THE TRAVELLING COINS

This is the story I have written for my course Drama & Storytelling. I hope you like it!

THE TRAVELLING COINS

She could not believe they were there again. This time it was not a dream. It was real, the mess of trolleys and bags, the uncertainty of tourists, the tired look of residents, and people speaking Italian all around, the language that sounds like music to her.

They rented a car at Fiumicino airport and drove to Tuscany. They enjoyed the sunset and the sparking lights of little villages. They arrived at Rodellosso country house.  The hostess received them with a smile, a homemade cake and a bottle of red wine.

 “Isn’t it a dream, really?”, she thought.

The next morning after the sun and the rooster songs entered their room softly, they went to Pienza. They saw a telephone box and they decided to phone the family. Sergio got the receiver and inserted a coin. Somebody answered the phone on the other side and the line went off, and so did the coin. Surprisingly, he got mad about it.

“How can I make a complaint to recuperate our coin?”, he said furiously.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible. Forget it and enjoy. Let’s have an espresso!” answered Lucía. He stared at the telephone box promising revenge.

They went to Siena the next day. They escaped from the pigeons in the piazza walking along the narrow streets. Suddenly a telephone box stood opposite them. Sergio challenged it and went straight into it with a bright euro coin in his hand. But the same thing happened again. His face turned red and his look bitter. Lucía could not help laughing and a battle started. So they decided to ignore telephone boxes during the whole holiday.

And the last day came. They were driving to the airport when suddenly they had to stop at a toll road. There were several coins outside the basket. Sergio stopped the car, got out and picked his two coins. He had a triumphal smile when he entered the car.  He explained that the Italian Tourist Board offers this service to travelers who wasted their money on telephone boxes before leaving the country. Lucía did not say a word. She sighed and started missing Italy.

Written by ANA Mª HERNÁNDEZ DOMÍNGUEZ

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

As I have told you several times. Valentine's Day is celebrated in English speaking countries in a more extended way than here. People send cards to all the people they love and towns and cities are decorated with love so there is a magical atmosphere everywhere.I usually write posts on celebrarions in this blog so I do it again now. This year I have chosen...
Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

THE JOY LUCK CLUB BY AMY TAN

We, philologists, are a kind of people who like rereading books over and over again. It also happens to other people and not ony with books but also with films, art shows and so on. This year, when I was teaching my Acceso students in class,  I remembered the beginning of a novel that was an impact for me when I read it for the first time in 1993 in Massachusetts: The Joy Luck Club by the Asian-American writer Amy Tan. So in the next class I gave them the text and we worked it together. The power of her words full of meanings evoking the past and far away lands as well as expressing the inmense love of  mothers to  daughters and the the hope of a better life in the land where the dreams can come true is overwhelming in that text. Here it is if you want to read it:

https://app.box.com/s/twbq4tufm9o8wwemqqkf

 After reading this I decided to read the novel again and I found  it  superb. It is the story of four mothers born in China and for daughters born in the US and we can see the cultural contrasts and the bonds between these women written in a sensitive poetic style.
Amy Tan dedicated her first novel : To my mother and the memory of her mother" and she adds these deep words: "You asked me once what I would remember. This, and much more" and the novel starts like this filling he reader with great expectations.
Amy Tan is an American writer who was born in California in 1952. Her parents were immigrants from China. The Loy Luck Club is her first novel published in 1989 and she has published other well written novels such as: The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Opposite of Fate and Saving Fish from Drowning . All of them are translated into Spanish. If you read any of them, you will hook up, I'm sure.
She has beautiful quotations, among them I choose this: "Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone"