MONTSE BOND: OUT HERE ON MY OWN

Montse Bond and her scrapbooking works

Montse Bond. Cheerleader. Vatican City. 

I'm Montse Bond. I was born in Rome because there aren't hospitals in Vatican City. I'm from this country, the smallest in the world although one of the richest and more powerful. 

I was a diver but I decided to change my working life and now, I'm a cheerleader. It's not easy to be a cheerleader in Vatican City because is one of the places in the world when the presence of women is limited but I like challenges. I love reading and make scrapbooking.

-Good morning, Montse Bond and thanks to attend us.

-Good morning. It's an enormous pleasure.

-How's life in Vatican City?

-Well, it's like in other places but in a smaller version.

-Is difficult to be a woman there?

-No, it isn't. It's difficult to arrive to a workplace of responsibility inside the Diplomatic corps or the Catholic Church because, of course, all of them are for men.

-And?

-You must cross borders and search an your opportunity in other place.

-Are you optimistic?

-Yes, I am. I believe in believing. Without hope and trust in yourself you start your race in a position less than zero. You must believe. Believe in yourself; believe in your ideas; believe in your projects. If you don't believe, it's very difficult to reach something.

-Your message seems a coacher's one.

-I like coaching. It's something that I control and I'm good at this. I enjoy a lot.

-Who's your favourite coacher?

-It's impossible to choose. I like Gandhi, because he carried all his nation to freedom; Martin Luther King, because he was proud of his people and his culture and fought for them; Nelson Mandela, because he learnt how to live in peace and respect with her own oppressor and broke the chains that joined with him when he had his chance to do it and Pere Casaldàliga, because he fights for keeping the native cultures of Mato Grosso away from speculators and multinational enterprises.

-If you had to choose only one...

-Charles Chaplin.

-Charles Chaplin?

-Yes. Charles Chaplin put cinema on the top of art with his mute films. Expressing feelings without voice is very difficult. He was a master of communication, a genius of interpretation and a critic voice in front of injustice and abuse of power. He suffered a terrible prosecution because of McCarthyism and he had to exile. He was an uncomfortable voice in a world that only wanted to listen to comfortable and beautiful messages.

-You think that we are not prepared to listen to bad things, don't you?

-Yes, I do. People want to buy happiness and this is something that you can’t buy with money.

-Why do you think people are not happy enough?

-I don't know but I can see that, in general, people don't appreciate little things which are the most important: a sunrise, a good moment with your family or your friends, an afternoon making scrapbooking...

-How can we fight against this?

-Every person has his/her own vision of life. It's difficult to say a good advice for everybody but I can say what I do and I enjoy my life day and night, perhaps, this is the reason I'm a cheerleader. I want to share my happiness with the rest of the world.

-How is possible to change from a diver to a cheerleader?

-Why not? Searching a work is not a question of who you are, it's a question of what you are able to do, which are your skills and how much resistance you are able to offer. I had always wanted to be a diver but I had a terrible experience with a shark. Shark is a dangerous animal which lives in oceans and rivers and finds its prey with its sense of smell. I was swimming and I found one in front of me. It was a terrible experience. I thought I was going to die and since that day I think in life with other terms.

-How do you feel being a member of The Bond's family?

-It has been a fantastic experience. I'm very shy and when I was a new member of The Bond's family I feel a little strange but it was a feeling of five minutes. They're very good people and you can trust on them. This is very important.

-How is a normal day with The Bonds?

-We haven't got normal days. Every day is a new day and a little treasure that you must enjoy.

-How long have you been studying English?

-Since the Primary School. I speak Latin and Italian. Both of them are Romanic languages and it's very difficult to study English because we have a different phonetic.

-What can you explain about your life with The Bonds?

-The most important for us is travelling and knowing new cultures because we believe in diversity, respect and tolerance.

-Which is your best memory with the family?

-It's difficult to choose only one but I remember when I talk about miracles and beliefs. It was a good experience that I remember with a lot of happiness. It was a joyful day.

-You like reading, don't you. Recommend me a book...

-I'm reading three books at time. One is about sinister and disturbing stories of people obsessed with blood; another is about Levi Strauss, the man who invented the jeans and the last is about Christopher Columbus who believed that the Earth was round and decided to sail west from Spain in August 3rd 1492. He was travelling for ten weeks when a sailor saw a bird, followed it and arrived to the island he named San Salvador.

