'THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA' BY ERNEST M. HEMINGWAY

The Old Man and The Sea

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Jordi Santanyí. Jordi is a great writer, he loves Literature and he likes talking about it with The Grandma. They have talked about the American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman Ernest Hemingway and his work The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was first published on a day like today in 1952.

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952.

It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.

The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin.

The story opens with Santiago having gone 84 days without catching a fish, and now being seen as salao, the worst form of unluckiness. He is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with him and has been told instead to fish with successful fishermen.

The boy visits Santiago's shack each night, hauling his fishing gear, preparing food, talking about American baseball and his favorite player, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago tells Manolin that on the next day, he will venture far out into the Gulf Stream, north of Cuba in the Straits of Florida to fish, confident that his unlucky streak is near its end.

More iformation: Friends of Words

On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago takes his skiff into the Gulf Stream, sets his lines and by noon, has his bait taken by a big fish that he is sure is a marlin. Unable to haul in the great marlin, Santiago is instead pulled by the marlin, and two days and nights pass with Santiago holding onto the line.

Though wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago expresses a compassionate appreciation for his adversary, often referring to him as a brother. He also determines that, because of the fish's great dignity, no one shall deserve to eat the marlin.

On the third day, the fish begins to circle the skiff. Santiago, worn out and almost delirious, uses all his remaining strength to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed.

On his way in to shore, sharks are attracted to the marlin's blood. Santiago kills a great mako shark with his harpoon, but he loses the weapon. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks keep coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail, and its head.

Ernest Hemingway

Santiago knows that he is destroyed and tells the sharks of how they have killed his dreams. Upon reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder, leaving the fish head and the bones on the shore. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.

A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 5.5 m from nose to tail. Pedrico is given the head of the fish, and the other fishermen tell Manolin to tell the old man how sorry they are. Tourists at the nearby café mistakenly take it for a shark. The boy, worried about the old man, cries upon finding him safe asleep and at his injured hands.

Manolin brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youth- of lions on an African beach.

Written in 1951, The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway's final full-length work published during his lifetime. The book, dedicated to Charlie Scribner and to Hemingway's literary editor Max Perkins, was simultaneously published in book form -featuring black and white illustrations by Charles Tunnicliffe and Raymond Sheppard- and featured in Life magazine on September 1, 1952. The first edition print run of the book was 50,000 copies and five million copies of the magazine were sold in two days.

The Old Man and the Sea became a Book of the Month Club selection, and made Hemingway a celebrity.

In May 1953, the novel received the Pulitzer Prize and was specifically cited when in 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature which he dedicated to the Cuban people.

The success of The Old Man and the Sea made Hemingway an international celebrity. The Old Man and the Sea is taught at schools around the world and continues to earn foreign royalties.

More information: Cliffs Notes

The Old Man and the Sea served to reinvigorate Hemingway's literary reputation and prompted a reexamination of his entire body of work. The novel was initially received with much popularity; it restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author.

Its publisher, Scribner's, on an early dust jacket, called the novel a new classic, and many critics favorably compared it with such works as William Faulkner's short story The Bear and Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick.

Several critics note that Santiago hails from the Canary Islands, and that his Spanish origins have an influence in the novella. After immigrating to Cuba in his 20s, later in life Santiago dreams about the Canary Islands and mixes Cuban and Peninsular Spanish vocabulary. His biography has many similarities to that of Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s first mate.

Joe Russell & Ernest-Hemingway, Havana, 1932

Gregorio Fuentes, who many critics believe was an inspiration for Santiago, was a blue-eyed man born on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. 

After going to sea at age ten on ships that called in African ports, he migrated permanently to Cuba when he was 22. After 82 years in Cuba, Fuentes attempted to reclaim his Spanish citizenship in 2001.

Critics have noted that Santiago was also at least 22 when he immigrated from Spain to Cuba, and thus old enough to be considered an immigrant -and a foreigner- in Cuba.

Hemingway at first planned to use Santiago's story, which became The Old Man and the Sea, as part of an intimacy between mother and son. Relationships in the book relate to the Bible, which he referred to as The Sea Book. Some aspects of it did appear in the posthumously published Islands in the Stream.

