Public schools' meaning in UK and in USA A few days I go I looked it up in my dictionary what are the words used to name the schools that are financed by the state, and the information I found confused me a little. According to my dictionary, "public schools" means "state schools" in USA but "private schools" in UK. Is this right? Thank you all in advance!

Is the expression "shake off the rust" commonly used? I've just heard it in a TV series: "it's time to shake off the rust and get back in the game". I think I understand what it means, but I would like to know if it's frequently used, because it doesn't appear in the dictionary I consult. Thanks to you all in advance

Catalina About four years ago, one day I arrived home and found a cat in our kitchen. It was on a towel under the table, shaking and with a sad look in its eyes. It was skinny and its hair was all dirty. My mother told me that a friend of my sister had found it on the street and, since she couldn't take it to her home, the cat had ended up in ours. The vet had said he wasn't sure if it was going to make it through the following days. The next day I named her Cata (it was a she), because I didn't want she to die without a name. Fortunately, Cata didn't die then and she became one of the most beautiful things that have happened to me. I remember the first days she was very scared. I brushed her hair and she gained weight quickly. She had no longer that sad look. Though she was pretty jumpy, she seemed to like me. Soon afterwards I found her spending almost the whole day with me. She would follow me along the house, she would sit down on my legs when I studied. When I took a shower, she would wait beside the bathroom door and when I was in another room, she would put her paw on the door repeatedly to make me open it. She would purred when I was close to her, even if I didn't caress her. These were, in general, difficult years to me, but it's really strange the power a pet has to make one feels he's not alone and to relieve his sorrow. She died last year, now I miss her. The past is a very particular possession.

Let's talk about films: Marie-Antoinette Marie-Antoinette is an American film released in 2006 and directed by Sofia Coppola. Marie-Antoinette (1755 – 1793) was Archduchess of Austria, Dauphine of France (1770 – 1774) and Queen of France and Navarre (1774 – 1792), well-known for her death by guillotine as a consequence of the French Revolution. In spite of her close relation with the episode that closes Europe’s Modern History, the film doesn’t focus on the social facts that led to the uprising of the ordinary people of France, but in the historical figure of the decapitated queen and her life in Versailles. And this makes the film really interesting, since it offers a very human view of Marie-Antoinette. We can see the fear and sorrow of a fourteen year old girl who has to leave her country and her family behind because of a marriage arranged by Austria and France. We can see how she is rejected from the French Court’s members and pressured by everyone to give France an heir, while actually it’s her husband who doesn’t show any interest in it. Sofia Coppola uses classical music but also contemporary songs in her movie and I think she may aim to break the distance and make us think of Marie-Antoinette as a teenager, not so different from teenagers of 21st Century. Only four years after her arrival to the French palace, the young Louis XVI is crowned and she becomes Queen of the French. It’s impossible to portray the Queen without portray the daily life at Versailles, and Coppola does it really good: protocol, frivolity, gossips, parties, bets and lots of dresses, shoes and food... “This is Versailles”. Life at Versailles is a blind life, a life which turns its back on starving people. While taxes are being increased, Marie-Antoinette wastes France’s money carelessly. The folks of France only appear at the very last of the film to return them to reality, a vindictive reality which results Coppola only suggest. After seeing the film, one can only think about how frequent in History people lives have been left in the hands of a few unprepared, irresponsible and selfish individuals.

Astor Piazzolla I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, twenty-three years ago. However, being twelve, I moved with my family to Spain. My parents had decided to leave the country since they considered Buenos Aires was not a good place to live in. Armed robbery carried out on houses and on the streets of the city was too frequent. That situation they could no longer stand. Another was the extremely poor condition of public health service and education, not to mention politician’s corruption. Given that my grandparents were born in Spain, my mother, my sisters and I could obtain the Spanish nationality and live there having all the legal rights. I’ve been living in Madrid since then and I’ve never gone back to Buenos Aires. I have so many precious childhood memories of my life there, but I can’t say Argentinean culture is mine because I was too little to make it mine. Even so, there’s an Argentinean musician that’s close to my heart (although it’s funny that I started listening to his music just a few years ago): Astor Piazzolla. Piazzolla was born in 1921 and was a bandoneon player and composer. It seems he was touched by destiny when he was a teenager: he would have been in the plane where Gardel and his entire band died in 1935 if his father had not forbidden him to go with the famous Argentinean singer in this tour. The bandoneon is closely related to Tango, but what music genre he belongs to was (and still may be) a hot topic. In his relationship with traditional Tango admiration and rejection were mixed together. He thought Tango had to change because Buenos Aires was changing and that’s why, in the fifties and sixties, critics said “Piazzolla is not Tango” and called him “the murderer of Tango”. His music was considered hybrid. Here is one of his most famous compositions, Adiós Nonino (Goodbye, Nonino), which have become a symbol of the author: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqSxwWgpE6A It’s a very complex composition he wrote after his father’s death, as a Requiem for him (“nonino” is how he called his father fondly). While I’m listening to it, all I can say is Piazzolla’s music, tango or not, touches my heart. I hope you enjoy it too.

Hooked on Grey's Anatomy... again Lately I've been looking for an English or American serial to train my ear and to get to understand native speakers better. I've been watching Friends without subtitles and depending on the day I catch almost everything the characters say or hardly anything. Because of this, I thought: “maybe I should try with another one” and Grey's Anatomy was the chosen one, because I've already seen it and I liked it. Well, it was a bad choice: all the medical terms and all the people talking at the same time when a patient is about to die... that's impossible to understand! However, here I am watching the last episode of the first season in Spanish... and I think I'll end up watching the whole serial again. Why? It's hooked me again (“d'oh!”, as Homer would say). I haven't been able to help it, and it's weird, because I don't like serials very much. But I find this one very enjoyable: the characters, the funny dialogues, the drama (at the beggining, not so extreme), the sad songs... The bad thing is that I still have a problem to solve... so, could you recommend me any serial that's easy for foreigners to understand*? Thanks! * A quick answer: is it correct "easy to understand for foreigners?"

"Genesis" by Sebastiao Salgado A few days ago I had the luck and the pleasure to discover one of the works of the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, who was completely unknown to me before. I'm talking about "Genesis", a very large book that contains pictures taken between 2004 and 2012. All of them are in black and white (seeing his previous works, the artist doesn't seem to like using the color in his photos) and show the huge beauty of wild nature. The fact that these places haven't almost been touched by the modern man's hand explains the title chosen for the book. He also puts his camera's eye on the primitive way of life that some groups of humans have kept until today. The author, as he says in the Introduction, wants to make us aware of what we could lose if we don't change the terms of our relationship with Earth (our home). "Genesis" has become a really moving experience to me. So if you have the time, I recommend it to you all (go and google it!).