this was how we made the deal. On Thursday I came back to take my order. Sophie was so happy that she was earning some money (what I called a "fortune" for her) with her cooking abilities!! She just couldn't stop smiling. Her happiness made me feel really good and this is why I put her as the second smile. Well, the third one is a very complicated history. On Wednesday after the Party, we went to a pub with the people from school. There I found a jacket with a mobile, a gloss, some keys and a card of the pub. I thought it was from any of the students because the jacket was in the sofas that we were sitting at the moment, so I took it with me to the MBargo. I realised that it wasn't from any of the students when nobody said nothing about had forgotten a jacket in the pub. So when I arrived at home, I took a look at the mobile and I guessed it was from an English girl because of the contacts and the texts that was in the mobile. The mobile was a HTC, really nice with touch screen. So I texted some numbers of her contact list and waited for an answer. Yesterday, a girl answered me asked me to contact her in another number. Today, she called me and we arranged to meet in the Sainsbury so I could give her jacket/mobile/gloss/keys. So we met in the Sainsbury. It was really short. I just gave her stuff and in this moment her eyes were flooded in tears. She smiled back and gave me a big huge. She offered to pay me a drink in another day and I accepted. She said that she will call me another day so that we can arrange it. I chose these smile because it was really pure like the other two. I felt really good about doing the right thing and I was happy to be rewarded with that smile. Made my day. Tomorrow I'm going to meet Holly and Ash (two of the daughters of my ex-host family) and we're going for what they called a Autumn walk. Pip told me that is like a walk in a park when the leaves are changing colors. Actually, there are a lot of them in the streets now. It's really beautiful! That landscape between gray and yellow is so nice! So I'm looking forward to the Autumn walk tomorrow! I'll take some pictures and put them up here later! I'm feeling really sleepy now, so bye bye fellows!

Internation Food Party!

Today we have the International Food Party! We made "brigadeiros"! IIIIhulll! I'm a little bit afraid that I'm late. So I have to go! See you later!

Sick

Hello everybody! I'm not feeling very well today. I woke up with sore throat and fever and against all the odds I went to the class. But now, I'm almost falling asleep. Today, will be no salsa class, which is really sad for just being in one day of the week and I really enjoy it. I will take a good rest and hope that tomorrow I will be better!

Yeah, I wanna be!

Revolting situation

I'm really upset about some news that I heard today.
And to resume what I'm feeling now, is that I don't want to come back to Brazil.
I don't want to live worried about violence again! I'm tired of it!

Edited: Later I'll write a full and better post related to this.
Not everyplace in Brazil is like that, but I have to assume that São Paulo is.
And I'm in my right to be sad about it. I know that my position makes the people feel sad, but this is my opinion. Taking risks in your life, it's just a question of choice. You choose to do it by accept living in a dangerous place or doing something.
But life is like this! You have to take risks!
See you

In:Motion

I will start this post with a very famous sentence here in Bristol: "Tonight is the night!".
And I'm expecting a lot from this night. I'm going with some friends from ELC to a party called Bristol In:Motion. The In:Motion is part of the underground scene in Bristol and the season starts in the end of the summer. The parties happens at a skater park just by side of the Avon river.
So, let the night starts!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yGcKlYAiw

Attention, Zombies ahead!

Here is a fact that I forgot to tell you guys.
On Friday afternoon, I went to the city centre with Mohamed. By the time we were there, a lot of zombies started to appear in the streets. But it wasn't like a group of ten zombies walking, there was a lot of them wandering around.
We stayed approximately 50 minutes just watching the whole group, that we think it was around 500 people, scaring the people in the streets.
I will upload some pictures then you can have a look!

So it was like this that I felt in the middle of a zombie infestation (left4dead).

I know that some of my friends will think this when they see this pictures! hahaha

Take care everyone!

2000!

