Make a List of: things you no longer believe

1. that you can trust anyone. Literally everybody will either lie to you, betray you or let you down.
2. that true love exists. As long as we're not talking about family love I am sure that it's just not there.
3. that people are good. There's just too much horrible stuff going on in the world...wars, animal cruelty, parents neglecting their children - it's an endless list, just pick one.
4. that life's fair.
5. that true magic exists. 

A rather pessimistic list, I know. Can't change it, however, these were the things that sprang to my mind first. 

Make a List of: the most unusual things you do every day

Okay, this really is a challenge!
As i actually consider myself as a rather normal person I don't think that I'm really doing unusual things very often...
Okay, I'll do some brainstorming and give it a try:

1. From time to time I seek a quiet place in order to be able to think.
2. I write a diary.
3. Occasionally, when I feel like killing someone, I get drunk all by myself in front of the TV.
4. I still watch Disney movies like The Lion King.
5. I actually like blogging and do it frequently (if I can find the time).
6. I can only fall asleep in front of the TV or if I can hear my roommates talking.

Well, I think that's it. Whether these things are really unusual or not I don't know, but it's all I can think of at the moment. :)

Make a List of: things that make you angry

Day two of my challenge, so far I'm still motivated! :) Plus, this is a pretty easy task.

Things that make me angry:

1. people who treat you unfairly
2. people who can't accept that you have a different opinion on something than they do and start to treat you as if you were stupid or something
3. when you want something really badly and it just doesn't work out regardless of your effort
4. uni - whenever a professor is convinced that his homework is the only thing you have to do and it is totally manageable within two days or gives you bad marks simply because he can
5. when grown-up people start to behave childish and you suddenly are caught up in an argument that makes you think you're back in kindergarten
6. when you're in a restaurant and really, really look forward to your food and then the waitress mixes up you're order or even forgets it
7. when you desperately need a hug and there's NO ONE around you could possibly ask for it
8. not being able to go home for the weekend for a long time
9. when you're totally motivated and want to do something and you can't find someone to do it with you
10. people who behave as if you were their friend but actually don't give a crap about you

^^that's just to name some, I'm sure with a little effort I could expand this list to infinity! ;)

Inspiration for blogging? Why not get it from other blogs?

I don't know if many of you did this, but I added all your blogs to my reading list on blogger. I did this simply because I'm interested in what you are blogging about, and also to get some ideas if we have to write a post about something special and I don't know what to say about it. ;) Anyway, I just read this one blog post from Güliz Deniz and thought "Wow, that sounds really cool!".
She started a challenge she found on another blog and as I really like the content I think I will try that as well.
^^Sorry for stealing your idea, but as you might know copying is a form of admiration, so, see it as a compliment. ;)

The challenge is as follows:

Make a List of: things you know to be true

Make a List of: things that make you angry

Make a List of: the most unusual things you do every day

Make a List of: things you no longer believe

Make a List of: things you should have learned by now

Write Poetry: with “I remember sentences

Write Poetry: about your heart—not what it does or who it loves, but the odd and weird stuff it is made of

Write: a love poem … for a non traditional item or person

I have to admit that I never tried to write poetry, so maybe I will alter the last three points, but I will definitely try it first. You'll find the outcome on my blog. Next thing I don't know is if will find the time to finish the list in eight days, but I will try my best to do so. 

Well, now that everything is explained I'd better get started. There we go.

Make a list of things you know to be true:

Things that are true are of course the visible/touchable things, but let's talk about the things that are not visible but true nevertheless.

One very important thing is LOVE. I know, I know, not very creative. But still. 

I will not talk about the love between two people because I was not particularly lucky with that and this would become a very negative statement. But the love of a family is worth so much. I don't know how I would ever be able to live a happy life without my family, because even if everyone else fails you they're somehow obliged to stay with you. Of course this is not true for all families, but I am happy to be able to say that I can fully rely on mine. Thank god for that. The same thing works for friends as well, by the way. ;)

What also counts is the love of an animal. We have a family-dog, Boris:

He just gives so much love. Even when you're all miserable and angry when you come home, he's there, wiggling his tail, utterly happy that you finally returned. A dog is the only creature that loves you absolutely unconditionally and expects nothing in return. Maybe their only reason to be on earth is to give happiness. 

Whenever I am in Graz I miss Boris terribly, and whenever I am at home I am unbelievingly happy that I have him around again. 