Hemingway mentions the real life experience of an old fisherman almost identical to that of Santiago and his marlin in On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter (Esquire, April 1936).

Joseph Waldmeir's essay Confiteor Hominem: Ernest Hemingway's Religion of Man is a favorable critical reading of the novel -and one which has defined analytical considerations since. Perhaps the most memorable claim is Waldmeir's answer to the question-  What is the book's message?

More information: A Research Guides for Students

In 1954, Hemingway wanted to donate his Nobel Prize in Literature gold medal to the Cuban people. To avoid giving it to the Batista government, he donated it to the Catholic Church for display at the sanctuary at El Cobre, a small town outside Santiago de Cuba where the Marian image of Our Lady of Charity is located. The Swedish medal was stolen in the mid 1980s, but the police recovered it within a few days.

The Old Man and the Sea has been adapted for the screen three times: a 1958 film starring Spencer Tracy, a 1990 miniseries starring Anthony Quinn, and a 1999 animated short film.

It also inspired the 2012 Kazakhstani movie The Old Man, which replaces the fisherman with a shepherd struggling to protect his flock from wolves. It is often taught in high schools as a part of the American literature curriculum.

In 2003, the book was listed at number 173 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 200 best-loved novels.

More information: The Guardian

Download The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

All modern American literature comes

from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

Ernest Hemingway

THE GRANMA ARRIVES TO CUBA'S ORIENTE PROVINCE

The Grandma during her last visit to Cuba

On a day like today in 1956, a 18 m diesel-powered cabin cruiser built in 1943 named Granma for the previous owner's grandmother, was used to transport 82 fighters of the Cuban Revolution from Mexico to Cuba for the purpose of overthrowing the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

The Grandma wants to commemorate this event that represented the beginning of the Cuban Revolution and she has gone to the library to search more information about it. She remembers her last visits to Cuba and her last memories with the Granma.

Before going to the library, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

Granma is the yacht that was used to transport 82 fighters of the Cuban Revolution from Mexico to Cuba in November 1956 for the purpose of overthrowing the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

The 18 m diesel-powered cabin cruiser was built in 1943 by Wheeler Shipbuilding of Brooklyn NY as a light armored target practice boat, US Navy C-1994 and modified postwar to accommodate 12 people.  

Granma, in English, is an affectionate term for a grandmother; the yacht is said to have been named for the previous owner's grandmother.

The yacht was purchased on 10 October 1956 for MX$50,000 (US$15,000) from the United States-based Schuylkill Products Company, Inc., by a Mexican citizen -said to be Mexico City gun dealer Antonio The Friend del Conde- secretly representing Fidel Castro.

More information: Granma

The builder, Wheeler Shipbuiding, then of Brooklyn NY, now of Chapel Hill NC, also built Hemingway's Pilar. It is still unknown who removed the light armor and expanded the cabin postwar to convert the navy training boat into a civilian Yacht.

Castro's 26th of July Movement had attempted to purchase a Catalina flying boat maritime aircraft, or a US naval crash rescue boat for the purpose of crossing the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba, but their efforts had been thwarted by lack of funds. The money to purchase Granma had been raised in the US state of Florida by former President of Cuba Carlos Prío Socarrás and Teresa Casuso Morín.

The Granma

Shortly after midnight on 25 November 1956 in the Mexican port of Tuxpan, Veracruz, Granma was boarded by 82 members of the 26th of July movement including their leader, Fidel Castro, his brother, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, and Camilo Cienfuegos.

The group -who later came to be known collectively as los expedicionarios del yate Granma (the Granma yacht expeditioners)- then set out from Tuxpan at 2 a.m. After a series of vicissitudes and misadventures, including diminishing supplies, sea-sickness, and the near-foundering of their heavily laden and leaking craft, they disembarked on 2 December on the Playa Las Coloradas, municipality of Niquero, in modern Granma Province (after the vessel), formerly part of the larger Oriente Province.

