# data[].attributes.body
Even though our Christmas parties usually went like a dream, I have to say that this year’s Christmas was the most boring party ever.

It wasn’t horrible per se, but compared to our previous gatherings, it wasn’t really good either.

My parents were ill, so we didn't really plan anything special for the 24th. For the most part of the day, I was just surfing the internet, or took short naps.

I enjoy lazing around and doing nothing, but let’s be honest, it’s not the best pursuit on Christmas Eve, right?

We also already got our presents on the previous day, (yes, we’re too impatient to even wait until the crack of dawn) and the Christmas tree was still naked.

We always spend the 24th with my mom’s family at my grandparent’s house. However, my parents were not in the mood for partying, so I had to convince them first, and force them to get out of their bed, because I knew it so well that they didn’t want to go because they were just lazy, and not because of the flu (they were not in that bad condition anyway) .

Then we received a phone call from my grandma if we were coming or not, because the guests were planning to go home soon. We said that ‘yes, we are coming’ and rushed off our feet to get ready as soon as possible.

Until now, everyone sat around the table and told stories, (lame) jokes, and ate much food that my grandmother cooked. It was kinda like that this year too, but the adults just talked about ‘adult things’ and my cousin and I played with our little cousin.

He’s only two years old, but he drove us stir-crazy in 20 minutes. He’s not a bad child, but he talks a lot and needs a lot of attention, so you have to play with him ‘till you leave.

And if he’s too bored and climbing the walls, he’s not on his best behavior and becomes even more annoying. He’s cute though.

My mom and I argue a lot. We never see eye to eye, and she always makes a scene even at public places. However, on Christmas Eve, some kind of let’s-not-go-off-on-Jenny-and-be-kind-to-her-instead spirit posses her, because she’s always kind to me and also walks on eggshells to don’t say anything that would piss me off. (And my older sister too, who acts like another mother of mine and discipline me always, becomes a good, loving sister, and at times like this, I don’t deny the fact that she’s my own flesh and blood).

After that, we gave each other gifts, but nothing that breaks the bank. Just things like perfumes, mugs, video games, etc.

The one who turns into the life and soul of the party is definitely my uncle. He tells us hilarious stories all the time, makes us laugh a lot, and sometimes he speaks too much that we can’t even get a word in edgewise.

He told us some this time too, but because everyone wanted to celebrate in their own house too and didn’t have a whale of time, we went home.

We finally decorated the tree together, then watched some films.

It wasn’t a bad day, but as I said, it used to be way more better.

Next year, I’ll make sure to make the Christmas Gathering to go off with a bang!

# data[].attributes.body
2/1 Life and work of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 to October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, critic and editor best known for evocative short stories and poems that captured the imagination and interest of readers around the world. His imaginative storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story. Some aspects of Poe’s life, like his literature, is shrouded in mystery, and the lines between fact and fiction have been blurred substantially since his death.

From 1831 to 1835, Edgar Allan Poe lived in Baltimore, where his father was born, with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, his cousin Virginia. He began to devote his attention to Virginia, who became his literary inspiration as well as his love interest. The couple married in 1836 when she was only 13 years old. In 1847, at the age of 24 — the same age when Poe’s mother and brother also died — Virginia passed away from tuberculosis. Poe was overcome by grief following her death, and although he continued to work, he suffered from poor health and struggled financially until his death in 1849.

Poe never really knew his parents — Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a British actress, and David Poe, Jr., an actor who was born in Baltimore. His father left the family early in Poe's life, and his mother passed away from tuberculosis when he was only three.

Separated from his brother William and sister Rosalie, Poe went to live with John and Frances Valentine Allan, a successful tobacco merchant and his wife, in Richmond, Virginia. Edgar and Frances seemed to form a bond, but he had a more difficult relationship with John Allan. By the age of 13, Poe was a prolific poet, but his literary talents were discouraged by his headmaster and John Allan, who preferred that Poe follow him in the family business. Preferring poetry over profits, Poe reportedly wrote poems on the back of some of Allan's business papers.

# data[].attributes.body
1/2 The Missing Piece

Shel Silverstein’s Sweet Allegory for the Simple Secret of Love and the Key to Nurturing Relationships

The writer:

Shel Silverstein was perhaps the most widely popular children's book author of the twentieth century. His poems were bestsellers, translated into numerous languages, and internationally celebrated

He was born in1932, in Chicago. He always remained a very private person, giving few interviews

The Poem:

a minimalist, maximally wonderful allegory

The theme:

A missing piece (wedge) goes in search of a circle that is missing it.

It tells the story from the perspective of the missing piece.

1. Happiness:

The missing piece feels that finding its Circle will make it happy.

- wants to fit

- finds partners who are not competent, satisfying HERE YOU SHOULD TALK ABOUT HIS/HER PARTNERS

-

2. Quest:

- the search was more fun than actually finding what it was searching for. WHAT KIND OF PARTNERS DID HE/SHE MEET?

