Time change

Time has changed in Europe; this week many classes will be at a different time. Next week time will change in SL too and everything will be back to normal.

These are classes that will start one hour later this week:

• Monday, International News, 12pm PDT (it was 11am PDT
• Tuesday, Grammar, 1pm PDT (it was 12pm PDT)
• Wednesday, Flat Mates 12pm PDT (it was 11am PDT)
• Thursday, Word Games, 2pm PDT (it was 1pm PDT)
• Friday, Excursion, 9am PDT, (it was 8am PDT)
• Saturday, Vocabulary, 7am PDT (It was 6am PDT)

Sunday: back to regular times until next spring when this mess will happen again.

Pushing Up Daisies

                    

ESL Group Story Writing Class October 24, 2010

                   
Last Halloween I decided to dress up as a vampire. I was too lazy to come up with a more original costume, so slapping on a set of false vampire teeth and draping a black curtain over my shoulders was an easy thing to do.

When I arrived at my friend Jim’s house where the party was, everybody had on great costumes. I was looking really sloppy.  It was still early so I left to go to a costume store to buy something better. When I arrived there, the store looked closed, but the door was open, so I walked in.

When I went into the store, I saw someone lying down, and I saw a lot of blood.  It startled me, but soon I got a hold of my emotions and decided to check things out. I approached the person, it was a young man. I poked him, but he didn't respond.

I was scared, my hands were trembling, but I had no time, and started to check costumes. I wanted to get out of that store as soon as possible.  And then I saw a costume that impressed me. It was a big, orange, funny, pumpkin costume.

I was still trembling a bit and I felt as if I were in a fog, but the sight of the bright, orange, pumpkin costume made me push my fear aside.  I had to step over the body that was lying in a pool of blood to get to the pumpkin costume.  I told myself that it wasn't a real person, that it was a prop for Halloween.

As I was going out of the door, a creepy laugh chilled the blood in my veins.  A voice said: "Where are you going, thief?" I froze there and I was afraid to turn. I sensed someone moving towards me and I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I wanted to run but suddenly I couldn't run anymore. My legs were not working. But then I thought "The blood is false, so maybe I can use it for my party."

Yes, the blood is fake! I was not scared anymore. I looked at the guy, smiled, and asked him: “Dude! Where can I get some of that blood?”  Maybe I can make my pumpkin bloody.

Class switch (this week only)

This week Nimlot's class will be Tuesday at 8am PDT (instead of Thursday) and Seikatsu's class will be Thursday at 6am PDT (instead of Tuesday)

Green Bear, Green Bear

              
                                  ESL Group Story Writing Class October 17, 2010
                                                
                                                                                                                                
I still remember it clearly: that day, because it was the opening of the deer hunting season.  Me, my friend Michael, and my brother-in-law James went to my cottage in the woods and spent the night there.  Finally the day that we'd been waiting for, for a long time, had arrived.

I thought it would be a good idea to have a barbecue.  So I thought we should go hunting.  "Are you crazy?” said Michael. “We can't have a barbecue here, in the forest. It's too risky; we could cause a big fire."

 "Besides, I hate killing animals, I am a vegetarian and in favor of animal protection."
“Forget this idea. What do you think Rilli? Do you agree with me?” “Yes I agree,” responded James. I’m a vegetarian too.

I looked at my brother-in-law in disbelief. "You're a vegetarian?” I asked.  "Then why did you agree to go hunting with us?"

“I like to walk in the woods, but I am scared to go alone. I heard that there are fairies and monsters kin the woods.  I would like to see them, but I'd feel safer going with someone with guns, just in case...

While I was still trying to understand my brother-in-law's worries, James called us next to him. A big brown bear was peacefully walking in our front yard, next his pick-up truck. After all, there would be something that might have spoiled our day in the woods: and it looked like a monster.

I was afraid that something would happen. So I thought that maybe we needed to take a gun.
I was sure there would be an accident. When he saw the bear, my brother-in-law became frantic, immediately.  He took my rifle and fired at the poor bear.