He is able to make me feel loved and appreciated by his sheer presence, and I honestly don't know anyone else capable of this.

Well, I will continue with the fact that BOOKS CONTAIN POWER. 

From a very young age on I loved reading. I always wanted books for my birthdays and christmas and whenever else you get presents. Luckily, my family supported this and I barely ever ran out of books to read. This love for books still continues today even though I don't have enough time to read any more. At the moment I am stuck with Game of Thrones II, not because I don't like it or because it's hard to read or something like that, simply because I don't have enough time to read. And once I would be able to spare an hour or so I am too exhausted from uni and homework and I want nothing but to turn off my brain and relax a little bit. 

Anyway, it is a fact that, if you're able to get involved in the story, a book can help you to escape your own world and enter a complete new one with new people and new possibilities. 

For me this saying is more than true. If you find complete new creatures or landscapes or physical laws in a book, isn't it a kind of magic that one person was able to make that up? Simply by his/her imagination? 

If that isn't magic I don't know what is.

Have you ever closed a book after the last sentence, feeling sad that the story doesn't continue and with the feeling that you lost a friend? I certainly have. Once you're not able to give it out of your hands anymore, once you suffer with the characters, once you have to laugh or cry, a book is a good book.

But even books that are not literature have power, it's just of a different kind. A scientific book can open one's eyes for something new, for a truth that he couldn't accept beforehand, simply by explaining everything in a logical way. 

The written word is something incredibly powerful. However, it does have a very strong weakness: people have to choose to read them to give them the possibility to wield their power. Nevertheless, once they get the chance to do so their true power looms up. They can rouse people out of their apathy, they can stimulate new behaviour or a change in attitude and so much more. Why else would regimes have burned books in former times? 

Well, at the moment I can't think of anything else, so I'll leave it with that! :)

Vocab learning!

So, I honestly have to say that I'm already pretty fed up with vocab learning. It's not really the having to learn itself, it's only that besides all the other things we have to do - and there are billions of tons of homework and projects as you all know -  it just seems to be of so little importance at some times. Of course I know that it is very important and so I'm trying my best not to lose track of it and to improve my vocab as much as possible.

I do have several approaches to vocabulary learning, some of them might be better than others and some of them might be worse - I don't claim to have the perfect system or anything like that.
I will explain my strategy by the example of the Porter words.

When I am working my way through one of the exercices I start by reading through all the words we have to use, if I don't know one of them I look it up in an online dictionary, usually pons.eu. I then write its meaning directly above the word itself. The next thing I do is that I proceed with finishing the exercice, usually by using the process of elimination. This actually works pretty well and I do finish most of the units with little or no mistakes at all.

 ^^ This is what my pages look like in the end: The blue words are my translations, then I circle/write down the right answer with a pencil and then correct myself with some colored pen.
Sorry for the poor quality, by the way, but apparently this is all my phone is capable of.

My next step is writing down the words/expression I don't know or which I seem to forget all the time down in a vocabulary notebook. If two words are very similar or easily mixed up I write them down one below the other with a little blizzard next to them as a sign that I have to be careful with those. If a word is high/low register and I didn't know it before or it's not obvious I write that down next to it. Also, if there are some easy or good synonyms/explanation I try to write those down as well.

I then try to go through these words every now and then to commit them to my memory - it is a sieve sometimes, I swear!

When a PC comes up I usually make my own vocab lists once again because I think words are easier to remember if you have to write them down yourself.
These vocab lists are often a little confusing for other people as I usually go through the words and then create my own (weird) links. That works pretty good for myself, however, and so  I don't really care. ;)
I print them out then I go through them over and over again. It's the actual word, a synonym/antonym or whatever comes in handy and the translation.

^^This is what my lists look like

When creating the last list for PC1 I even went through the whole book, okay Unit 1-6, again and read every single sentence to check if I know the word and also in what context it can be used.

I do also use vocabulary.com but actually I don't like it that much. I prefer not looking at a screen 24/7 and so I try to summarise as much as possible and print it out. This is far less distracting for me. Also, I'm very prone to headaches if I use a computer too much and we already have to work so much on it all the time, so I try to avoid it as much as possible.

Generally I'm content with my tactic and so far my results (at least in the PCs) were always good, so I guess my system is okay. I don't know anything about the last PC, so I guess we'll find out soon whether it really works or whether I have to adapt my system.

