11/24/2011

Lviv here I come!

iT'S GONNA BE A REALLY DIFFICULT DAY TOMORROW....
And then a night on a bus to Lviv, one of the most famous cities of Ukraine...
It's a social / working trip.
I enrolled to be a holiday rep, and we're going to have practice lessons in Lviv...
And then a huge party...
when do i sleep?
 :(


Keep your fingers crossed for me my sweeties! :)

11/08/2011

"It's been a hard days night...."

Hello world! Or should I say good evening?

It's been a really long day for me... But when I think about the long weekend I'm glad there are only two more days of work left :) I plan on having a Dress-up Halloween party on Saturday :) - Would you like to see my outfit? :P

Anyway, coming back to the subject: Let's speak about being tired....
You could say after a long day that  you're dog-tired - which basically means - you are extremely tired.
To use a lot of intelligent words, you could say:  I am  utterly exhausted! - which also means being very, very tired :)

You could also quote (or sing) a Beatles Song:
It's been a hard days night, and I've been working like a dog,
It's been a hard days night, I should be sleeping like a log.

To make your teachers exceptionally proud of you you could say: 

I am so dog-tired that I need to hit the hay at once!
to hit the hay - means to go to sleep...
Imagine the time of peasants when after a long day's work in the field they came home to their little cottages and beds of straw and hay and went to sleep. For some reason the saying "hit the hay" is still used :)

I know you want another idiom, don't you? :D:D
Ok, here you go...
You could be very tired but you might not be able to sleep at night.
So you might  toss and turn all night - which would mean you kept moving and moving and couldn't "find you place", or if you didn't sleep at all, you would say  "I didn't sleep a wink!"

I hope that makes you sleepy my dear readers! :) Any plans for the long weekend?



________
Glossary:

a log - a cut-down tree
peasants - farmers/workers - the low social class in the Middle Ages / past :)
a wink (more often used as a verb so: "to wink") to quickly close and open you eyes or eye...

10/23/2011

New week, new dream, new idiom :)

Tomorrow a new week begins- hurrah? Why are weekends so damn short?!
But at least I rested a bit, though I should be doing stuff for my other "jobs"...

I wish there was a way to sleep ahead of time... Like you know: you sleep for e.g. 50 hours during the weekend and "store" those hours for later. And then during the week when you're tired - you open the jar with those 50 hours and say: "Let me take out 8 hours of sleep" and you immediately regenerate, you are rested and ready to do stuff again, without wasting time to sleep :) Like saving money in a piggybank and taking bits and bits during the week for little stuff... :)


As for an idiom - let's have to start from scratch - it is about beginning after all.
Imagine a situation when you are doing an experiment or project but in the middle it turns out it was wrong and you need to start again - so you start from scratch :)

Please remember, though, that you cannot say from the scratch of time - meaning from the beginning of time.
To start from scratch means "to begin" but refers to e.g. repeating a project, experiment, investigation (they frequently use it in CSI etc.

Anyway - What are you guys doing this week? :)

10/22/2011

Youtube Read-along!

I finally posted your voice sample onto wrzuta! They are all on facebook. Please vote for your favorite voices so we can record this masterpiece :)
here's a link to the main page: Facebook voting.


If you like any voice in particular - you can write it here :)

10/18/2011

Voting? :)

I'm taking part in this comeptition to win a Nokia 500 :)
If you like my entry please vote for your Broszka (I never asked for any votes but I see everybody does so why shouldn't I? :P )
My entry
You can also take part and come up with a nice story :)

10/17/2011

You really can't teach an old dog new tricks...(idiom)

Today a bit pessimistically.
To start off, the topic of today's post: You can't teach an old dog new tricks which basically means that many people have fixed ideas about the world, a certain type of character or a habit that is difficult, or sometimes impossible to change.

To give an easy example: your grandmother may be very reluctant to learn how to use facebook or turn on the computer. For some, she is the perfect example of the "dog" that doesn't want to learn anything new (the new trick) which in this case is using the computer.

I have a friend, a very dear friend who is a wonderful human being - caring, helpful, trustworthy and would do anything to help you if you were in trouble, BUT he sucks at long distance communication (unfortunately, he lives quite far away from me so we can't easily communicate). The sad thing is, he suddenly becomes this totally different person: he seems to stop caring. Why is he "the dog"? Because explaining that contact is needed, and sending him countless e-mails doesn't work. He simply can't write long e-mails or keep in touch on a regular basis! and neither I nor anyone else can teach him to write more often. That's just not his style.
And I'm afraid, I have to accept it. It is a bitter pill to swallow but what else can I do?

