Saint Patrick´s Day by Lidia

Saint Patrick was the patron saint and the national apostle of Ireland who is credited with bringing christianity to Ireland.

He is most known for driving the snakes from Ireland. It is true there aro no snakes in Ireland, but never have been. As in many old pagan religions, serpent symbols were common and often worshipped.

Saint Patrick´s day has been associated with everything Irish: green and gold, shamrocks, luck... Saint Patrick´s day is a traditional day for spitirual renewal.

The Irish are descendants of the ancient Celts, but the Vikings, Normans and English contributed to the ethnic nature of the people. English rule eliminated the use of the ancient Gaelic, or Irish, language.

Saint Patrick is celebrated on 17th of Martch because is the day that he died: that is the theory.

With the exception of restaurants and pubs, almost all businesses close on March 17th.

In American cities with large Irish population, Saint Patrick´s day is a very big deal, celebrated with parades "wearing of the green", music and songs, Irish food and drink, activities for kids such as crafts, coloring and games.

Some comunities even go so far as to dye rivers or streams green!!

An email from abroad

Hi Iñaki:

Greetings from Barcelona, Spain. I´m here with my family and some friends in a trip.

I´ve never been here before and I love it.

We have been here for a week now and we´ve done lots of exciting things: we´ve visited

the Sagrada Familia and the Camp Nou, that is the football stadium of F.C. Barcelona.

Fortunately the weather is fantastic. All the days have been sunny since we got off the

plane. I hope it continue the same way.

I´ve met lots of fantastic people and I´ve made some new funny friends.

I have already bought lots of souvenirs and I´ve taken a lot of pictures to show you when

we get back.

See you in a few days.

Take care, Lidia.

A story about an accident- Chrismas

This is a story about my last Christmas hollyday:

The story starts on a cold, beautiful and a covered of snow day in Navarra (15th December). I was very excited.

I packed all my winter clothes and a few other things in my fathers car. Were going to visit Valencia.

We were familiar with the area, so we took a shortcut throught a country road. My father was drivin along in the car when two of our tyres burst. Within minutes it started raining heavily. My father tried to send a SOS message to somebody or to the police, but the mobile phone hadn´t got coverage!!. So we decide to get into the car. We had some food for the travel, but not for four or more days and two bottles: one with Coke and the other with mineral water.

So, the days passed and we ran out of food and drink. We were very unhappy and scared...were going to lost Christmas... and we started writing goodbye letters to our family and friends. And one morning, we heard a police car, because it had the alarm! We knew we were safe. We felt happy and proud ourselves. We managed to survive for ten days in our car in two navour metres, thanks for our patience and survival skills...

But the story don´t ends there, because I passed ( finally) Christmas in the hospital!! It was funny.