Granma was piloted by Norberto Collado Abreu, a World War II Cuban Navy veteran and ally of Castro. The location was chosen to emulate the voyage of national hero José Martí, who had landed in the same region 61 years earlier during the wars of independence from Spanish colonial rule.

More information: ThoughtCo

Batista correctly predicted that the landing would take place, and his troops were ready. Consequentially, the landing party was bombarded by helicopters and airplanes soon after landing. Since the terrain on the coastline provided little cover, the party was an easy target. Many casualties ensued, most of them during battle at Alegría de Pío further inland. The survivors continued to the foot of Pico Turquino in the Sierra Maestra to carry out guerilla war.

Initially, Batista did not know who exactly were among the casualties, and international media widely reported that Fidel had died. This was, however, not the case. Of the 82, around 20 had survived.

According to the most credible version, the survivors were Fidel, Raúl, Guevara, Armando Rodríguez, Faustino Pérez, Ramiro Valdés, Universo Sánchez, Efigenio Ameijeiras, René Rodríguez, Camilo Cienfuegos, Juan Almeida Bosque, Calixto García, Calixto Morales, Reinaldo Benítez, Julio Díaz, Rafael Chao, Ciro Redondo [es], José Morán, Carlos Bermúdez, and Fransisco González. All others had been either killed, captured, or left behind.

The 26th of July Movement, in Spanish Movimiento 26 de Julio; M-26-7, was a Cuban vanguard revolutionary organization and later a political party led by Fidel Castro.

The name commemorates its 26th July 1953 attack on the army barracks on Santiago de Cuba in an attempt to start the overthrowing of the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

 

The Grandma

Fidel Castro's nationalist ideology was founded in the ideas of José Martí.
 
This is considered one of the most important organizations among the Cuban Revolution. At the end of 1956, Castro established a guerrilla base in the Sierra Maestra. This base defeated the troops of Batista on December 31, 1958, setting into motion the Cuban Revolution and installing a government lead by Manuel Urrutia Lleó.

The Movement fought the Batista regime on both rural and urban fronts. The movement's main objectives were distribution of land to peasants, nationalization of public services, industrialization, honest elections, and large scale education reform.

In July 1961, the 26th of July Movement was one of the parties that integrated into the Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas (ORI) of the Integrated Revolutionary Organization (IRO) as well as the Popular Socialist Party and the March 13 Revolutionary Directory.

On March 26, 1962, the party dissolved to form the Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista de Cuba (PURSC) or the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (UPSRC), which held a communist ideology.

The 26th of July Movement's name originated from the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, an army facility in the city of Santiago de Cuba, on 26 July 1953. This attack was led by a young Fidel Castro, who was a legislative candidate in a free election that had been cancelled by Batista. The attack had been intended as a rallying cry for the revolution.

More information: The Vintage News

Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison but, along with his group, was granted an amnesty after two years following a political campaign on their behalf. Castro traveled to Mexico to reorganize the movement in 1955 with several other exiled revolutionaries -including Raúl Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Juan Almeida Bosque. Their task was to form a disciplined guerrilla force to overthrow Batista.

The original core of the group was organized around the attack on the Moncada Barracks merged with the National Revolutionary Movement led and Rafael García Bárcenas and with a majority of the Orthodox Youth.

Soon after, National Revolutionary Action led by Frank País would join. Because of the commonality in their ideology and their goal of wanting to topple the Batista regime, the M-26-7 would quickly add more young people from diverse political backgrounds. 

The Grandma visiting The Granma, Cuba

On 2 December 1956, 82 men landed in Cuba, having sailed in the boat Granma from Tuxpan, Veracruz, ready to organize and lead a revolution. The early signs were not good for the movement. They landed in daylight, were attacked by the Cuban Air Force, and suffered numerous casualties.

The landing party was split into two and wandered lost for two days, most of their supplies abandoned where they landed. They were also betrayed by their peasant guide in an ambush, which killed more of those who had landed. Batista mistakenly announced Fidel Castro's death at this point.

Of the 82 who sailed aboard the Granma, only 12 eventually regrouped in the Sierra Maestra mountain range. While the revolutionaries were setting up camp in the mountains, Civic Resistance groups were formulating in the cities, putting pressure on the Batista regime. Many middle-class and professional persons flocked toward Castro and his movement. While in the Sierra Maestra mountains the guerrilla forces attracted hundreds of Cuban volunteers and won several battles against the Cuban Army.