Do you have similar experiences? with friends that don't stay in contact? or maybe you have other examples of "dogs not learning new tricks"? Tell me!!! (practice your English god damnit! :) )

_______

Glossary:
(adj) fixed - already decided and unable to be changed
(noun) reluctant - not willing (= unwilling)
(phrasal verb) to keep in touch with sb - to stay in contact
(idiom) A bitter pill to swallow - an unpleasant situation that simply needs to be accepted.

10/15/2011

My Teeth! (Idioms)

Hello,
As some of you may or may not know - it is not always possible to create a video. You may lack time, you may look terrible, you may be sick, you may be tired etc. So in many cases it is much easier to post a message and put it on a blog. That is one of the reasons why this site came to exist.


Today, trivially, about teeth. A while back I posted a video about teeth and my wisdom teeth. Well, they're acting up again! And Maciuś has also recently suffered  because of his teeth :( He had one of his fangs removed because it was broken :( He had to be  anesthetized and it was a terrible experience for him :( 

So as you can see, the topic of teeth just won't go away! Hence, I must return to this topic and give you some more idioms connected with teeth :)

IF you have no idea what I'm talking about, here is a video with the first portion of tooth idioms (in PL):  Idiom Vlogu: "Zębowe idiomy" (Beware! It's old!!!!)


In this one you have:

by the skin of one's teeth  - just barely
to be armed to the teeth - have a lot of weapons
search something through a fine-tooth comb  -  look for something really carefully.

To make learning more interesting here are two more!

1) To lie through one's teeth

If you lie through your teeth - you are a terrible liar!
Jesse was lying through his teeth when he told me about the accident! it was a big fat lie!

2)  To set one's teeth on edge

if you set somebody's teeth on edge -  

a) you are irritated because it's a terrible sound: 
It really sets my teeth on edge when she scratches her fork against the plate...

b) you are annoyed / upset because of someone:
It sets my teeth on edge when he lies through his teeth! (NOW THAT'S A NICE DOUBLE IDIOM SENTENCE!!!!!)
  



I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE LESSON, BYE!!!
(And I seriously need to go to the dentist.... :( )

__________

Glossary:

to lack something - when sth is missing.
wisdom teeth (or tooth) - the infamous number 8 teeth :)
to act up - to become active (e.g. hurt again) after a period of being inactive. 
Beware! -  Look out!/ (in many cases: be careful!) 

Cleaning! (Vocab)

Today (Friday) I cleaned throughout most of the day. I finally threw out half the contents of my shelves near the bed. They were mostly old medicine, pills, lozenges, lotions etc. You won't believe how old some of the stuff was! I think the oldest lotion had the expiration date of 2008! Jesus... gotta take more care of that :)
I also cleaned my workplace  - all my course books are in place, dictionaries, pens and pencils - ready to give more NDST (Fails) hahaha! Joking....

I guess I might say my desk is clean as a whistle - which means squeaky clean and this means it's really really clean :)

PS. Naturally Maciuś had to test it out, so he slept on that squeaky clean desk for about an hour :)

______

Glossary:
lozenges - "suckable" pills for the throat :)
to squeak - to make a high-pitched sound (like a mouse)
In the case of squeaky clean I think it means that something is so clean from scrubbing that if you scrubbed or rubbed it any more, there would be a squeaky sound :) I think it's actually pretty easy to imagine :)
to be clean as a whistle -  very very clean

10/14/2011

Greetings

Hello everybody it's me Broszka :)

I'm new to this thing so I need some tips, advice and a bit of understanding for the future :)
I'll try to  write posts as often as it is possible.
I figure, we can all benefit from it:

You, as readers and participators, practice your English, hopefully learn new stuff;

I, the writer, will keep myself busy and possibly have a teeny bit of accomplishment and feel appreciated. You may not know this, but the job of a teacher is not generally respected. Kids tend to hate you, you frequently have to force them to do anything... They have negative feeling towards you, so sometimes you have negative feelings towards them... To cut a long story short - we are the bad guys. *sigh*  But that's a topic for a whole new post. :)
Anyway - hope we'll all enjoy the journey :)
See you next time, bye!!!!

_______


To cut a long story short - a nice idiomatic expression that means exactly what it says :) So instead of talking about something for a very long time you decide to skip the boring stuff and just talk about the most important,