My name is Domenec Mendez, this is my legal name on my ID and passport, but I prefer being called Mingo.
Some students had difficulties answering the questions of the Oral Presentation Guide for this assignment and asked me for an example, or template to follow ...
and I thought it could be a good idea; this way, we can also introduce different prepositions and connectors, all verbal forms, conditional sentences, mixed conditionals, inversions, etc... and you guys can select those phrases (that) you need, change it, adapt it and discard the rest.
So let's start:
This is one of my oldest family pictures, it was taken around 1939 right after the end of our Civil War. It shows my grand parents and their four kids, three guys and one girl. My father is the youngest, at the time, he had broken his arm while playing around.
My whole family comes from Adamuz, a sierra village in Cordova, in the South of Spain. If you are familiar with this infamous picture taken by Robert Capra:
it was taken in the same sierra, Sierra de los Pedroches.
So my family hails from Cordova,
I also have a great grandfather from Seville,
however, according to the genealogy of my last name, Mendez, it originated in Galicia.
Many of my relatives emigrated during the fifties and sixties, and we now have family in Valencia,
San Sebastian,
Ciudad Real,
Madrid,
France,
Switzerland,
and Florida, USA
my parents moved to Terrassa in the sixties and I was born in 1962 in Ca N'anglada neighbourhood.
When I was two weeks old, the infamous floods of Terrassa took place and killed more than a thousand people, in the early morning of September 25, about 250 liters of pouring rain per square meter fell on the city, flooding the dried river and the surroundings, one of my uncles lost their house and almost their lives, my father volunteered to recover corpses from the mud.
When my parents got married, moved to Terrassa and I was born, they didn't have money to pay for their own apartment or home so we lived with my uncles in one bedroom for a few years. My uncle and aunt had two daughters and one son, they were all older than me and we lived together for some time.
My father was an electrician, as well as my two uncles, and some of my cousins as well.
I have two brothers, they are younger than me so I'm the oldest one.
My parents moved to Sant Pere neighbourhood in Terrassa when I was 5 or so. There, I went to a school called Loyola, then Llaudó,
we still keep in touch with each other,
and Karmel, we also keep in touch with each other from time to time:
Friends are great. You realize when you come back from a long journey, or get divorced, or lose your job, or grow old and your kids go away. In moments like these they are more important than you would think. I believe we should nourish our friendships more than we usually do.
When I was 17, I spent one month in Cambridge UK, learning English.
When I was 19, I took part in an international program by which I compromised to work as a camp counselor for the three months of Summer in exchange of the return flight ticket and some pocket money. It was a wonderful experience, I worked in a Summer camp in New Jersey and then, in a Jewish Summer camp in Connecticut also in New England.
Then I finished my grade and started working as a teacher until 1987, at that time, with more than two years of teaching experience, I decided to go back to the USA and try my luck for a while.
So off I went, landed in San Francisco without knowing any body, just me and my huge backpack.
After spending some months in San Francisco downtown without success, I moved to Los Angeles where I got a job as a Spanish teacher in Berlitz Language School in Torrance -California.
After a year or so, I moved to the East Coast, I spent some days in the Youth Hostle of International House, next to Columbia University,
and after that, I rented a room in the apartment of a lady from Santo Domingo, in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
From that bedroom, I sent resumes to all language schools in the Three State Area including one very exclusive language school in the World Trade Center. Finally, I got a call from the New School for Social Research, a college from New York University. I passed the job interview and started working as a Spanish teacher for intermediate courses. Then I moved to my own apartment in Queens,
I recall that I could see the World Trade Center through the window of my classroom,
By the end of 1991 I came back to Barcelona, Spain, after almost 4 years of being abroad. It was a bit shocking but, anyway, soon after I started working as a foreign language teacher until the beginning of 1993 when an American company, IBM, offered me a three-year contract in their Translation Center, located first in Via Augusta, Barcelona, and then in L'Illa. I accepted.
It was a very exciting job, we already had resources that average people did not know about it, like internal messenger service -or whatsApp- email service and Internet, I also learnt digital tools like Book Manager and Translation Manager, and had assignments in Stutgart, Stockholm and North Carolina.