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara was shot in the neck and chest during the fighting, but was not severely injured. Guevara, who had studied medicine, continued to give first aid to other wounded guerrillas. This was the opening phase of the war of the Cuban Revolution, which continued for the next two years.

It ended in January 1959, after Batista fled Cuba for Dominican Republic, on New Year's Eve when the Movement's forces marched into Havana.

More information: Passage Maker

After the takeover, anti-Batistas, liberals, urban workers, peasants, and idealists became the dominant followers of the M-26-7 movement, which gained control over Cuba.

The Movement was joined with other bodies to form the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which in turn became the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965.

Cuba modeled itself after the soviet-bloc countries of eastern Europe, becoming the first socialistic government in the Americas. Once it was learned that Cuba would adopt a strict Marxist–Leninist political and economic system, opposition was raised not only by dissident party members, but by the United States as well.

More information: Yachts International

Fidel Castro's government seized private land, nationalized hundreds of private companies -including several local subsidiaries of U.S. corporations- and taxed American products so heavily that U.S. exports were cut half in just two years. 

The Eisenhower Administration then imposed trade restrictions on everything except food and medical supplies. As a result, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union for trade instead. The US responded by cutting all diplomatic ties to Cuba, and have had a rocky relationship ever since. In April 1961, a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles and dissidents launched the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion against Cuba.

The flag of the 26th of July Movement is on the shoulder of the Cuban military uniform, and continues to be used as a symbol of the Cuban Revolution.

More information: Morning Star

Remember that the revolution is what is important,

and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.

Che Guevara

MARIANAO, THE JONES & THE BEANS REACH THEIR GOALS

The Grandma is waiting her families

Today, The Jones have met The Beans. They had a common objective: a Cambridge University Exam. 

The families have been working very hard for some months and today they have done a fantastic work. The Grandma is very proud of all of them. 

It's not an easy goal but they have trusted in their work and effort and they have demosntrated themselves how much English they have learnt in these intensive months.

More information: Cambridge University

Thanks Jones. Thanks Beans. Thanks for trusting in this project and work with all your effort and illusion and thanks for sharing these wonderful and unforgettable days with The Grandma, a person who loves words and names and music and old stories and who takes profit of them to try to create connections between things, people and places. 

The Grandma in Marianao, Cuba

Places and names like Marianao, the beautiful place where two  families have met each other, and a special place for The Grandma, who has an unforgettable and special story which connects her with Sant Boi, a city very important in her life, a city that she loves eternally.

Marianao, which means the ship of Maria, it’s a place in Cuba where a Catalan family, The Samà, created a big fortune. They were Indians.

An Indian, often cited with the popular names of Indian or American, is how the adventurers and traders in Catalonia knew each other who, having emigrated to the Spanish colonies in America, returned to the metropolis after having done fortune. This is the origin of the expression made the Americas.

More information: The Catalan Indians-Evokating the American Past

Their dress was of great elegance and they gave them a gentle breath that distinguished them from the rest of the population. Typically American clothing: clear trousers, vest with gold-plated rings, a large silk scarf in the neck and the jipi, a hat from Panama.

Old pictures of Palau Marianao, Sant Boi

Some, when returning, built large mansions, houses of Indians, who, despite being daughters of ostentation of what had prospered, nowadays are an excellent example of the best architecture of the second half of the nineteenth century and first third of the twentieth century.

In fairness, it must be said that they were often generous with their people, and they became promoters of actions and works that could benefit the impoverished contemporary society of the overseas empire. Thus, lighting, railroad or schools were built in many places thanks to their patronage and will. The municipalities expressed their gratitude towards their benefactors by naming their favorite children and christening the building with the name of the Indian, or by dedicating a street to them in order to perpetuate their memory.

More information: Cuban people of Catalan descendent

The phenomenon was very important in Catalonia, which after the lifting of the monopoly of trade in the exclusive Indians of Castile could obtain some compensation for the military defeat of 1714 and the brutal subsequent cultural repression.