 The bullet from the rifle hit the bear in its heart, and the bear started to turn green.  And we watched as the bear slowly fell to the ground.

My brother-in-law, the vegetarian, went to look for help from the forest faeries. But I thought it's not bad to eat bear meat. I was sure that the meat of the bear would be a gourmet meal.

Since I thought It's OK to eat bear meat, I told James to go back into the cabin and bring out some sharp knives.  But then I gasped because when I looked down at the bear, I noticed that its fur had turned a pale green.

All of a sudden, my brother-in-law returned with a dozen faeries flying behind him, sprinkling some strange green-glowing dust all over everything. The dust made me sneeze.

And the Prize Goes To…

                                  

                   ESL Group Story Writing Class October 10, 2010                                     

                                                                         
Last month, I visited a friend who lives near the ocean. It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen the ocean.

It was a majestic view. The day was stormy, the water was dark gray. The waves were tall and strong.  I decided to take a walk on the beach. All of a sudden I saw a giant wave coming my way. I was scared but also fascinated and I could not run away.

I went to my friend's house, and we our other friends, “Do you like swimming? "I like swimming," one said. And we went swimming.

This was my future plan, but first I needed to think about how to run away. I was in love with the sea, and the more I saw those blue waves, the more I thought "I am happy here."

I was in love with the sea, and the more I saw those blue waves, the more I thought "I am happy here." We swam a lot, my friends and I and we walked on the hot sand.

I was having such a great time that I stopped thinking about running away. I thought about running away before, when I first saw the beach and my friends, because I was frightened of such a new and different thing and I didn't think I would be able to swim.  But I was able to swim!

To move in the water and float was a beautiful sensation. I looked down and I saw a lot of fish and sea flowers.  One big fish came up to me and said: "Follow me."

It was flipper. I grabbed my surfboard and started following it. I liked surfing and big waves but the waves were too much for me, that day.

When I went the fish place, to the fish's place, I saw a lot of hungry baby fish. I thought, "Now I'm food for fish!"

SL Gripe Session

ESL Group Story Writing Class October 3, 2010

                                         
Frustrated Avatar: Second Life was horrendous today! So many people had a difficult time teleporting.  Not a few of us cursed the blasted program. It’s so bad, sometimes, that we talk about SL as if it were a person, not a thing.

Exasperated Avatar: I could not agree more.  Sometimes I don't know if I should call the avatar who stands in front of me "he" or "it." Have you ever experienced the same, Broono?

Confused Avatar:  Yes. When the person is a cloud, it confuses me. I don't know what to do when that happens.

Annoyed Avatar: Because of SL, I was blocked in a place where there were a lot of people. Some were strange, and especially one in particular who was singing with a horrible voice.  We were all captive victims of that person.

Irritateed Avatar: I can relate to that, CEM. Because of the problems with SL today, when I tried to teleport to the school, I wound up stuck in a wall! And to make matters worse, there was an annoying person making weird noises on the mic [microphone].  Lucky for me, OO TPed [teleported] me out of there.

Black Hole Cinema

                                                  ESL Group Story Writing Class September 26, 2010


                                                                            Black Hole Cinema

What a disappointing movie! I thought I was going to be frightened out of my wits but instead, I fell asleep! Oddly enough, that's what happened to everyone who went to see the movie at Black Hole Cinema.

When I woke up I saw some of the other people still half asleep, others were still sleeping and some of them were even snoring. When we tried to exit the theater we found out the doors were stuck and that we could not get out. I went back to my seat to pick up my half full tub of popcorn.

I saw a doctor, and I asked a man how I could exit the theater, but he didn't know.

OK, while I was just thinking about why I couldn’t get out of there, a girl came up to me, hugged me and said: “Darling, we can have some fun.” I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know this girl.

I was just about to kiss her after having given her a hot look when the speaker from the theater turned on and a voice said: “Attention, attention!" I was puzzled and mad at the fate that didn't allow me to kiss that chick.

