Showing posts with label Ulisses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ulisses. Show all posts

Monday, 26 February 2018

MIRAMAR, SAN DIEGO, 1986: THE HEAVEN IN YOUR EYES

Top Gun cover, 1986
The Beans have just arrived this morning to San Diego where they're going to participate in the Comic Con. Before going to this event, the family has wanted to review some English grammar. They have been talking about some clues for the Present Perfect like Just, Already and Yet and about how to use Past Simple or Present Perfect.

More information: Already-Just-Yet

After doing some exercises counting the time to be prepared for the exam, the family has been playing to Scattergories and Paqui Bean has won again and again. 

The Beans have taken profit of their time writing some postcards to MJ and they have been talking about fair tales and their main characters before The Grandma had explained a private story with an old friend, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, who was one of the best F14 pilots in Miramar, San Diego in the last decade of the 80's. She remembers him like a handsome man with the reflex of the heaven in his eyes. He took her breath away.


Meanwhile The Beans have visited the most important places of San Diego included the Sea World where they have seen another old friend, Ulisses, an orca which was living in Barcelona some years ago and was moved to San Diego to live in better conditions, The Grandma has visited her old friend Maverick, who is a retired pilot now, and they have been remembering old memories in front of the Pacific.

The Grandma & Maverick together again in 2018
SeaWorld San Diego is an animal theme park, oceanarium, outside aquarium, and marine mammal park, located in San Diego, California inside the city's Mission Bay Park. The park is owned by the City of San Diego and operated by SeaWorld Entertainment.

SeaWorld San Diego is an accredited member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). Adjacent to the property is the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, which conducts research on marine biology and provides education and outreach on marine issues to the general public, including information in park exhibits.

More information: The Wrap

San Diego is a major city in California. It is in San Diego County, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, approximately 190 km south of Los Angeles and immediately adjacent to the border with Mexico.

San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest in California. The city is known for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbor, extensive beaches, long association with the United States Navy, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology development center.

Tania Bean and Ulisses in the SeaWorld San Diego
San Diego has been called the birthplace of California. Historically home to the Kumeyaay people, it was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area for Spain, forming the basis for the settlement of Alta California 200 years later. The Presidio and Mission San Diego de Alcalá, founded in 1769, formed the first European settlement in what is now California. 

In 1821, San Diego became part of the newly independent Mexico, which reformed as the First Mexican Republic two years later. California became part of the United States in 1848 following the Mexican–American War and was admitted to the union as a state in 1850.

More information: SeaWorld San Diego

The city is the seat of San Diego County and is the economic center of the region as well as the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. San Diego's main economic engines are military and defense-related activities, tourism, international trade, and manufacturing. The presence of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), with the affiliated UCSD Medical Center, has helped make the area a center of research in biotechnology.

Finally, this evening, The Beans have gone to the Comic-Con as special guests stars and they have enjoyed with the wonderful and fantastic world of illustrations.

The Beans arriving to the San Diego Comic-Con
San Diego Comic-Con International is a multi-genre entertainment and comic convention held annually in San Diego, California. The name, as given on its website, is Comic-Con International: San Diego; but it is commonly known simply as Comic-Con or the San Diego Comic-Con or SDCC.

Comic-Con International also produces two other conventions, WonderCon, held in Anaheim, and the Alternative Press Expo (APE), held in San Francisco. Since 1974, Comic-Con has bestowed its annual Inkpot Award on guests and persons of interest in the popular arts industries, as well as on members of Comic-Con's board of directors and the Convention committee. It is also the home of the Will Eisner Awards.

More information: San Diego Comic-Con


Beans, you are the top 1 percent of all English students. The elite. The best of the best. We’ll make you better… 

You might say we’ll make you the best of the best of the best. Those of you who can’t cut it to graduation will still be the best of the best. But you will simply be the rest of the best of the best, not the best of the best of the best, like the best of you will be.

I don’t imagine you have any questions, so I won’t even ask. 

Good luck, Beans. I’ll see you in the hotel. Class dismissed.

CDR Mike Viper Metcalf, Top Gun

Wednesday, 8 June 2016

SCIENCE: EPPUR SI MUOVE!

Top Gun
Yesterday, The Poppins studied passive voice in present and past. They read another new chapter of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and they worked with more elaborated texts. Moreover, they learnt how to create compounds using some adverbs and past participles. After some exercises of phonetic, the family has encouraged themselves to relax during some days to prepare the final exam in better conditions.


They visited Ulisses in SeaWorld under a terrible hot climate and they reminded old personal stories plenty of actions with nightmares, beaches and dangerous holy bibles.The Grandma has talked about two people very admired by her: Manel Esteller and Valentí Fuster. It was another interesting day because this family is a box plenty of surprises.

The family is finishing their Californian trip. The Grandma wants to visit Miramar to meet an old friend, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, a pilot who was Grandma’s lover in 1986. After, she wants to travel to Washington to visit another old friend but she prefers to ask her family before. 

Today, Eli Poppins is going to offer something incredible to the rest of the family. They’re intrigued.


There are four kinds of people in the world: 
those who make things change;
those who aim to ensure that things do not change; 
those who watch how things change 
and those who wonder at what point things changed.

Valentí Fuster

Tuesday, 7 June 2016

PEKE: FREEDOM OUT OF HOMETOWN

Yesterday, The Poppins did some exercises after they had talked about Past Perfect. They have finished the main grammar contents and now they’re learning some new theory.

The family practised with some texts to take speed and to try to understand as words as they could in a text and they read a new chapter of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Finally, they talked about zoos and nature and different species like falcons, owls, gorillas, killer whales or tortoises and what was better for them living in closed and protected areas or in open and dangerous areas.

More information: Past Perfect & Past Simple

Today, the family has an appointment with Ulisses in The SeaWorld of San Diego and all of them are excited because of this.


Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work though difficult problems. 
 Gever Tulley

Saturday, 4 June 2016

INNOVATION FROM SILICON VALLEY TO COMIC CON

Comic Con Logo
Yesterday, The Poppins visited Silicon Valley. It was an important day for all the family because Susana Poppins has been invited to participate in the opening of the annual convention about apps.

It was an incredible experience and all The Poppins enjoyed every minute of that incredible speech. Before assisting to the convention, the family had been reviewing some English grammar. They have been working Present Perfect and its clues Already, Just, Yet and Ever during all the week.

More information: Already, Just & Yet

The trip is arriving to the end and now is the moment to start to work with complex exercises, mixing tenses and trying to learn some things of an upper level. The family practised the difference between Past Simple and Present Perfect.


Next Monday, The Poppins are going to San Diego to visit Miramar and to prepare its assistance in the Comic Con next July, 21-24. The Grandma is a great fan of comics and TV Series and she wants to assist to this future convention.
More information: Comic Con San Diego

Finally, in the same city, The Poppins are going to visit Ulisses, an old friend, the male orca which lives in SeaWorld and lived in Barcelona before arriving to California. Ulisses (Ulysses) was captured on November 7, 1980 at Reydarfjördur, Iceland, when he was approximately 3 years old and moved to Barcelona where he and Snowflake were the most loved members of the local zoo. After staying in San Diego, Ulisses has had three children: Moanà, Amaya and Kalia.


Comics are a gateway drug to literacy.

 Art Spiegelman