Palau Marianao, an Indian building in Sant Boi

Catalan community in Cuba grew very fast thanks to their habilities in commerce. They were great sellers and made great fortunes with the exportation of sugar, cacao, rom, tobacco and anise. 

They inverted in their hometowns and Catalan cities like Badalona, Arenys de Mar, Torredembarra, Vilanova i la Geltrú, Sitges, Begur, or Cambrils became Indian cities thanks to new factories dedicated to manufacture and export rom and anise. Indians expanded from Cambrils to Begur across all the coast and their presence is easy to discover nowadays because they are an important piece of our recent history.

More information: Office of the Historian

During the War of Independence of Cuba, the Catalan community helped the Cuban one against the Castilian power. Repression and prosecutions against Catalan people increased in Spain and Catalan were forced to fight against Cuban but they denied and were accuses of disloyalty and dishonour and prosecuted, even with death penalty. Castilian government wanted to take possession of these factories and enterprises and Catalan enterpreneurs decided to not return and stay in Cuba forever, mainly by two reasons: help Cuban people, who were their workers, in their reclaims and protect their businesses in the Caribbean island.

Marianao Gardens and its palm trees, Sant Boi

Marianao is the result of an Indian, Salvador de Samà i Torrents, Marquis of Samà, Marianao and Vilanova i la Geltrú. The name of the land evocate a Cuban one. The characteristics of Palau Marianao are Cuban ones. Marianao gardens are full of plants which have a Caribbean origin in the same way that Palau Novella, in Sitges, or Parc Samà in Cambrils.

The origin of Catalan Havaneres is also in Cuba. Havaneres comes from Havana, the name of the Cuban city, and the lyrics of these songs always talks about homesickness. This homesickness was the main cause of the architecture of Indian houses. Indian wanted to evocate the life in the island and they built houses similar to Cuban ones with gardens full of Caribbean plants, the most important of them, the tree palm.

More information: Palau Marianao-From Cuba to Sant Boi

There are some famous havaneres in Catalan like El meu avi, which talks about the Cuban Independence Wars, La barca xica or La Gavina and in Castilian, Yo te diré, which talks about the Philipines Independence Wars, La bella Lola or La paloma, a popular song created by Basque Sebastián Iradier Salaverri which was versionated in English by Elvis Presley. 

These havaneres are love metaphors because although it seems they are dedicated to a woman's love, this woman is really Cuba, and the singers are crying its absence, its memories and its lifestyle.

More information: Visit Palafrugell

Darling, I love you so, and my heart forever,
will belong to the memory of the love that we knew before.
Please, come back to my arms; we belong together.
Come to me; let's be sweethearts again and then let us part no more.

Elvis Presley

THE CATALAN INDIANS, EVOkATING THE AMERICAN PAST

The Grandma in Begur, El Baix Empordà

Since 1765, when Carlos III, the Spanish king, had to be more flexible with the commercial monopoly of the Southern Spanish ports over Cuba, we have news about Catalan migrants in this Caribbean Island. The beginning of the Catalan Industrial Revolution and this political resolution marked the economic success of some Catalan migrants in the island during the first half of the 19^th century (1820-1840). During those years, the Catalan migrants had an intensive commercial activity and they became in new members of the Cuban society. In Santiago de Cuba, the commercial activity was so big than native people say “I go to the Catalan” when they went to the winery and surnames like Baró, Martí, Alegret, Ametller or Arnau mixed with the native ones.

Download The phenomenon of the Indians in Catalonia

Judges like Josep Verdaguer, businessmen like Facund Bacardí Massó (founder of Bacardí Rum) and  Jaume Partagàs i Ravell (founder of Partagàs Tobacco Factory), bankers like Narcís Gelats (founder of Banco Gelats) or religious like Antoni Maria Claret, the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, were only an example of personal successes in the island.

The existence of the Modernism art in La Habana is a great influence of the Catalan artists in architecture, painting and sculpture. The main Catalan settlements were Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, La Habana, Matanzas, Bayamo, Manzanillo and Holguín.

