Christmas

It's Christmas time! Do you know that in Switzerland it is a custom to bake cookies before Christmas? In almost every family the chlids, mothers and fathers bake some cookies to eat during Christmas time. I have here a recipe from the "Mailänderlis". ("Mailänderli" means "Milano cookies"). Everybody likes them and they're very easy to prepare. And you can chose the form of the cookies. And of corse you can decorate them just like you want.

Ingredients for approximately 80 cookies (depending on the size of a single cookie):
250 g (9 ounces) butter or margarine
225 g (8 ounces) sugar
1 pinch of salt
3 eggs
1 lemon
500 g (18 ounces) flour
1 yellow of an egg

Preparation:
Stir butter in a bowl until it is smooth.
Add sugar, salt and 3 eggs, stir until ingredients are evenly distributed.
Grind the skin of the lemon and add to the mixture of the previous step.
Add flour, knead to a soft dough.
Cover the dough and let rest for about 2 hours in a cool place.
Cut dough in parts and roll out on a flat, with flour covered surface, approximately 5 mm (0.2 inches) thick. Put out different shapes and put them on a baking sheet covered with baking paper.
Let cool for about 15 minutes.
Before baking, sweep with the yellow of an egg.
Bake for about 10 minutes in the center of the pre-heated oven at 200 °C (400 °F).
Let cool completely before serving.

Hope yo enjoy it!

If you want to know more about the customs for Christmas in Switzerland go to the webpage http://navidad.juniorwebaward.ch/home

Party time for Sant Narcís

Read the newspaper article. What is it about?

The article talks about the annual festival Sant Narcís. Sant Narcís saved Girona from the French troops and that's the reason why every year Girona is celebrating a very big festival.
There are over 300 activities, for example correfocs, a procession of gegants and of course the fira with a lot of attractions.

Which events/activities did you take part in? (October 2008)

I went with friends to the fira. We went to the attractions which were very funny. To eat something we went to the barraques.

Catalonia's version of Robin Hood

Who was Serrallonga?

Joan Sala i Ferrer known as Serrallonga was a catalan robber in the 17th century. He robbed with his gang from the rich people to share the booty with the poor people.
He was executed in the year 1634 in Barcelona.



Who was Robin Hood?

Robin Hood (about 15th, 16th century) was a man from the english aristocracy who lived a double life. He was an earl but on the other hand he lived undercover with his band in the Sherwood forest nearly from Notthingham and robbed from the rich people to gave to the poor ones.
Finally he was shoot by an arrow.

What did the have in common?

Both robbed from the rich people to share it with the poor ones.

Description of a person

Hello everybody!

I'd like to describe my brother Matthias, he's 15 years old.
He's got short brown hair and a slender face. His eyes are blue and half-moon shaped. His nose and lips are quite slender, too.
Matthias is the tallest one in our family. (About 1.80m, 25cm more than I am amd I am two and a half years elder.) He enjoys it to stand at my side, look down on me and joking about my shortness.
How is my brother? First of all, he's a very funny person. For all opportunities and situations he knows a suitable joke. That's one of his talents: He can joke about almost everything.
Another talent is his great memory. He remembers most birthdates, including the year of birth, from our relatives and friends.
And he knows almost complete shows of Swiss comedians by heart and is able to imitate them very good.
Without an doubt, my brother an I have a lot of fun together.
Matthias likes to do experiments an sometimes this can be a little dangerous.
And if he and the boys in the neighbourhood made any idiocy, you always know who had the stupid ideas.
He likes it too, playing soccer. He isn't in a club, but with the boys in the neighbourhood (and with our nine-year-old sister) he plays almost every day.
He gets along very well with children. One afternoon in the week, he's the baby-sitter of a three-year-old boy.
One of his hobbies is swimming. He's in a club for two years and I think he likes it very much.
Another of his hobbies is that he's in the organisation called "Jungwacht". That's an organisation just like the scouts. They meet every second Saturday an do a lot of things together. And in the summer holidays the organise a camp.
What he doesn's like is to work for school. In that case he's very lazy, altough he gets good marks.
Of course I have a lot of arguments with him. However I like it very much to spend time with him, because we can talk about almost everything and we share the same interests.

Informal letter

Dear Romy,

Thank you very much for your last e-mail. I was very surprised to hear from you. I’m fine, thanks. And you? How are you?

Now, I'm here in Spain for 5 weeks and I’m enjoying it very much.
I live in Banyoles in the north-east of Spain. Banyoles is part of Catalonia and the people here don’t speak Spanish. They speak Catalan. First it was very difficult to understand something. But Catalan is very similar to Spanish and French and now, after a few weeks, I understand it better. And if I don’t understand something people are very helpful and explain it to me in Spanish.
I’m living in a big family with 5 children. They are very nice. My brothers and sisters here in Spain are between 3 and 15 years old. I'm not bored in no case.
Of course I also have to go to school. Every day, from 8 am to 2 pm, I'm going to a Spanish secondary school. It is quite exhausting, because I have to concentrate a lot to understand and for the homework I need a lot of time, because I have to translate a lot. But I like to learn a new language and I think in a few weeks it would be easier.

Life in Spain is very different from the life in Switzerland, particularly with regard to mealtimes. Lunch in Switzerland is at 12 o’clock. Here in Spain about 3 pm. And dinner in Switzerland is at about 6 or 7 pm. On the other hand, here in Spain, is about 10 pm. First it was a little bit difficult to habituate to the new rhythm, but now it’s very normal for me.

Hope you enjoyed your autumn holidays! Wish you were here to enjoy this great weather in Spain!
Write soon! What’s new?

Love,
Lea

PS: What was your topic in the project week at school? Did you like it?