VALIDATION

Through this great short film, which has been played in 34 film festivals worldwide and has won 17 awards, we celebrate Peace Day. Sometimes we think of peace as something that doesn't depend on us direclty... but everyday we have lots of opportunities to make people around us feel happy...let's change rude nicknames and fights into compliments and hugs!!

If you want to see the subtitled version click here:

Validation- Spanish subtitles

HAVING A GREAT SNOW DAY!

The cuddly 275-pound panda woke up at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, Saturday morning to find his enclosure full of snow — and couldn’t be happier about it.

Cameras at the zoo caught 18-year-old Tian Tian rolling in the fresh powder and making snow angels, turning him into the biggest celebrity to emerge from winter storm Jonas thus far.

DO YOU FEEL LIKE HAVING A SNOW DAY? I RELY ON YOU!!

MODAL VERBS

GERUNDS AND INFINITIVES

Learning how to use gerunds and infinitives is one of the most challenging aspects of the English language. Do you want to revise them a little bit? Click on the following link and have a look!

gerunds and infinitives

DESCRIBING PLACES

Let's review the vocabulary we use when we want to describe a place! Click on this link and have a look!

describing places

RIP

David Bowie, the iconic rock star whose career spanned more than half a century and whose influence transcended music, fashion and sexuality, has died aged 69.

The singer’s death was confirmed in a Facebook post on his official page: “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief.”

Writing on Twitter, Bowie’s son, the film director Duncan Jones, 44, said: “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true.” The news came as a shock to some, who were initially sceptical, but Bowie’s publicist, Steve Martin, told the Reuters news agency: “It’s not a hoax.”

• 
  

GOLD BULLION VAULT

After watching the video please answer the following questions:

1.  Where's the Bullion Vault?
2.  What type of element is gold?
3.  How does the presenter feel while in the vault?
4.  Does gold smell? Why?
5.  How long has the oldest bar of gold been there? 
6.  Where were the bars of gold the presenter shows made?
7.  Which one is heavier?
8.  What can you buy with a bar of gold?
9.  Where could all the gold that has ever been mined fit?
10. What is his weight in bars of gold?

Transcript:

In some ways seeing these bars is disappointing. It's sitting there doing nothing. But the gold is an exciting element with an interesting chemistry.The Bullion Vault is at the Bank of England and each of its shelves contains a ton of gold. The gold is very secure there because you have to be through a whole series of security checks and no money is allowed there. It's exciting to be there. It's like being surrounded by chocolates aim a Duty Free at the airport!
They are solid gold bars and it's quite extraordinary . It doesn't smell at all because metals don't smell. It's very quiet because of the thick walls to keep it secure. In spite of being cold outside, it's quite warm in the vault. Gold colour gives you the feeling of warmth. It's probably psychological.
The reason why the bank has got this storehouse  is because not only the Bank of England and other central banks like to keep some of their money reserves in gold because the price of gold is very stable. the value of gold compared to the value of currencies, which can go up and down. So every country has a certain proportion of its reserves in gold. And if you look at the statistics, the UK at the moment has got 310 tons of gold in its reserves. But there's much more gold here than that because it also belongs to people not just the Bank of England.
This vault is part of the complex of different rooms. I haven't seen the other rooms but all together if you look at the bank annual report is worth 197 billion pounds.and that's quite a serious sum of money.
People buy and sell gold and each block of gold has its own number like your car has a registration number and when people buy and trade the gold , they don't actually take the bar home but just the number is transferred from the seller's account to the buyer's account and the gold just sits here quietly.
Apparently, the oldest bar of gold here has been since 1916: that's the World War I, nearly a 100 years ago. But the beauty of gold as a chemical element is that is very unreactive, so it looks just the same now as it did in 1916: it hasn't tarnished, it hasn't got any oxide layers on the surface, it hasn't started creeping changing in shape and so on. so we can be here because the gave me two bars, we can look at: so we've got two different bars of gold which are both the so called London Good Delivery bars, which means their weight is in a certain limit range and , in fact, each of them has its precise weight put on them in a rather strange unit called a Troy Ounce.
This one is 399,100. This one was made in Australia.And this one has apparently come from Switzerland and it's slightly heavier : 400,075.
I must say this one looks much nicer: it's polished more. this one looks a bit like a loaf of bread but it's rather a miserable loaf of bread but a pretty lump of gold.
Now one of the things you know about gold is that it is really heavy. so I'm going to see whether I can lift this with one hand. and I can sort of actually lift it but not easily. Two hands is quite easy! So this way, each of these, in  more under stable units, weighs 12,4 kilos or 28 pounds or for those of you who use imperial units , that's 2 stone. Each of these is worth 435,000 pounds: You could buy two fine nice houses with a block like this or with a whole shelf of these which contains a ton, you could buy 137 of the upmarket Rolls Royce cars. So take your choice!
It's a bit like bricks and if you took all the gold that has ever been mined and put it together like a construction kit to make a big block, you would end that the block was 20 metres cubed: that's 60 feet on each side which will easily fit, for example, under the legs of the Eiffel Tower! It wouldn't look all that big just because the building is on the street. That's all the gold that ever has been.
I did a little calculation on the way: here, that I weigh about the same as six of these bars of gold, which means if I were to weigh my weight in gold, I'd be worth a bit over 2,5 million pounds. That's a bit disappointing! I thought I might have worth more..but still...

Questions:

1.  Why is disappointing seeing the gold bars at the gold Bullion Vault?
2.  How much gold does each shelf contain?
3.  Why is the vault very secure?
4.  What do the gold bars look like?
5.  According to the presenter, what has the weather been like in London recently?
6.  What type of feeling does the colour of gold give you?
7.  Why other do other banks keep gold there?
8.  What happens to the value of gold in comparison to other currencies?
9.  How much gold does the U.K. have in its reserves at the moment?
10.  Does all the gold in the vault belong to the Bank of England? Why?
11.  What is the worth of the gold in the vault?
12.  How is each bar of gold identified?
13.  When you buy a bar of gold do you take it home? Why?
14.  Has the oldest bar of gold changed? 
15.  How are the two bars of gold called? Why?
16.  What unit of weight is used for gold? 
17.  What does the first bar of gold look like? 
18.  Which one looks nicer? Why?