It's HALLOWEEN!

Photo by Verginia Veloso

This is one of my favorite celebrations! I was very grateful because I had the chance to go to Dallas in the beggining of this month and what an incredible and nice surprise...places such as restaurants, supermarkets, the hotels, the shops in the mall, even Starbucks... almost everywhere were decorated to celebrate Halloween! The Barnes & Noble bookshop (photo on the left) was really cute! And besides that, the child section had some great bargains! Buying three books about Halloween (some of them were very cheap - about U$3.00)you could get a nice bag to go "trick or treat". I bought the books (for my nieces) and brought the bag full of chocolate and marshmallow (in the ghost shape) to my husband. He loved it! (Of course I suggested it would be a great idea if he could think about sharing all that...with me!). At Starbucks, there were some nice witch-hat-cookies which were beautiful and delicious! Some people may think it was pretty commom, but for me who isn't used to this, I thought it was very creative!

Phot by Verginia Veloso

Good coffee, delicious food and lots of great books... what else would somebody wish? OK, I guess that to be perfect it was only missing my husband keeping me company! It would be heaven to me! Although we don't really celebrate it properly here in Brazil, I do like to get together with my family and watch movies like "Practical Magic" (Da Magia à Sedução)or read books about vampires and witches or comic books like "Penadinho's Gang". Cooking is also a great activity and it really brings family together. We love to drink coffee after meals! So we decided to make a "Witches' Brooms", just to add a little charm to our coffee and I can tell you...it was really good! Not difficult to make. We use some cinnamon sticks to make the broomstick and small cookies that we pressed the dough with fork to resemble bristles of broom. We put the two parts together with hot melted chocolate. As soon as the chocolate gets cooled and firm, we had nice "brooms" to stir our coffee.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

ARLEQUIM - o servidor de dois patrões

Que grata surpresa, em plena noite de terça-feira, ter a chance de assistir a um verdadeiro espetáculo! E o melhor de tudo, um espetáculo teatral divertido, muito bem trabalhado, dinâmico e absolutamente envolvente. Mas venhamos e convenhamos, qualquer um que já tenha assistido as peças teatrais apresentadas anteriormente pelo grupo de teatro do Colégio Eduardo Gomes, já sabia que no mínimo seria presenteado com essa belíssima Commedia dell'Arte. Como descrito na sinopse do texto - a peça retrata a confusão gerada por um criado (Arlequim) que, para viver e comer melhor, trabalha ao mesmo tempo para dois patrões (Beatriz e Florindo), que estão hospedados no hotel do Sr. Briguella, sem que um saiba do outro.

Entre trocar as cartas (além de abrí-las e depois tentar fechá-las com miolo de pão), misturar os pertences do baú, entregar o dinheiro do dote para o patrão errado, se apaixonar pela Esmeraldina (uma fofa!!!) e interferir no noivado da Clarisse com o Silvio, a personagem Arlequim virou a cidade de cabeça para baixo! Coitado do seu Pantaleão, que já nem sabia mais com quem a filha Clarisse deveria se casar. Claro que de acordo com o Doutor Lombardi, deveria ser com o filho dele! O importante é que no fim os apaixonados ficaram juntos, os idosos continuaram amigos, a platéia aplaudiu de pé e a história ainda continua...

...continua a ser escrita com próximo trabalho!

Parabéns a todos e em especial para Verônica Menezes, a mestra que permite que tais sonhos se realizem! Sorte nossa!

Teacher's Day

Today we are celebrating the Teacher's Day! Although being a teacher is a very known profession, "teaching" is a kind of activity that is done by everybody! Parents teach their children, friends teach and are taught by other friends, elderly people teach the young ones and vice-versa. Learning is a process that is absolutely connected to life itself.
Isn't interesting that some people actually do that for living? It's a great privilege to be able to exchange knowledge with the students and learn a lot from them. I do think that it's one of the most important teacher's features - be aware that we, as a teacher, know a lot but not all - and there will always have "room" for learning more and more. Being a teacher is a process that will not be totally completed because we've been learning, researching, studying...and we will always keep doing that for the sake of our students! That's what make a great teacher - being humble and patient! Pacience is required because the harvest of the fruits of this hard "teaching" work will only be seen years and years later...
For all my friends that work at school with me - HAPPY TEACHER'S DAY!

"If you think in terms of a year - plant a seed;
If in terms of ten years - plant a tree;
If in terms of 100 years - teach the people!" - Confucius

Teacher Wagner and Snoopy - our best wishes!

Today is a very nice day! Besides celebrating teacher Wagner birthday we also celebrate the 'Peanuts'60th Anniversary! What a great day! Can you belive that...Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip “Peanuts” and its cast of characters including Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy turn 60 today? And they keep on captivating our hearts and minds as they did since their first strip, on Oct. 2, 1950.“Peanuts” has appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers in 72 countries and 21 language(according to The Associated Press). Although we can have one character which is our favorite, there is no doubt that people all around the world just love this group of friends and its lovely Beagle! There are 17,897 original “Peanuts” comic strips. Schulz (Peanuts author) announced his retirement on Jan. 3, 2000. He died on Feb. 12, 2000, one day before his last original strip appeared in Sunday newspapers. But what has Wagner to do with it? NO...he is not turning 60 today (not yet!) - but I can clear see a great affinity between them - both enjoy their job and I don't know if it will be doing exactly what he is doing today, but I can picture Wagner the same way as Schulz...working and involved with Education untill his retirement (which could be just at the end of his days). May God bless you with a healthy, long and wealthy life! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!