The voice then continued:  “You are being kept inside for a test. Nobody can escape. We'll give you further details soon."

Suddenly, a group of zombies entered the theater, slowly marching down the aisle! Now we knew what was happening! The doors were being held shut from the outside by zombies! The announcer's voice had sounded a bit strange, come to think of it.

The Enemy

ESL Group Story Writing Class September 19 2010

I was preparing to go to sleep early because the next day I'd have to play the final of the city football cup. The phone rang. It was a sexy female voice. "I'm Christine" - she said - "I saw your profile on a dating site and I liked it. Let's go out tonight."

It was a very nice offer, but I was afraid to lose my chance to be one of the main players on my team.

The coach depended on me and I considered my decision to play this game as a challenge to prove my skills. "OK," I thought, "Just one night with this female won't matter so I decided to stay out all night with her. But maybe something had happened to her because when I arrived at that place, no one was there.

I was thinking that I may have made a mistake about the place when the cell phone rang. "Muahaha" -the sweet lady said- "I am Christine, your enemy. I am the coach’s daughter of the enemy team." "And now you are lost because I changed the schedules for the game tomorrow. It will start even earlier, muahaha," Christine said. I was mad.

Even though I was angry, I answered Christine in a calm voice. I didn't want to let on that I wanted to explode, to that wicked woman! "OK, thank you Christine. You're doing me a favor because I'm about to sign a contract with your team," I told her. That, of course, was a lie, but I wanted to throw her off guard.

"I don't really think so," - she answered- "If it were true, I would know about it. Anyway, you’d better hang up and start walking home." And she hung up.

I looked around. No one was around. My taxi had left, so I started to walk home. A car sped by, a paparazzi took a picture of me and drove away.

It was a risk to leave my house tonight and to go to meet Christine. I blamed myself for deciding to meet her at this critical time. I thought that it may drive me to lose my concentration during tomorrow's game.

I decided to forget it for tonight and went to bed to be ready for the game tomorrow.

Interview with an Alien

ESL Group Story Writing Class. September 12, 2010

There was broken glass all over the floor. There were feathers gently floating down from somewhere.

There was also a lot of blood and body parts all around. Special Agent Dale had no doubts. It had all started with a pillow fight. Other things he could not understand. Whose bodies were they? They were not human (phew). They looked like something he had never seen before.

I had just now reached the place. I thought it must have happened suddenly because 30 minutes ago, everything was all right. I had to meet the owner of the company that I wanted to work in.

I was very scared and didn't know why this case was here. I thought maybe whoever caused this came from a UFO or maybe they wanted to capture Earth.

My other illogical thought coming into my mind right after that was: "I've been pranked!"

By the way, that wouldn't be such a weird theory, being that I was applying for a job at Hilarious Pranks LTD: the biggest company manufacturing pranks and jokes of all kinds.

Learning in second life

I’m one of the second life residents, I have been living there since sep2009. I have a funny story about how I came to SL for first time. My story started with a phone call and an email, yes that’s the true , I’m not a native English speaker. I live in an Arab country and my first language is Arabic. I had studied English for 12 years as a separate subject in the school, and had used it for 5 years during my study in the university. I have practiced my English with people who were not native English.

In the country where I live, there are people from different non- speaking English countries , all of us try to let others understand what we want by using English language. The English we use is not like the English which is used by native English speaking people use and the accent also is different. I’m not talking about all the people in my place, but I’m talking about the people I’m dealing with. In the country where I live, native English speaking people do their best to let others understand their accents.

One day, I wanted to talk to a native English speaking man to arrange a work for my company. I Phoned his office and the secretary replied to me with such a hard English accent. In fact, I couldn’t understand 75% of her speech, she was talking very fast.

