TEMA DE RAP - MANUEL CLEMENTE 2PCPI

VACATIONS ARE COMING SOON!!!!!

The school season is about to end and hopefully we will enjoy our holidays very soon. Our students from 4º E.S.O. will be coming back from Newcastle this week and I am sure they will have had exciting and new experiences to tell.
Our students from 2º Bachillerato have had an extraordinary success in the so called "Pruebas de Acceso a la Universidad" and they really deserve some relaxing vacations and these lines is just to say goodbye but we will be seeing each other very soon in two months, so have a nice holiday everybody!!!!!!

EASTER

Easter is the most important festivity of the year for Christians. On Easter Day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter Day is on the first Sunday after the full moon in March. This day is between 22 March and 25 April. The date is later in the calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Non-Christians like Easter time because soem traditions remind people that nature is coming alive after winner.

The origins of Easter

The modern English word Easter may come from the name of an old northern pagan goddess. The goddess with the most similar name was Eastre, but there were other goddesses with names similar to Easter. They were all goddesses of spring and fertility. Pagans celebrated spring and the beginning of new life with festivals in March and April. When Christianity became important, the Christian Easter gradually replaced pagan festivals. But we still use today some symbols from pagan spring festivals: flowers and eggs were symbols of new life, and rabbits were symbols of fertility.

Easter Today

In the days before Easter American and British schoolchildren sometimes paint Easter eggs with bright colours.Families usually spend Easter Day together. The traditional Easter meal is roast lamb, new potatoes, peas and other vegetables. There are chocolate eggs for children. Some eggs have a surprise in them, others have someone's name on them, and others...just empty chocolate eggs!. Hot cross buns are typical on Good Friday in Britain. They are small, sweet cakes with a cross on top: the cross represents Jesus Christ' s death on the cross.

FERIA MEDIAVAL EN EL I.E.S. LOS ÁLAMOS

We celebrated the medieval festival with great success. Students and teachers took part in various activities.and we had great fun. Teachers and students got dressed in traditional costumes and they sold home-made food, and the weather was great, too!!!

VALENTINE'S DAY AT I.E.S LOS ÁLAMOS

On 14 February lovers celebrate Valentine's Day. People in love give each other cards and presents: flowers-especially roses- chocolates or jewellery. In the evening there are special parties, and couples sometimes go to restaurants for a romantic dinner. In New York City on the top of the Empire State Building there are red lights on Valentine's Day.
The ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia was on 15 February. On this day young men took the names of young women out of a vase. The couples formed in this way, stayed together until the next Lupercalia. As usual, the Christian Church wanted to replace pagan festivals with Christian festivals. So, at the end of the fifth century Pope Gelasius created St Valentine's Day on 14 February.
Nobody knows exactly who Valentine was. There are three possibilities:

1. Some people think he was a Christian priest when Claudius II was the Roman emperor. When he needed a lot of soldiers for his army, Claudius did not permit marriages, but Valentine performed marriages secretly.The authorities discovered this, and executed him in AD 270.
2. There were another two Valentines in the third century: the Romans executed them because they were Christians.
3. A legend says that one of them fell in love with the daughter of the prison keeper. before his execution he wrote a letter to her: he signed it "from your Valentine".

In the United States, young schoolchildren take to school the same number of Valentine's cards as the number of children in the class. There is no name on the envelope, but each child writes their name inside the cards. On Valentine's Day children make colourful red and pink decorations for their classroom, and the teacher gives the cards and some sweets to every child.

PEACE DAY ON I.E.S.LOS ALAMOS HIGH SCHOOL

The students from I.E.S. Los Álamos are celebrating Peace Day in our High School. Students from 3º and 4º E.S.O. are making posters on the issue and are working on Martin Luther King's life.The posters will be shown in the hall of our High School.

MARTHIN LUTHER KING DAY

On the third Monday in January America celebrates Martin Luther King Day. This is quite a new public holiday in the United States: it started in 1983. Doctor Martin Luther King,Jr. was an important person in the American Civil Rights movement. He believed in non-violence. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia and became a Baptist minister. At that time there was segregation in the southern states of America. Black people could not use certain types of public transport and go to the same schools and churches as white people. Doctor King didn't agree with this and he protested in public. The police arrested him several times. On one occasion John F. Kennedy asked the police to free King.
In many southern towns and cities, black people sat at the back of the bus and white people at the front. In 1955 in Alabama, one lady, Rosa Parks, refused to give her seat to a white person. The police came and arrested her. Dr. King organized a boycott of the bus system in her village. No black person used a bus in Montgomery for 382 days. In the end the Supreme Court decided to stop segregation on public transport. After this victory Dr King was famous. Later he campaigned against segregations and inequality in other cities in the South. In 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama he organised another peaceful protest. He invited children and young adults to march with him.
The police commissioner ordered his policemen to attack them with dogs and water cannons. Televisions and newspapers all over the world showed these pictures of police brutality. In August 1963 he helped to organise the Civil Rights march on Washington,DC. On that day he gave his most famous speech:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the
content of their character. I have a dream today".

More than 200,000 people listened to his speech. In 1964 America passed the Civil Rights Act. This changed the lives of African-American forever. In this year he won the Noble Prize Prize. On 4 April 1968 a man called James Earl Ray assassinated him in Memphis.
Every year Americans remember his work by celebrating this national holiday. All the schools close for the day. People try to help someone on this day. It is not a day for rest but a day to think about how we can help people.