When I finished my contract with IBM, I had a short one-month assigment in USA working for CENTRISA another Information and Technology company. Afterwards, I was offered a job as a translator but preferred the working conditions of a teaching position.
and I've been working as a teacher ever since.
When I was younger, I liked hanging out with friends, playing billiards, pinball machines, futbolin or video games like Space Invaders, I'm sure your parents had the same entertainment back then.
I also liked playing fronton, hiking and sailing.
After I got married, and with two kids, in our free time we liked watching TV, the Simpsons, Two men and a half...
We enjoy hiking, travelling and camping, we have visited Andalucia many times, Granada, Malaga, Cadiz, Seville... and the Basc Country, Asturias, Castille and Galicia, Portugal, Andorra and France.
we have gone on a Cruise across the Mediterranean Sea visiting Italy, Tunicia and Malta, and another Cruise across the Baltic Sea visiting Stockholm, Helsinki, Saint Petesburg and Tallin.
A few years ago, I went parachuting with my daughter,
and last year, my son and I went down the canyon of Sierra Guara in Lleida.
Right now, I go cycling from time to time, my favourite ride is starting off at Bosc de Can Deu in the North side of Sabadell, and pedalling all the way down the Ripoll river to Badalona and Catalunya Square in Barcelona, where I catch the train back to Terrassa. It takes about three hours but it is so liberating!
I also play squash a couple of times a week.
My favourite national songwriters and singers are from the seventies and eighties, as you can imagine, Mecano, La Guardia, Duncan Dhu, Joan Manuel Serrat, AnaBelen, etc... my favorite international singers besides the classic Beatles, Guns and Roses, the Cure, etc... would be Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, JuanLuis Guerra...
More modern artists would include Catherine Jenkins, Dana Winner, Heiley Westenra, Coldplay, Walkoff the Earth, Freehome, the Piano guys, and youtubers like Anne Reburn,
I don't hate any music, I would simply listen to some music less often, or just for a short while. In fact, I enjoy some operas like Verdi's la Traviata and Aida or Beethoven's Joy Hymn, or Carmina Burana, or some Gregorian music, or flamenco by Chambao,
I'm also fond of soundtracks from movies, Blade Runner's Love Theme and Blade Runner's Rachel's Song, Once upon a time in America, Grease, Moulin Rouge, Chicago, Paint your Wagon, les Misserables, etc...
My favourite movies are the kind of science fiction like Mattrix, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, On the Edge of Tomorrow, but I also enjoy more realistic thrillers like The Devil's Own, Babel, Quien a hierro mata, now playing on theatres, and comedies like The Big Leboski, Dumb and Dumber, The Men who stared at goats...
Right now, when I want to relax I often watch some documentaries on Youtube, I like topics like history and the secret government programs in World War two, like Project Manhattan to develop the first atomic bomb in our history, or Project Paperclip to recruit all German scientists and work in the USA space program, or Operation Highjump, etc... other topics I am keen on are science and technology, climate change, archeology, etc...
I like reading, I've read all works by Dan Brown except the last one: Origin, but I read The DaVinci Code, The Lost Symbol, Inferno, etc...
I also like writing, I have published several articles, this short one
I love researching and looking into topics to find out how incredible everything is. In approximately, 2004, I took some courses on enterpreneurship in CECOT -Terrassa- and Barcelona Activa. As a consequence, in March of 2008, we set up our own non-profit organization called LiveScripts-Guions de Pel.lícula, based on the pedagogical use of movie transcripts.
And in the Summer of 2012, the Education Department of Generalitat de Catalunya gave me a grant to study Multiple Intelligences in Kent, United Kingdom, a wonderful experience!
Another experience I treasure as very dear to me, was when I had my house main structure built for me, and then I spent a couple of years finishing off the interior, I personally made the concrete to glue the floor and wall tiles of all rooms, kitchen and bathrooms, I ordered all kitchen furniture from IKEA and installed everyone of them, including the owen and stoves, all except the marble countertop. I also fixed up with some help the toilet and shower and sink.
This has been my last addition this past summer:
a sliding alumminium door connecting the garage and the terrasse.
