Shamrock Festival

It looks like everybody`s very into Ireland lately, and not only because many of the people I know moved to the green island. In fact now it`s time to celebrate St Patrick`s Day. In spite of not being Irish, and not even Catholic really, I still did my part to celebrate this important Irish holiday.



Yesterday I went to an event at the RFK stadium (the same of my first baseball game) in DC: the Shamrock Festival. For the Brazilians, I would say it`s a sort of Pop Rock. For the Italians, I would compare it to Festivalbar (but bigger).



In general, I had a lot of fun. I got to listen to "Irish rock", which, I found out, I like very much :) Only, I was a little bit too tired. In fact, my day started early on Saturday as I had to wake up at 6:15 am to go to my TOEFL class. As soon as the class ended, I took the metro and went to the festival with my friend from Indonesia, Isia. In the metro, we already started feeling a little misplaced: everybody was wearing green t-shirts, green sweaters, green make-up, green head-bands, antennae, shamrock sunglasses, etc. My friend and I were dressed in regular clothes, instead. When we got to the festival, we bought a green St Patrick`s necklace, so that we wouldn`t feel so misplaced any more. We also hung around a little bit, met some friends, listened to some music. When Ania and Adam came, we also got some beer (just budweiser...no Guinness, sigh :( ) and we took a whole lot of pictures together. After a while, Isia left and we hung around for a little bit more. We listened to some more rock groups, and finally we left.



The way back in the metro was also exciting: green people filled in the wagons of every train, and populated every metro station. By the time I got off the metro, though, I couldn`t see any more green people and the last part of the trip was a little lonely. To cheer me up I bought a Mc Donald`s apple pie :)



Back to St Patrick`s Day, there are a few things I think are interesting:

• "Shamrock" is an English word, true, but it comes from the Irish and it means "clover"
• St. Patrick`s Day is actually on March 17th (although people seem to celebrate it only during the weekend)
• Irish rock is also known as Celtic rock (correct me if I`m wrong). Researching on the internet I found a quite famous band and I loved listening to it. The name of the band is "Wolfstone" and some of their vieos are availale on youtube or on their official website. I wonder whether the Italian rock band "Modena City Ramblers" could also fit in the Celtic Rock category; listen to this
  

My TOEFL classes

And here I am, still in the United States but once again behind a desk, in front of a blackboard...yeah, you got it!! I started studying again (thank God!). Today I had my first class, with new classmates who are completely different from my previous ones.

But wait, let`s start from the beginning! It`s been ages that I haven`t written one single word about my life here and this post has started at the very least without any context (oh, my gosh!! what did I do with my 5-year linguistics classes?). Let`s start again: I am taking TOEFL classes at LADO for the second time. From October to December 2007 I took classes in this same school, but in the Silver Spring building. Since they seem never to have TOEFL classes at Silver Spring, I decided to come to Washington DC LADO and take my next level here. So far, it seems it`s been a good choice. The class is much bigger (12 students, I think). Most of them are au pairs like me, and they come from all over the world: Russia, Poland, Germany (of course!), France, Peru, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia. For a change, I`m the only representative for Brazil (and Italy, only nobody know it yet). Also, the atmosphere in DC is nicer...I`m really excited!

In this first class, beside meeting the classmates, I met my teacher, Mark Stoneman, who seems very nice. He started the class with a nice talk about the course and our needs, but he grabbed the chance to give us a lot of homework (read this, read the news every day, read that, write a journal, write every day, listen to npr, watch pbs, etc.). This is why I decided to come back to my blog: see if I can leave short posts every day, so that I can get what Mark called "fluency in writing". It shouldn`t be hard since I really enjoy writing, specially in English. Besides, my post will be back to its first and main objective: making me improve my English writing skills.

Of course, not everything is nice about my classes in DC. The main prolem is time: I will have to wake up really really early to get there on time. I hope it`ll work...but this is one of the reasons why i`m so tired i can`t wait to lie down and fall fast asleep. I have pleny of other things to write about, but I think it is enough for today.

C ya tomorrow :)