The man wasn’t in the office at the moment, So I told her about the subject and gave her my phone number to let him call after his arrival. Not long after I finished my call , the man called and talked to me slowly with understandable accent. I told him what I wanted and we agreed that he would send me an email about the subject we were talking about. When I received his email, I found out that the secretary sent him an email about my conversation with her and that she ended her email with a sentence which pushed me to look for a way to improve my English skills. Her notice about our conversation was “ His English is pretty poor.”. I was ashamed and felt very embarrassed about her notice about my English, so I decided to look for a way to improve my conversation skills. I searched in the internet about the teaching English websites. I found a lot of websites, each website had a different way of teaching English. I ran into the language-lab website. There I tested my level , then I followed the instructions to create an account to be able to study English. When I logged in, I found a weird place with nice graphics and Cartoon movies moved in front of me. At this moment, I wasn’t understand what was going on around me and where I was. I saw the name which I had chosen over the head of a character and there were many characters with names over their heads. I found out that there were many messages that were being written and there was a conversation between those names. Then I started to type and send Instant messages and I received instant messages too. I asked the people around me about the place, they told me it’s second life. “Where is language lab?” I asked. No one replied to me. I have spent the first three months hanging out to discover that new world. I also met many friendly people who taught me how to deal with the SL. During all this period of time, I was looking for English schools but I couldn’t reach to any of them.

One day, a friend asked me to go with her to a school where she wanted to take dancing classes. Maybe it was her first visit to the school , because we found out that there were no dancing classes there, but it was an English school. It was ESL-SL the English school. There I met a man , he talked to me in a very nice way . He explained how the school worked and how I could attend the classes. He gave me all the information I needed to be a student in the school. There was a problem to attend classes, the problem was that the school is not a free school and I have to pay to be able to attend the classes. I felt so sad because I couldn’t return back to attend the classes as I wished because I don’t have lindens and it is not easy for me to transfer money from real life. I received many announcements about the classes, but I couldn’t attend because of my Lindens.

One day, I received an Instant message from the school owner , he asked me if I was interested in attending the classes. I answered him “ yes, I want, But I couldn’t collect the lindens.”. Fortunately, he had the solution, he offered me to work for the school as a help team member and attend all classes for free. It was great offer for me, I started to attend the classes, I was very happy , the classes amazed me because of their way of teaching and also because of the different kind of classes. The classes dealt with all English skills Voice classes, text classes, Grammar classes, classes for beginners, classes for not beginners. Early on studying at the school I was attending most of the classes . I was spending long time in the SL travelling from class to class, I enjoyed studying the English language. Class by class and day by day I found out that my English skills were improved. I could understand more conversations and my vocabulary bank grew more and more. On top of that, I always found the native teacher who corrected my English pronunciation, corrected my English text , corrected the grammar. I was going to the school with a lot of questions and returned back with plenty of answers.

After more than a year I spent studying English in the SL, I can say that it is a wonderful mean to learn. Now, I have the self confidence which enables me to start conversation with the others without fear or shyness. When I talk to people who speak English with hard accent, I have the braveness to tell them that I can’t understand their accent without feeling of shame. I also learnt that there are slang, idioms, phrasal verbs which are very important to study to speak English natively. There is another source that helps me to improve my English, it’s the conversations I do with my native English speaking friends. Text conversation and voice chat help me to improve my skills. Thank you second life .

Not only learning English is the benefit I got from SL, but also learned a lot about others. Others means the people from different cultures. I learned how people deal in different situations, what is good to do and what is not accepted to avoid. I learned also when, how and where people celebrate . I also met friendly people who I exchange knowledge with. I tell them about my culture, my life and my traditions and they do the same with me.

In second life I usually meet people from everywhere, we talk and spend time even if we don’t have a common language. There is a wonderful mean used in second life: it is the translator which residents can wear and talk to everyone. This wonderful mean enables me to keep in touch with friends from countries far from my country. Using the translator eases the study of languages, I already started the study of Spanish language in SL and RL too.

I have a lot more to say about learning in the second life , but I have to finish now, RL is calling