I collect posters and signs hanging on the street walls, I first make sure the date is overdue, and then, it takes me a little while to take off the sticking tape, fold them and keep them. I recycle them and put them in my book bindings. I'd like to collect minerals, I used to collect minerals as a kid, I would also like to collect seeds of different plants.
About fears, we were in the classroom last week, working on the oral presentation, and one of the students confessed he was most scared of... God, and I thought it was a very intelligent answer, that is, there are so many things that can happen unexpectedly any time without warning and we do not have absolutely any control over them. Take for example, Uganda, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, Croatia, Serbia and more recently Venezuela.
These were peaceful countries where there was a middle class like in any other country. Suddenly war broke off and their inhabitants had to face a deadly conflict or fleeting as refugees, millions of citizens lost everytthing they had in the blink of an eye!
It has happened before and it could happen again! everywhere.
Or what to say of the numerous climate and environmental disasters like earthquakes, huracanes, flooding, mud slides, tzunamis, volcanoes' eruptions, the Ring of Fire, the melting of the poles and raising sea levels that could affect us all, anytime, anywhere.
So I guess I am most afraid of accidents, disease, discapacity, lost of my senses, lost of family members, of friends, loneliness.
I don't think I fear death itself, although you never know until the very moment of truth, but struggling through life can be a living hell!
However, I am optimistic, I want to believe, I choose to believe everything will work out for the best.
How do I see myself in a few years time? I really hope I can retire by then, I hope I'll be healthy enough to enjoy a few more years doing the things I like in the company of my family and friends like cooking, chatting, watching movies, listening to music, reading and writing, painting or doing arts-and-crafts, travelling around, hiking, swimming and perhaps even gliding!
So this is my presentation, now I would like to share a game with you, it is called the Lier and it is played like this:
We will play in pairs and I'll give each couple one a dice beaker and five poker dices,
As you can see, a dice has six faces, from higher value to lower value the faces are called:
An Ace,
the King
the Queen
the Jack
red dots,
black dots,
The objective of the game is to obtain a higher hand or more point than your oponent according to this poker dice hand ranking:
You start by deciding who is first in trowing the dices,
for example, both of you grab one dice each and throw it on the table, the one with the highest ranking will start the first hand or game.
FIST STEP
the player starting the game will insert two dices inside the beaker --or leather glass-, will shake it up and will throw the dices on the table so his/her opponent can also see it,
SECOND STEP
then he/she will grab the other three dices and will introduce them inside the beaker, the player will once more shake up the beaker and will toss the dices on the table with the beaker on top, without letting the opponent player see his/her final ranking, only the player throwing the dices will know the true score.
At this point, he has to tell either the right score to his/her opponent or invent a higher score. His/her opponent then has two options:
FIRST OPTION
if the opponent doesn't believe the player's score, he/she simply says, "I don't believe you!" and the first player will have to raise the beaker -the leather glass. if the first player said the truth he wins, if he lied he loses the hand.
SECOND OPTION
if the opponent does believe the score, he has to throw the dices himself or herself and get a higher score than his/her mate. Just like in step one and two.
The player winning five rounds wins the game set.
Objectives:
Practicing oral skills as well as reading and listening.
Connecting emotions to verbal communication in foreign language,
having fun and class cohesion
EXPRESSIONS AND VOCABULARY TO PRACTICE:
Who's first? I am first,
Who goes first? I go first,
what do you have? I have two pairs/three of a kind/etc..
do you believe me? Yes, I do, - No, I don't
if you believe me, you have to throw the dices and do a better ranking than me or improve my score,
if you don't believe me, I'll show you my game,
let us see if I said the truth and I win or lied and then you win and I lose,
Ok
Now it's my turn, give me the beaker and dices!
here you are,
you should introduce two dices first, and toss them,
then the rest, and throw them without lifting up the beaker,
Ok,
os what do you have? you said you had two pairs, I got three of a kind, do you believe me?
How many rounds did we play? the score is 4 for me 4 for you, the next one is the last one! Exactly.
Evaluation:
did you practice oral, reading and listening skills? was it fun?