-Which is your philosophy in life?

-Albert Einstein said that "creativity is intelligence having fun". I like this quote and I would add that you must be out of your own.

-Thank you very much, Montse Bond.

-You're welcome.

Sometimes I wonder where I've been,

who I am, do I fit in.
Make believin' is hard alone,

out here on my own.
We're always provin' who we are

always reachin' for the risin' star

to guide me far
and shine me home,
out here on my own.

Irene Cara

SEAN SCULLY: ART BETWEEN DUBLIN AND BARCELONA

Jaume Bond in the Giant's Causeway

First time The Grandma visited the Giant's Causeway in North Ireland, she was impressed by the beauty of the place. She was accompanied by an old friend who was an expert in vulcanoes and who was the responsible of this visit.

Some years later, during an exposition in Barcelona, The Grandma discovered Sean Scully, an Irish artist whose paintings are recognized around the world. It was impossible not to think in Giant's Causeway after seeing these beautiful art.

Today, The Bonds have visited the Giant's Causeway without Sean Scully but with Montse and Jaume Bond two experts in art and painting meanwhile Eli Bond has explained who is Sean Scully and why he is so important for the Catalan community.

More information: The Giant's Causeway Official Guide

Sean Scully  is an Irish-born American-based painter and printmaker who has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. His work is collected in major museums worldwide.

Montse Bond's painting

Scully was born in Dublin and raised in South London. He studied at Croydon College of Art and Newcastle University. He was a recipient of a graduate fellowship at Harvard in the early 1970s and subsequently settled in New York. Scully was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1989 and 1993. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, and is represented in the permanent collections of a number of museums and public galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the National Gallery of Australia, the Tate Gallery, London, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and many other private and public collections worldwide. 

In 2006 Scully donated eight of his paintings to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, which opened an extension that year with a room dedicated to Scully's works.

In 2005 to 2006, Scully's Wall of Light series was displayed at museums across the United States. The work originated in a trip Scully took to Mexico in 1983. He combines abstract works with figures.

More information: Sean Scully Studio

I hold to a very Romantic ideal of what's possible in art, and I hold to the idea of the 'personal universal.' This is a complex agenda. My project is complicated in this way, and in that sense I'm out of fashion. I'm going against the current trend towards bizarreness, oddness; as you just called it, the 'esoteric', which of course was around in the 1930s. That's what is being revisited now. In between the two great wars, there was a very strong period, particularly in Europe, of a strange, bizarre, distorted and perverse kind of figuration, with freaks in the paintings. Very disturbing twins, subjects like that. These paintings were mostly coming out of Italy and Germany. Now we have a return to that, again in a strange period, after the end of Modernism - Sean Scully said.

Montse Bond's Painting

As of 2015, Scully lives and works in New York City, Barcelona and Munich. In 2015 he restyled Santa Cecilia Chappel next to Montserrat Abbey in Catalonia. He was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.

Scully's paintings are often made up of a number of panels and are abstract. Scully paints in oils, sometimes laying the paint on quite thickly to create textured surfaces. After a brief initial period of hard-edge painting Scully abandoned the masking tape while retaining his characteristic motif of the stripe which he has developed and refined over time. His paintings typically involve architectural constructions of abutting walls and panels of painted stripes. 

In recent years he has augmented his trademark stripes by also deploying a mode of compositional patterning more reminiscent of a checkerboard. He has stated that this style represents the way in which Ireland has moved towards a more chequered society. He stated in 2006, I remember growing up in Ireland and everything being chequered, even the fields and the people - he said.

More information: Santa Cecília de Montserrat-Espai d'Art Sean Scully

When I got into art school, I thought it was paradise. 

I wanted to be an artist so much that 

I was really driven and nothing could stop me.  

Sean Scully

HEY HEY, THE BONDS HAVE SAVED THE WORLD TODAY

The Grandma in Casa Vicens, Barcelona

Monday finds you like a bomb, it's a bad day for starting or finishing something. This is the reason because of The Bonds have choosen Tuesday to say goodbye to The Grandma.  They are going to stay in Ireland during some days but The Grandma has decided to return to Barcelona to redecorate her new home. She has bought Casa Vicens, an Antoni Gaudí's building in the center of the city.

