The Pad is finally here
The first few hundred copies neatly packed in brown paper. When we unwraped the first pack, it came as a shock to see a real whopper. No one ever expected it to be that big – a fat, A4 size volume of paper magic! Sizeable yet suprisingly light, humble and unique at the same time, practical yet irrationaly beautiful. It’s a sensuous feat – the stark colours on the cover against the subdued shades of white and grey inside, the velvety paper which smells of nature and hard labour, and the crackle it gives when you bend it. Students just love it.
You don’t have to bring it to your class. – we say.
We want to show it off. – they answer.
If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
You simply have to own two pads, one to use, the other to keep and look at.
Back to basics on paper
IELTS
IELTS page updated.
GV playlist
A collectively compiled GV playlist for late September:
- Tony Gatlif, Arrinconamela
- Gorillaz, Slow Country
- Lao Che, Powstanie Warszawskie
- Nigel Kennedy & The Kroke Band, East Meets East
- Matisyahu, Live at Stubb’s
- Ennio Morricone, Il était une fois dans l’Ouest
- The Orb, Orbus Terarrum
- PowerShovelAudio, Sample CD
- Thievory Corporation, Revolution Solution
Music
For rather obvious reasons English teachers don’t get out much – they work anti-social hours and they work quite a lot. So how do they fulfil their need to be out with people? Well, some just go on pretending there’s no such thing as a life outside classroom, some treat their classes as social events, some extend lessons into improvised get-togethers in bars around town. (We’ve long abandoned this habit.) Others plunge into solitary activities – they surf the web, watch videos, read glossies, listen to whatever. (Doesn’t it sound a bit like teaching and learning?)
Listening can really be a serious and inspiring pleasure and as such has always been an important part of Global Village. In spring 2001 we managed to draw in quite a crowd to an all-night music event called ‘Zgrzyty i trzaski globalnej wioski’. In four of our rooms we continuously played back long pieces of contemporary music from the avant-garde to improvised music to electronica. The listeners sat or sprawled on the floor, in almost complete dark, and soaked up otherworldly sounds for hours.
At the other end of musical spectrum there is always plenty of pop around the place. Someone might be humming and whining, trying to impersonate Barbra Streisand or George Michael. Someone might be downloading hip-hop mp3s for later onslaught on their ears.
But nobody can beat Rogal, a teacher at GV until 2004, a true fan of real music. Always with a bunch of CDs in his bag to share, always ready to risk a sleepless night after an escapade to a one-off concert 400 kilometres away. Hey, Rogal, how about another Invisible Jukebox session one day?
Rogal – a fan of many things
Global Village publication
See a forthcoming Global Village publication.
Language schools
The new enrolment is gradually getting into full swing. Ever growing number of language schools in this relatively small city probably reaches dozens now. It’s amazing to watch what they are doing to attract potential clients. This season’s inventory covers an impressive array of images and tricks they’ve resorted to. Here are just a few:
- Flags. Flags everywhere. The more, the better. One may think a United Nations summit is being held in town.
- Smiling children at the blackboard – kids love English. A kind of Michael Jackson-style happy English class.
- Cars to win. A smart for Lolita.
- Clean, grinning teenagers. Straight from a Bravo Girl cover.
- Scruffy teens in sneakers. One levitating above the ground in a pose of a crawling tot against the background of a… tulip.
- Endangered species. Namely frogs, multiplied in a neat group. Aha, this one is clever!
- Human tongues of various length and shape. Twisted, sticking, or lolling, bare or painted Union Jack, in a post-punk fashion. Outrage!
- Images of public transport. Specifically red buses, and other late 60s British memorabilia. Somewhat tainted recently by last year’s blast in Tavistock Square and the hysteria that followed.
- No images at all. Just plain text, embellished with abbreviated titles in front of names: dyr, dr, mgr. Are Fr and Rev still to come?
Modesty tells us not to self-refer.
WTC
Minoru Yamasaki, architect
World Trade Center
New York, USA, 1972-2001
Briefly the world’s tallest skyscrapers, the twin towers of the World Trade Center had a remarkable visual presence that came in large part not from their great size, but from the tension between them.
The structural system on which they were based used the stiffness of the outer wall as a principal element in the design, a fact which was reflected in the densely spaced mullions on the facade. They gave the towers a massive dignified quality rare in high-rises that customarily have only the flimsiest of glass or stone skins.
(John Pawson, Minimum)
a different view
Read
New page on reading outside classroom added.
Plum cake
Atumn in Podlasie. It’s hard to resist stopping at fruit and vegetable markets these days, at the peak of harvest time. We keep indulging in good food and sharing it with others. Try this at the weekend.
Global Village plum cake
- butter — 150g
- unrefined golden caster sugar — 150g (if not available, use regular caster sugar)
- plums — 16 large
- eggs — 3 large
- plain flour — 75g
- baking powder — 1 1/2 teaspoons
- ground almonds — 100g (get a 200g bag at Auchan’s fruit hall)
- shelled walnuts — 50g
Set the oven at 180°C. Line the base of a square 20cm cake tin, about 6cm deep, with a piece of baking parchment.
Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. A food mixer will do this far more efficiently than you ever could by hand. Stop only when the mixture is light, soft and the colour of vanilla ice-cream. While this is happening, halve the plums, remove the stones and cut each half in two.
Break the eggs, beat them lightly with a fork, then add them bit by bit to the butter and sugar. Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold them gently into the mixture. Fold in the ground almonds. Chop the walnuts so they are the size of small gravel and fold them in too.
Scrape the mixture into the lined cake tin. Place the quartered plums on the cake mixture. There is no point in doing this with any real precision as they will sink into the cake as they cook. Bake for forty to forty-five minutes, then test for doneness with a skewer. If it comes out clean, without any wet cake mixture sticking to it, then the cake is ready. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for fifteen minutes before turning out. Enough for 12.
ads for language
(on close studying of the first instalment of ads for language schools in yesterday’s Wyborcza)
It’s perfectly understandable why helter-skelter English courses are still in demand here in Podlasie, this easternmost flank of EU. Just ask a bunch of local university graduates what they are hoping to do in Britain or Ireland these days. Some are already driving red buses.
It’s equally logical to join a Spanish course after you’ve basked in the Mediterranean sun for a week and vowed to return.
But here is a real puzzle – one of the school offers a course in Japanese! Or a foolproof recipe for getting into Bushe’s terrorist register – they run Arabic courses.