In addition to these real study techniques I also do some other things and use some other sources, but I am not sure if they really count. Anyway, I will just mention them here:

1. I try to read English books as much as possible. Currently I'm reading the second part of the Game of Thrones series and I just love it. Even though I just don't really have time to read or if I do have time I am too exhausted so that I can't really concentrate, I'm trying to do it as much as possible. What comes in really handy is a cool feature of my kindle: a built-in dictionary. If I don't know a word I can simply click on it and it shows me an explanation/definition
2. In addition to that I'm watching some movies and series in English. Right now it's Perception: an absolutely amazing series about an uni professor who's a paranoid schizophrenic in addition to being a genius and helps the FBI to solve cases. Even though I love it and think it's simply amazing it's nothing I can watch without paying attention because the language is really difficult and unusual (at least if you're not a native speaker). Plus, they often speak really, like REALLY, fast, which makes it even worse. Nevertheless, I just love it and hope it helps me with my English skills.
3. I liked several English pages on Facebook. I know, I know, not the best source. Anyway, these three, for example, are really cool: Word Porn, Truth Beckon and I fucking love science. While Word Porn is all about nice quotations and beautiful words, Truth Beckon posts links to articles and inspirational quotes and I fucking love science informs you about new scientific achievements.
4. When we have to write a piece of homework for one of our English classes I always try to weave in new vocabulary, usually looked up in pons.eu or thesaurus.com. Some words reoccur often and I tend to just remember them after a few times. Of course this system contains a certain risk of misusing a word, but if possible I try to look it up in coca or a similar site before using it. If I don't have time for that, however, or don't really find anything I still just use it, because how else would I find out how to use it?

Okay, I think that's about it. 

Comment on Summary 28041994

Alright, I chose the Summary 28041994 and here is what I think about it:

SUMMARY OF EUROPE ALREADY HAS ONE FOOT IN “JAPANESE“DEFLATION GRAVE

According to the author;  the current economy faces the same problem as decades ago (1). Debts keep rising and no government knows how to prevent financial crisis (2). The situation will become more lethal for all EU- members since the Inflation-rate (3) keeps falling which makes it more possible for Europe to fall into debt (4). Over the past months examples, such as Italy, Spain and Greece, give an impression about what will happen to other countries if deflation starts (5).

The authorities can look back on similar cases that happened in the past. The Japan syndrome which occurred in 2002 is a reminder of how dangerous this scenario can become. Currently, it seems that there is no opportunity for the indebted states to flee from their debts (6). As a result many countries cut spending first, to prevent their debts from rising (7). This leads to reciprocal accusations because the governments do not know how to improve their financial situations (8). Italy, Spain and Greece would benefit from inflation; however, Germany is against it at the moment.

As a solution Club Med allies should gang up to receive what they need. Most countries are still hoping for the best case scenario, but the chances are near zero (9).

200 WORDS, NOT INCLUDING TITLE

My comments:

1. I don't think you need the semicolon after the author; also I would rather say the current European economy because the article basically is about Europe, and not the whole world.
2. I'd rather say how to combat the crisis as the crisis is happening right now.
3. As far as I know you don't need these two hyphens.
4. It is more likely, not more possible; also, Europe already is in high debt, I'd rather say fall into deflation, because isn't that what the author is saying all the time?
5. Examples, such as -> no need for the comma after examples; If I understood the author correctly those countries are not yet in deflation (only in high debt), they simply have too little inflation.
6. Aren't they supposed to pay them back instead of fleeing from them?
7. I would leave out the first, 
8. I don't think you say situations, singular is fine.
9. I would put in something like the author says that because without this it sounds like it is your opinion. Also, these last two sentences seem really vague in comparison to the rest of your summary.

All in all I have to say that I don't really think it is a good summary. You forgot to mention the authors name in the beginning and somehow your summary is lacking a proper introduction sentence. Also, the conclusion is somehow really short and abrupt, maybe you should have left out something above (like naming the states, in my opinion that is not really necessary) and instead write a more developed conclusion. This is just my personal opinion, but I got the feeling that you did not really get the text - which I can fully understand, it was horrible! I hope you are not too discouraged by my feedback, it really is just my opinion, and maybe you can even understand some of my remarks and they help you with your next summary.