Those who became rich and had fortune returned to their hometowns and built Indian-style houses. They missed the island and tried to evocate the Caribbean architecture in towns like Cambrils, Torredembarra, Sitges, Vilanova i la Geltrú, Arenys de Mar, Blanes, Lloret de Mar, Palafrugell or Begur.

More information: Xarxes de Municipis Indians

Lots of Catalans helped Cubans in the Independence Wars against Spain (1868-1878 and 1895-1898) and some years later, lots of Catalans loyal to the Republican troops must emigrate: it was a political exile (1936-1939). Some of them, famous intellectuals, contributed to found prestigious institutions and universities (Universidad de Oriente, 1947) and worked in them.

Nowadays, the influence of Caribbean cultre is still visible along the Catalan coast in the architecture and in the traditions. 

Local people celebrate parties to reminisce these cultural influences where Havaneres (Cuban-Catalan music) and rum are the main protagonists.

More information: Cantada d'Havaneres de Calella de Palafrugell

Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, 
to think and to speak without hypocrisy.

José Martí

CREATING A STORY: IRINA POPPINS

WHO? Irina Poppins 

WHERE? Havana, Cuba

WHEN? In the past

WHAT? Beautiful country

I was in Havana, the capital of Cuba. I visited the Caribbean island and I enjoyed a lot with its places, its culture and especially its people. Cuban people are very kind and nice and they live their lives with intensity and joyful. Travelling around the island was an excited experience because I felt like if I was living a dream or inside a film. I love Cuba and I know that it is going to change very soon.

Cuba is such a beautiful country, and everywhere you go, there's music and people dancing - especially in Havana.

 Julia Sawalha

FROM LINCOLN TO GUEVARA: FREEDOM!

Abraham Lincoln

Yesterday, The Poppins continued with their English classes. They started doing some exercises about Social English and reviewing Used to. Later, they practised with the Relative Pronouns and paid attention to the importance of questions and short answers.

More information: Used to

The Grandma explained some stories about Cuba and Catalan economy during the XIX century, paying special attention to the figures of the Indians, Catalan-born people who travelled to Cuba to make business and returned to their hometowns where they tried to evocate the Caribbean country building the same kind of houses and planting the same sort of plants and vegetables. 

She also told about slavery in American countries and the abolition of it in The USA thanks to Abraham Lincoln.

After some days without reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, they continued working the plot of this interesting book and they created another plot about sharks, an animal well-known in Australia and one of the most dangerous enemies of swimmers and surfers like Esther Poppins’ new boyfriend.

Che

Talking about boyfriends, The Grandma, following the advice of her family, decided to say goodbye to her last lover, Dave Clipster. A misunderstanding about him created some tension between the members of the family and The Grandma had to take a decision: choose between The Poppins or Dave. It was easy. Obviously, The Poppins won.

Next, the family listened to some stories from its members about difficult and uncomfortable situations in the past and they analysed how to confront them.

Tomorrow, the family is going to listen to Lulú Poppins’ explanations about fashion and trend and they’re going to play poker.

Come on Poppins! The die is cast!

In matters of style, swim with the current; 
in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Thomas Jefferson

CUBA OR SCOTLAND? THE DREAM CONTINUES...

Cuba

Yesterday, it was another fantastic day for The Poppins. Núria Poppins returned from Scotland and she’s with the family again. She explained her experiences there and they were very interesting.

Next, the family continued the English classes with Have to and some exercises about connectors. 

The Grandma knows that some exercises are more difficult than the recommended level but she prefers “to suffer in class not in the exam”.

More information: Have to vs. Must

Later, The Grandma tried to create a linchpin between England and Australia for one hand and Spain and Cuba for another, connecting them under the same storyline: stupid wars, innocent victims and colonialism.

Finally, The Poppins talked about some personal stories which had a relation with Scottish postcards. They were different stories about Costa Rica, children and new technologies, Andalusia, rock music, Torredembarra, the importance of light in pictures or beautiful castles from the Middle Age in Scotland to the new human ones in Catalan lands and an important reflexion: what’s the meaning of a lighthouse in the middle of the sea?

The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit.

Wim Wenders