Vivat Academia!Happy birthday to you!

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Family Reunion

Jack was proud of himself as never before: despite all the intrigues of the rivals his hotel business was booming. Nearly everyone in the town greeted the new-born business celebrity, whose career started taking off surprisingly quickly. The only person upset with the man was his wife Liz. She didn’t like Jack’s being as stubborn as a mule and her heart told her there was something wrong going with him. It was as clear as a day that her husband’s new successful business project had a terrific impact on their family life. He was but too often rude to her hitting the roof with no reason. No wonder that from a cheerful woman she turned to a desperately unhappy person absorbing bad vibes from her spouse. The last drop in the worsening of the family relations was an incident which happened with their son Billy and Jack.

That nice sunny morning the boy was as keen as mustard – they were going to the zoo with daddy! Were going but … didn’t go. Business turned out to be more important for Dad than the family entertainment. On hearing the disappointing news, little Billy was almost close to tears. Irritated by the son’s behavior, Jack lost his temper and became furious with him. The heartbroken boy would probably become hysterical, if girls on the playground didn’t try to cheer him up a bit by showing how to twist a hoop. A fierce raw  broke out between the spouses then and they stopped talking to each other.

Deep in his heart, Jack felt guilty. He ought to change something in his life, but how? Frustrated with family troubles, the young man was looking for someone to open up and disclose all his bad feelings to. This someone happened to be his older colleague Sam, who was as wise as an owl.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jack, but the best thing for you to do is to consult a good psychologist. It might do wonders for your life. I’ll recommend you one, if you want. This is Dr. Morris. His office, by the way, is just round the corner. Can you see that noticeable signboard ‘One thousand seven’ above the entrance door?” said Sam during a friendly chat in the café one day. 

Dr. Morris turned to be a very understanding and open-minded professional. “It’s good you’ve put your problems into words”, he pointed out to Jack delicately making it clear that anxiety and anger was a by-product of his suppressed feelings. “Remember, stress can be reduced by releasing emotions”. Jack understood that by cherishing his business he deprived himself of the opportunity to live his life to the fullest .Thus, he was appalled by what he had made with his life and came up with a firm intension to apologize to his wife and son. What is more, he sat a goal to start his life from scratch and pay more attention to the family.

You can’t even imagine how stunned Liz was one day when she got a lovely bouquet of her favorite white daisies from Jack! As for Billy, he was over the moon with joy when all of a sudden, daddy hugged him announcing great news – the following day they would go to the zoo together with Mum! He promised! ”The happiest moments are always so touchy”, giggled Liz embracing both of them. This time Jack was even more proud of himself - the long awaited family reunion took place at last!

My First Vocabulary Class

Whenever I recall in my memory our first Vocabulary lesson, I feel entirely happy because this new subject became for all of us a new avenue to creativity and brilliant opportunity to master our English vocabulary. So, I’d like to give you a brief summary of it which, to my mind, is the classic example of a perfect interactive lesson.

At first, when I entered the classroom and the noise died down, it came as quite a pleasant surprise to see among the familiar faces of my group mates our new instructor, Tetiana Oleksandrivna. Our acquaintance turned to be very warm and fascinating, and it was a great honor for us to introduce ourselves in English. After such a nice chat, we faced the prospect of having quite a challenging vocabulary activity, main concern of which was repeating and memorizing the unusual words pronounced one by one. To tell you the truth, I would do no such thing as at that very moment there was an utter chaos in my head, and I almost had narrow escape.

Frankly speaking, I hoped to gain only pleasant impressions from that first lesson in vocabulary, because the subject was expected to be really important and helpful. But at the same time I made it clear for myself that I had a considerable difficulty with memorizing the stuff. Taking the blame for my poor memory or slight accent and waiting for Tetiana Oleksandrivna’s constructive criticism, I was pleased to hear her cheering praise for my real efforts.

Then, we were learning some interesting collocations with the word ‘fire’, like “catch fire”, “on fire”, “set fire” and whatsoever. Apart from a very friendly atmosphere of the lesson, I especially enjoyed the moment when we were supposed to create a poster “I love Ukraine and…”. It was lots of fun while deciding who would write the headline. We even settled a dispute on that concern. Finally, we reached an agreement and, as a result, our poster turned out to be ever so colourful, positive and bright that we even decided to take some photos of it!

All in all, the excitement from our first Vocabulary class still is in my heart, as well as the fire of curiosity lit in our heads by our creative instructor. I do hope this year will bring us a lot of new exciting experiences, the main thing is just not to back down!