European Commission

ORIGINAL VERSION:


The European Commission is one of the main institutions of the European Union and therefore plays a major role in its internal affairs. In addition to representing the EU as a whole, it has to meet various responsibilities such as managing the budget, setting priorities for actions and enforcing the European law. On top of that, the EC can propose new legislations to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union and negotiate international agreements for the EU. The European Commission consists of 27 Commissioners, each representing one Member State, and its President, currently José Manuel Barroso from Portugal. The Commissioners have to focus on the EU’s needs rather than those of their home country and each of them is responsible for a specific field of policy. Additional work forces keep the Commission running smoothly. These administrators, lawyers, economists, translators, interpreters, secretarial staff and others are organized in departments. All in all, the European Commission plays without doubt a vital role in the EU as it operates in a great number of political, economic and social areas.


[180 words]



REVISED VERSION:


The European Commission (EC) is one of the main institutions of the European Union and plays a major role in its internal affairs. In addition to these internal duties, it represents the EU as a whole and has to fulfill various responsibilities such as managing the budget, setting priorities for actions and enforcing European law. Moreover, the EC can propose new legislation to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union and negotiates international agreements for the EU. The European Commission consists of 27 Commissioners, each representing one Member State, and its President. The Commissioners have to focus on the EU’s needs rather than those of their home country and each of them is responsible for a specific field of policy. Additional work forces such as administrators, lawyers, economists, translators, interpreters and secretarial staff keep the Commission running smoothly. The European Commission, which operates in a great number of political, economic and social areas, clearly plays a vital role in the EU.


[164 words]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XSsA_bJvA7rNnY32xap9A9M1XriLsLYQlZKP_yTvk6c/edit

Casper concert in Vienna!

Hi guys!

Today I decided to tell you a little bit about my last weekend, actually only my Saturday. I went to a concert with my little cousin, Iris, and her best friend Bianca. This was her birthday present as well as mine, as we both have our birthdays in November and my aunt gave us the tickets as our gifts.

First of all I'll give you some information on Casper, as many of you might not know him.
Casper is a German rapper who was born in 1982 in Germany, but right after his birth his family moved to the US as his father was American. His parents got divorced, however, and when he was eleven years old he moved back to Germany with his mother. He didn't know any German at that time, but quickly learned it and today you can't even notice a slight accent.
His first album Rap Art War, a collaboration with two other Hip Hop artists, was released in 2004. But soon after its release the trio separated and Casper then moved on to some other projects like a Metalcore as well as a Hardcore band. Luckily, this was only a phase and he then returned to rap.
Casper released three albums since then, Hin zur Sonne (2008), XOXO (2011) and Hinterland (2013).
Right now he's promoting Hinterland on his tour, and I have to say, it is an amazing album.

So, we left Salzburg on Saturday at nine in the morning heading for Vienna. A friend of my aunt has a flat there but always spends the weekends in her hometown, so we had our own flat right between Mariahilferstraße and Naschmarkt. When we arrived in Vienna we first went to a Chinese restaurant that was right around the corner, and afterwards we went shopping. All of us spent a little too much money, but hey, it was like a holiday, so who cares! ;)
After a few hours all of us were exhausted and we returned to the flat to grab a little food and  make ourselves pretty for the concert. ;)
When we arrived at the Flex at around 7:30 and we still had quite some time to wait, but we had a lot of fun and didn't really care.
The supporting act was AHZUMJOT (pronounced like the German a zum j), in case anyone knows him, and he was really good. I didn't know him before, but I actually got interested in him and will see if I can get some of his music.
He managed to get the crowd in a really good mood and everyone was happy and motivated when he left the stage.

^^AHZUMJOT

^^Iris and AHZUMJOT - he turned out to be a funny guy! ;)

For some unfortunate reason it took Casper another half hour to get on the stage and so when he finally appeared the good mood of the crowd had disappeared again. It wasn't too much of a problem though, as it didn't take him long to win the crowd again. He then played all his amazing songs and the atmosphere was just great!
My cousin and her friend were not directly in the crowd because they said they wanted to really see Casper, so I was in the middle of unknown people all by myself, just dancing and singing and having a good time! ;)
I'm really happy that I went to that concert as I had so much fun there and Casper was just pure awesome! You could see that he actually had fun on the stage himself and enjoyed it up there.
Afterwards we purchased some overly expensive t-shirts which were worth every cent. 

^^ Casper :)

So, it was a really cool evening, I had a lot of fun with Iris and Bianca and was listening to great music, what else would I want? Thanks for that. :)

In case anyone's interested in Casper now, here are some of my favourite songs by him:

^^ that's Ganz schön okay ft. Kraftklub

^^ So perfekt

^^ Das Grizzly-Lied