Happy Andalusia Day!

Andalusia Day (‘Día de Andalucía‘ in Spanish) commemorates the referendum for Andalucia to become an autonomous community within Spain, which was held on February 28, 1980. So this year the 33th anniversary of their Statute of Autonomy is honoured.

Andalusia is internationally renowned for its impressive natural beauty, but also for the warm and hospitable character of local people. This is why everyone is more than welcome to come in and join the festivities. The question is: how do they celebrate Andalusia Day?

 

And the Oscar goes to…

We’ve been counting down the hours till the celebrities hit the red carpet, and we finally have the list of the lucky winners. The Oscars ceremony is over, and this marks the ending of the film award season. Oscars fans will have to wait a whole year for the celebration to come again, but in the meanwhile, and to make the waiting experience a bit less distressing, we can delight ourselves with the best acceptance speeches and quotes from the red carpet and backstage.

For a start, let’s have a look at Ben Affleck words.

In his guise as producer, Affleck accepted the best picture awards for Argo. He used the speech to look back to 1998, when he and Matt Damon won the best screenplay award for Good Will Hunting, and to his rocky Hollywood career in the intervening years.

“I was here 15 years ago and I had no idea what I was doing, stood out here in front of you all, I was just a kid. I never thought I’d be back.”

“So many people extended themselves to me and I want to thank them. You can’t hold grudges, it’s hard, but you can’t hold grudges.”

“It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life. All that matters is that you get up,” he said, choking back tears.

Welcome to the English Cam!

We spend years and years trying to learn English. We study at school, sign up for extracurricular lessons, hire a private teacher and even go to an English summer camp. At least we can say we have an intermediate level of English now, right?

But we still find ourselves wondering how you say this or that in English, and then we realise some things can never be learned from coursebooks. Let’s face it, you only run into some stuff in real life.