THE BRITISH UNDERSTATEMENT

It is a matter of fact that since the day that every Spanish person, among which, of course, I include myself, starts learning Shakespeare's language with the typical "hello, how are you?" dialogue, we become aware of some tags, i.e. those "thanks", "you're welcome" and their ever present "sorry", "excuse me" and so forth, which are highly appealing for us. We always think, "how well-mannered these people are!"

As soon as you get to know one of these, you see that the more polite a British person is, the less trustworthy. From this corpus, it is compulsory to comment on the below treble of utterances. By the way, we will know whether Emilio is British quite soon.

WHAT THE BRITISH SAY	WHAT THEY MEAN	WHAT WE UNDERSTAND

I only have a few minor comments

Please rewrite completely

He has found a few typos

About "Can the art of storytelling be preserved?"

The fact that the job of storytelling isn't one which provides its professionals with great amounts of money is widely known. Even in the areas of Middle East, where storytelling is supposed to be original, the task of telling stories must be regarded as something obsolete. It is also said that once nomads settled in towns, the tradition of storytelling began vanishing.

Furthermore, the modern society forces most parents to be far away from their children and, as a result, telling a tale becomes secondary as there is little time to do so; the nowadays' regular child usually relies on PlayStation to entertain him (or even her), but I'm afraid this isn't the most advisable pastime.

New technologies, more specifically the information and communication ones, are a drawback for oral storytelling. Can anyone think what had happened to minstrels if the Internet could have told their narration of feasts too?

Last but not least, what has really made me think is the point that topics for modern stories have been created the so-called "Arab Spring". People are more likely to know the events that have happened since 2011 by word of mouth than by watching documentaries about them or reading them in an encyclopaedia. I wonder if it'll turn out to be the reappearance of this magnificent tradition in those countries. Time will tell us.

WHAT I THINK PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT TRAVELLERS AND TOURISTS

If I had to select a quote, I would choose Craig Heimburger's one, from TravelVice, "Tourists expect toilet paper - travelers carry their own".

One should always intend to have the habits of a traveller while even on a trip. As far as I am concerned, it would be a good idea to have uncle Matt, Gobo's uncle in Fraggle Rock, in mind, that is to say, expecting to find something new and worth seeing every time we take a turning.

With respect to Travellers and Tourists:

"Traveller" is a profession; "tourist" is a hobby.

Being a traveller represents visiting a place in a relaxed way, not paying so much attention to the well-known sights or monuments. It is enjoying the atmosphere surrounding a definite spot and getting in touch to its people, customs and traditions. A traveller spends quite a long time and a great deal of money on a journey.

Being a tourist refers to a constant haste for a period of time. A tourist visits a place and goes to a destination that a friend of his/hers told him/her and takes advantage of it to see the more attractions, the better. Tourists generally go to cheap hotels and eat bad meals and are not usually into the ways of life of the population of the place they visit.  

Good afternoon,

It's been quite long since I last wrote here. The time devoted to tenses, the preparation of Richard Burton's discussion and the lack of an Internet connection because of a broken router haven't let me enter my profile for twelve days. I'll try this kind of things not to happen again.

We'll be meeting next Tuesday at 6.30 pm hoping that Emilio will be fine so as to talk about Mountains of the Moon, a film that turned out to be a surprise (at least for me).

See you then!  

TRAVELLING TO IRELAND

In 2002 I was studying my degree on English philology and my family and I got to the decision that it was time I spent a year abroad as an Erasmus student. I chose Galway, in the Republic of Ireland and I have to say that it was a wonderful experience, out of which I have earned a great profit. Unfortunately, no member of my family was able to come to see me.

In July 2011, I was beginning my summer holidays, when my sister and I agreed to travel to Dublin. I was willing to show her the country that embraced me for nine months nine years before. Therefore, we booked two return flights to the Irish capital and meant to enjoy the "green country". Since I have a long-time Dubliner friend, Andy, I gave him a ring, but I got no response. After some missed calls and unanswered emails, I realised we would not see him. However, he called me back while my sister and I were queuing to enter the plane. He said he would not only be waiting for us at the airport but he would also give us a lift to our hotel. As soon as we landed on Dublin, an five-day adventure started. We took advantage of Andy's presence to have a tour guide all over the city: O'Connell Street and the Spire, the city centre, Trinity College, Dublin Castle and ... pubs. We paid a short visit to the most well-known ones in the area. We became accustomed to the Dublin atmosphere, both its people and its atmosphere. The journey was not, nevertheless, perfect. We had an everlasting breeze that made my sister doubt whether we were in summer. Moreover, the rain accompanied us, it travelled in our luggage as our toilet bags did. Andy was our leader into the Irish culture and he drove us to beautiful, nearby places, such as Wicklow Mountains and Dundalk although that was not enough for us: we wished to travel to Northern Ireland, to "the United Kingdom's branch in the island".

We did not ask Andy to go to "the North". I knew that, for him, it was just as going to someone's house with whom you had quarrelled some weeks ago. We got quite surprised when Andy told us that a cousin of his was killed in the IRA's terrorist attack in Londonderry in the 1980s and that he had never been to that part of the territory, consisting of six counties. We thought we would go there alone. Notwithstanding this fact, he agreed to. Thus, on the next-to-last day of our Irish tour, we headed for the north Northern Ireland, on the county Antrim's coast. After having withdrawn some pounds from the cash machine, we intended to visit the Giant's Causeway.

My sister got to know there that umbrellas are not useful in Ireland. In the photo I am on one of the thousands of the hexagonal, basalt columns. We were enchanted by the beauty of the landscape. We went trekking around the place and saw some cliffs, on which we took hundreds of photos of the North Sea.

The anecdote during the trip was that my sister was asleep for more than seven hours of the trip to Antrim and, every time she woke up, she got frightened by the cars on the left part of the roads. We still laugh at this memory.