That's been left ticking there too long. The ties that join The Bonds are so strong that they're goingto conitnue working together to reach their new objective and The Grandma is going to help despite of the distance.

You're bleeding in this hard work but nothing is won without effort and persistance. The Bonds are very strong people, perhaps because of the influence of Irene and María José Bond who have Aragonese ancestors.

Some days there's nothing left to learn, like today. The Bonds have dedicated their day to enjoy themselves and remember beautiful old memories, which are part of their story, now. In fact, The Bonds are History.

From the point of no return, you can't change these things that you thing you could have done better but with the experience of them, you won't do them again. Life is a constant way of learning things and we need to be resilient like Eli, Olga and Paula Bond who are a wonderful example of resistance against adversity.

You're leaving and you're still here in our memories. Rubén, Raquel and Miriam Bond, three beloved members of our family who decided to follow their own paths.

Hey Hey I saved the world today, I have created a new family plenty of happiness, illusion and creativity like The Collins, The Addams, The Holmes and The Poppins, The Bonds have become in another great experience which arrives farther than teaching English.

The Bonds have saved the world today

Everybody's happy now, Mariona Bond has decided to celebrate her birthday with the family and Maya Bond has cooked delicious cookie monsters for all the family.

The bad thing's gone away. It has been time to forget real situations and create a new world, a parallel universe where we have been the owners of our own future without paying attention to work, money or personal affairs.

And everybody's happy now remembering David and Pedro Bond  in Oasis Bar, being the Queens of the Carnival or Joanjo winning the Eurovision Song Contest.

The good thing's here to stay. MJ has arrived with our titles and suddenly have appeared lots of good memories about two intensive months travelling, working, laughing and sharing the best of us: our creativity and interest in learning new things. From The Cathars to The Navajo, we have been travelling across our history, our languages and our culture to realize that there's something that everybody shares: the idea of a better future for our next generations. We've listened motivational stories of Noemí Bond who have talked us about resilience and connections.

Please let it stay, share these fantastic moment with us because the future is unknown and nobody knows what is going to happen tomorrow. 

There's a million mouths to feed and Montse and Jaume Bond know it. They have prepared a delicious omelette and a fantastic cake for the family.

Jaume Bond or James Bond? Mmmm...

And I've got everything I need. I don't need money or treasures. I need to do something that gives sense to my work, then to my life. I want a better future for all the members of my families, because a better future for them means a future full of opportunities in a land of hope and dreams. 

I'm breathing. I've received some presents of my family and I'm astonished. I don't deserve them. It's my work and nobody receives nothing to do her work. I have grown under Master Yoda philosophy and I know that you must do things or not. There isn't another option.

And there's a hurting thing inside, the final is closer although we still have two months to stay in contact, two well-planned months to work together to reach the next objective.

But I've got everything to hide, this feeling of loneless that has invided me when I have said goodbye to the family.

I'm grieving. I’ll miss you.

Let it stay. Let all the memories stay with us forever because they’re going to help us to smile when difficult days arrive.

Let it stay. Let all memories stay with us forever, strong enough to be resistent to the fire which destroyed our past and to the forgetfulness which destroys our present. Be ready family, our future will be splendorous.

Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo the good thing.

The Bonds have saved the world today.

One of the most qualities of true friendship is

to understand and be understood. 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

MONTSE BOND: SEARCHING TRUE CONNECTIONS

Montse Bond and The Prince of Egypt

This story is true but it's not necessary that you believe it.

Days before Miriam decided to communicate her decision of starting in a new job, she went with me and other partners to drink a cup of coffee. In that moment, she was waiting for an answer but she didn't know anything. Then, I said her "Have faith!".

In that moment, when we returned to the class I sang to myself one song for her. It's the song that Miriam sings in The Prince of Egypt. Listen to this song...

The last day, before Miriam had communicated her new work in our class, she connected San Francisco with Sister Act. In this film, Mary Clarens was working with the sisters in the convent.

Finally, the last connection was when she revealed the name of the enterprise where she was going to work. What was my surprise? My brothers are working there!

It's possible that all had been a coincidence but I believe in causalities.

Thanks for your attention!

 

Who knows what miracles,
you can achieve.
When you believe somehow you will,
you will when you believe.

