Halloween

Halloween is a shortened form of All Hallow's Eve.

Halloween means holy - Eve is the day before a holy day.

Halloween was an ancient British Celtic

festival.At Halloween the souls of the dead returned. People lit bonfires to frighten evil spirits.

Now bonfires are only burnt on November 5th - Bonfire Night.

• masks
• costumes
• ghosts
• witches on broomsticks with black cats
• skeletons
• bats and spiders
• and Halloween lanterns

...have all become part of Halloween

Children play trick-or-treat. They ask for a treat hoping to geht sweets.

I found a funny halloween video on "youtube.com", which you can see if you click on this link.

My favourite advertisement

It's the Nike football advertising with Robinho.

link

Press review - Running on empty

I read an article the other day in the online version of “economist.com” and it talks about strikes in France, because of a pension reform. I thought you might be interested, because our class is going to France at the end of this school year.

Basically what it says is that the French president Mr. Sarkozy wants to raise the legal minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 years. The outcome was that the French were striking to prevent this law.

There are infrequent trains, absent teachers, undelivered post and unprinted newspapers, like it is on every other strike. Unfortunately this strike is already takin longer than usual strikes and the workers of all refineries, lorry drivers and school pupils joined in too. Now the government is having a big problem, because the country is running out of petrol, because of the striking oil workers.

In my opinion the strikes in France are silly and unnecessary, because the country has high debts as a result of their pension system. So they have to save money to pay the pension in the future and I don’t understand this long strikes. In Austria we can draw a pension at the age of 65, so the French should be happy with the minimum retirement age of 62.

Vocabulary:

minimum retirement age (Pensionsantrittsalter) – The minimum retirement age is 60 years.

to prevent (verhindern) – The people try to prevent a law.

draw a pension (Pension beanspruchen) – In Austria we can draw a pension at the age of 65.

Farrah

Farrah is a student from the USA and she comes from Maryland, which is close to Washinton D.C.

Now she lives in Linz, because she is in Austria to learn German.

The things she loves most of Austria are the mountains and the pretty, old cities.

Farrah has already visited Vienna, Linz, Perg, Saubach and Innsbruck.

Her hobbies are reading, meeting friends, travelling and watching movies.

She stays in Austria until may, but if she wants she can stay another year.

Farrah has already been in a lot of european countries. There are Germany, France, UK, Belgium, Greece and Switzerland.

The said that the biggest different between Austria and the United States is that in Austria everything is much smaller.

At her home in Maryland she has got some pats like a dog, a cat, a turtle and a parrot.