Saint Valentine’s Day

On February the 14th, we celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day. As you know it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine’s cards, presenting flowers, or offering confectionary.
In this school, students in the Fourth course always go on a trip to celebrate they finish their Secondary Education, so they took this opportunity to earn some money to help them in their school trip.
They made some paper flowers and everybody in the school could send a flower with a note to a boy or a girl in the form of “valentines”.

There are us wearing Valentine’s symbols.

If you want to see more photos click here. We hope you like them.

Videoconference

Last week some students from Selgas School had the opportunity to share a lesson with students from Hofstad Lyceum. It was a new learning experience through videoconference with an extremely interesting presentation offered by Bjorn Klinkenberg with the title: "Racism, migration and gender". Next week, Pilar Cuello, from the Teacher's Training Center of Avilés, will give the second lesson, on "Gender" this time.

Selgas School is really involved in this project and wants to thank Hofstad Lyceum for their encouragement and support to carry it out.

Ana Peláez

Selgas Secondary School Principal

Cider

Cider is a traditional drink that is made from apples. This drink consists of fermented apple juice. It’s very popular in Asturias.
It’s made in a ‘llagar’. Apples are collected from the trees and stored until they are ripe. Then, they are crushed to get the liquid. The cider is kept in big barrels until it ferments. Then, it is bottled and sold. There are two types of cider: the acid cider has alcohol. The sweet cider hasn’t got alcohol.

It is peculiar the way it is served. In this ritual the cider must be ‘escanciada’. The taste is different when a good ‘escanciador’ (person who serves the glass of cider) works properly:He (or she) rises the bottle over his head and makes the cider fall against the edge of the glass. When it strikes the glass it becomes oxygenated. That action is called ‘escanciar’. Then, you must drink it at once. You don’t drink it all. Some dregs stay at the bottom of the glass.

That´s the way you have to "escanciar" (Villa is from Asturias and he knows it well)

It is drunk in traditional festivals in Asturias like the ‘Amagüestu’. In this festival adults and children drink cider and eat roasted chestnuts. Children drink sweet cider, of course!. Adults always take the alcoholic drink and sometimes, when the party finishes, they are not very sober.

Here is Marina showing us how to do it

Cider is popular in Asturias because we used to have a lot of apple trees and lots of apples every two years (there’s a good harvest every two years). It is drunk since the Roman period. In the nineteenth century they started to bottle it. They started to ‘escanciar’ it.

Yurena Gancedo y Marina Granda

Mirian´s family

My name is Mirian, I live in Asturias, in the north of Spain. We are a common family: my mum, my dad, my sister and me.

My mum is called Juana. She is forty-six years old. She is a cleaner and she works in a hotel near our town. My dad is called José Ramón. He is a fisherman. My sister’s name is Noelvis. She is twenty-four year old. She doesn’t work. She is a student. She is studying at University in Gijon. My aunt lives ten kilometres away from us. She has got tree children: Angel Roberto is thirty years old; Patricia is twenty-eight yeas old and Dario is twenty-five years old. I like playing football with my cousin Dario.I also have another cousin Abraham. He is five years old. My little cousin is very nice. He says that he wants to marry me. My grandfather, my mother’s father, lives alone in a house, near us, so I can spend a lot of time talking with him. He isn’t mean and he sometimes gives me some money.

Write to me soon. Kisses.

This is me, with my parents, my sister and my brother in law in the day of my First Communium