Mariah Carey / Whitney Houston

CARNIVAL IN TENERIFE: CREATING YOUR FAKE PROFILE

Ready to enjoy the Canarian Carnival

The Bonds have just arrived to Tenerife Island in Canary Islands. They are going to stay four days in the island enjoying the carnival, one of the most famous around the world.

There are three kinds of carnival. For one hand, you can enjoy the pro-protest carnival, where people wear different costumes and are critic with real characters o situations, especially, politics and religious. You can find this carnival in places like Vilanova i la Geltrú or Sitges, in Barcelona. For other hand, you can enjoy another carnival, a great coloured-party where people sing and dance without stopping. You can find this carnival in places like Rio de Janeiro in Brazil or Tenerife Island in Canary Islands and finally, there is Venice. Venice is Venice.

More information: Canaval de Tenerife (English Version)

Carnival is a synonymous of costumes and fake identities, and this is the reason because of the family is starting to prepare their own fake profiles.

The Bonds have wanted to visit the lucky islands because of Montse Bond, who has an old friend in the island, Nikka and she wished to visit her but they're not only going to participate in the carnivale, the family wants to climb up Teide, the Canarian volcano and visits two more islands: Hierro and La Palma, two volcanic islands very important for the future of the planet.

These two visits are the reason because of The Bonds are assisting in that moment to a conference about occupational hazards. They want to climb up volcanoes and walk across high dangerous sismic zones and they need to know as things as it was possible about protection against these dangers.

More information: ILO List of Occupational Diseases

Next Monday, The Grandma is going to talk about ecology, nature and colours to prepare a new day about environment.

It's a party that's being organized; it's not a protest. 

The carnival is not like it was a long time ago. 

Before it was do as you like, take to the streets.
 

Michel Martelly

OASIS BAR: ÉÍ 'AANÍÍGÓÓ 'ÁHOOT'É FOR THE BONDS

Native American, ancient culture and language

While The Bonds were practising Countable & Uncountable nouns, the Highway Patrol arrived. They wanted to know how was possible that all their transports were full of peyote, a beautiful plant of the desert.

The family had been visiting Navajo Nation and they were impressioned by the resistance of this incredible and ancient community so important for our recent history and their wonderful language which was used in the WWII by the Codetalkers. They discovered The Blessing Way an important Navajo ritual.

More information: Navajo Code

Every member of the family explained his/her alibi to demonstrate that they were innocent and they didn't know anything about this wonderful plant.

More information: Countable & Uncountable

The Grandma explained how she was in her Indian tent with Mariona Bond who was totally slept while Pedro, David and Maya Bond were drinking some Navajo beer, this which has a black and gold tag, in Oasis Bar. M.José Bond was with Paula Bond dancing country line while Noemí Bond was trying to help some rich people, who seemed Arabian but were only native ones with some handkerchiefs on their heads, and wanted to be cured by the magic powers of Noemí's hands. Olga and Eli Bond were watching TV when Juanjo and Irene Bond took photos and disturbed some local scorpions and Jaume was sculpting an Indian Totem that Montse had demanded him.

Police has believed nothing and they're all under suspect waiting tomorrow when an FBI team is going to arrive to help the local police and all The Bonds are going to be analized by the true machine. God helps them!

 Always assume your guest is tired, cold, and hungry, 

and act accordingly.  

Navajo Proverb

WELCOME TO NEW YORK CITY, WELCOME MONTSE BOND

Montse Bond in New York City

Today, The Bonds are reviewing some Social English and some grammar: Present Simple vs. Present Continuous.

More info: P.Simple vs. P.Continuous

The Grandma explains a story every day and today she's talking about the sinister origin of Juanjo Bond and the tradition of Thanksgiving Day.  

Maya Bond is explaining how to cook a delicious dish: chili con carne, chili with meat.

Download Chilli Beans by Maya Bond

The  family has a new member: Montse Bond. She's Eli Bond's secret daughter, a result of an old German romance, and the real reason about Jaume Bond's behaviour last week in Berlin.

All the family is in New York City now and they're preparing a plan for a week. The Grandma wants to go to Broadway to watch Barbra Streisand in concert; Brooklyn, to visit Richard Castle, an old friend who is an international writer and she wants to know more things about the CSI team with Mac Taylor and Stella Bonasera.

Finally, the family plays Bingo with Noemí and Pedro Bond to enjoy themselves.

I grew up in New York City, a town with different races, religions, 

and peoples. It breeds tolerance.

Donald Trump