No, I'm not talking about the year! It's because this blog reached 2000 views!
I have only published 36 posts which give for each post an average of 55 views! Actually I know that this number does not represent it, even more knowing that there was a time that I stopped with the posts and some people was still accessing the site to check if I had published any post.
I'm pretty sure about who helped this blog to reach this number, and I just want to say "Muito obrigado!".
Today I went to a barber shop to have my hair cut. And this time, the barber was a guy from the South Africa (with a really strange hair, what make me feel quite nervous about the hair cut).
Ok, hair cuts a part, we start to chat about it and we discovered how similar South Africa is to Brazil. He said many things that I could easily connect with another in Brazil. Like the unbalanced society, the poverty and the criminality.
Now your probably thinking that we only talked about bad things right? Wrong! And after a while discussing these problems we reached a point that we could agree to each other without doubt: despite all these problems, Brazilians and South Africans are a really happy people, what contrasts directly from the European ones.
We could be in the worst situation ever, but we have strength to turn it over.
It's really amazing how some people say something or do something that makes you think about it. It has been happening quite a lot here in England, and maybe this is one of the things that in the end will make the difference between the "old" Rapha and the "new" one.
Cheers!

Strange night!

Hey fellows! How is everything?
This night was a really strange night. I don't know if it was because of the Indian food or because the beers, or the mix of the beer and the food.
I woke up at 1am and couldn't come back to sleep again. When i could sleep again I started to dream with a lot of crazy things.
I dreamed about a car accident which I broke my arm (what a irony!) but this time it was the right arm. It was so real that I had to check if it was really broken or not when I woke up.
I dreamed that I was in Brazil, driving a car through Sorocaba's streets with my classmates inside the car. I drove the car on some nails in the ground (I know, very stupid) and I lost control of the car. We crossed a traffic lights that was in the red and hit a wall. After that I remember that my arm was broken and we went to the hospital. Afterwards I woke up to check if it really happened or not.
Well, apart the dreams, we made a tour in the BBC Bristol today! And it was absolutely amazing!
In the final part of the tour, we recorded a novel in the radio. So funny! I have it recorded in my iPod and I will se if I can upload it in the blog!
Tonight is salsa night with the school!
So, see you later!!!

Music

Daerrrrrrrr
I forgot to put the music that I was talking about!!
Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLK4oaXUuLg
The name of the song is "Undercover Martyn" of Two Door Cinema Club.
Very typical inside the clubs here in England!
xx

Tired

Hello everyone! How is everything?
Well, I've been really tired these days. Maybe because I went to bad quite late, maybe because last weekend was too many parties or maybe because I'm getting older (I don't believe in this one hahaha).
The Halloween was so much fun! On Saturday the streets was so full of people dressed up and the clubs were already denying people to enter. Besides of all, we had a great good time!
I've been looking to a blog from a guy that is travelling for 5 years now. And do you know how he can pay for everything?? With a blog and some books that he writes!!!
It's so amazing! He could travel all over the world and sharing this experience with other people he could make money enough to keep travelling!!
A few days ago we had lunch with some friends in a restaurant. When we were there, I heard a really nice music playing in the radio, but nobody knew the name of the song. I had already heard that song in some clubs that I've been but never cared about asking someone about it. So I decided that I would search for it until I find it. And it was what I did. I think I stayed like an hour searching in different places, trying to guess some parts of the music and then I finally found it.
For my surprise, the band that plays it, was one of the bands I've watched in the Oxygen, the festival that I went on Dublin. And to make it worse, one of the few pictures that I took in the festival, was in the front of they show, which in that time was a band that I didn't know. It's so funny how the things happens sometimes, isn't it?
Today we had dinner with my classmates in a Indian restaurant. I love it! The food is sooooooo nice! The mixture of flavors, like spicy with vegetables was so good! And we drank a Indian beer, which had nothing special. Afterwards, we went to my friends house where was happening a prohibited party. We, students that live in students house, are not allowed to make parties in our houses, but sometimes it happens. Once I have already put in 12 people in my room and it was really fun! So we stayed there for a couple of hours and was really nice until John (the principal of the School) called Johan (my friend) and asked him to put everybody out of the house. I'm pretty sure that tomorrow John will call Johan for a chat in his office, what is pretty bad.
Well, I think it's my time to go now. This week will be really busy!
Tomorrow I have a tour around the BBC Bristol and afterwards the school will take us to a Salsa! And I could not be tired for that, right?
Take care everyone!
xx