3. Individualism:

love

a reminder that the best relationships don’t complete us but let us grow and become more fully ourselves.

“if the dull adult isn’t too dull to admit that he doesn’t know the answers to everything.” - Ursula Nordstrom

TOO SHORT FOR A SPEAKING EXAM TOPIC

# data[].attributes.body
2/2 Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe: The Black Cat

Summary

At the beginning of The Black Cat, firstly, we get to know the main character's personality.

He describes himself as a very kind-hearted person, a calm and tender man, who loves animals, and takes care of them since his childhood.

As the time passes, and he grows older, this caring gives him a great pleasure.

He thinks that creating a bond with animals are more meaningful than with just simple humans, because friendships with other people are mostly shallow.

He founds a lovely wife who happens to be an animal-lover just like him, and their wedlock goes smoothly.

Although they have many different kinds of animals, the narrator has been always fond of his cat, Pluto.

He alone feeds him, plays with him, and the cat always follows him everywhere he goes – at least in the house. His owner doesn't want him to follow him through the streets.

But this friendship doesn't last very long.

Due the narrator's alcohol problems, he becomes a short-tempered person, uses strong language with his wife, and starts to abuse his own animals, expect Pluto – at least for now.

Because one night, he arrives home very intoxicated. He grabs Pluto, and cuts one of his eyes with a pen-knife.

The cat survives, but this doesn't mean that the man's aggressive behavior just ends like that.

No, it doesn't, because one morning, he finds himself hanging up the poor cat.

He hangs up Pluto because he knows that he loves him, and he doesn’t give any reasons to treat him like that.

On the night of the same day, he wakes up to see his house in flames.

He and his wife manage to escape their house just in time. He calls themselves lucky.

After the events, he soon visits a bar.

He founds a cat that looks like Pluto, except the fact that this one has white hair on its breast.

He decides to go home alone, but the animal follows him.

If I would say that he starts to change after the new addition to the family, and that he loves the brute 'till the rest of its life – then I would be lying.

Because things don't go this lovely.

At first, he just feels disgusted and annoyed, but then these feelings develop into hating.

Even though he feels hatred towards the animal, he still prevents himself from abusing it.

Until a certain period of time.

The more he avoids the beast, the more it becomes clingy.

One day, he and his wife go to the cellar of their previous house.

The cat follows the narrator, and nearly trips him, which drives the man into madness.

He grabs an axe, and aims it towards the cat, but his wife stops his movement.

Then he kills his own wife.

He buries the object deep into her brain and she falls to the ground without any sound coming out of her mouth.

He walls the body up in the cellar, considering this the best option.

He sleeps tranquilly, and even after the third day passes, he still feels happy, not bothered by the events that happened a few days ago.

On the fourth day, unexpectedly, the police comes to his house to investigate.

The man doesn't feel nervous, he's completely confident in how the body is hidden by the officers.

When they're convinced enough, and the narrator says some words too, to prove that the walls are solidly put together, he knocks against the wall.

What neither of them expects, is a loud cry coming from the direction of the wall.

The policemen who remained motionless, soon starts ripping the wall.

Then there it is: The corpse, and the cat that sits upon her head.

He walled the cat up within the tomb.

# data[].attributes.body
My presentation
- The Fall of the House of Usher:

YOU SHOULD WRITE A TEXT/ SUMMARY OF YOUR PRESENTATION TO BE ABLE TO TALK. iT IS NOT A PROBLEM IN YOUR CASE AS I HOPE YOU CAN TALK FREELY, SO NO MINUS POINTS FOR THIS. https://prezi.com/cu53dph5-tox/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher/

# data[].attributes.body
1/1 Why do we love?

Love. Such a simple word, yet we don't even know the meaning behind it, or more likely, that why do we feel like that, why do we love.
Even though every person has their own thoughts about love, for now, I'd like to show five intriguing theories from variant philosophers.

1. Plato: Love makes us whole, again.

Plato, a Greek philosopher, proposed that we love in order to become complete. In his Symposium, he wrote a story about humans who were one creatures, with four arms, four legs and two faces.
But one day, they angered Zeus, who split them all in two. Since then, they've been missing their other half.
So, the main point is: in order to become complete again, we need to find our soulmate - our other half.

2. Schopenhauer: Love tricks us into having babies.

After many-many years, this German philosopher maintained that love is based in sexual desire was just a voluptuous illusion. Others said that we love because our desires lead us to believe that another person will make us happy, but, he did not agree with any theories like that.
Nature is just tricking us into procreating, and after our children are born, and our sexual desires are satisfied, we are thrown back into our tormented existences and suffering.
Basically, the so-called love is just an another uphold for the cycle of the human nature.

Russell: Love is escape from our loneliness.

Our next philosopher, a British gentleman, Russell, thought that we fall in love in order to quench our physical and psychological desires. Humans are created to procreate, but to be satisfied by sex, we also need the ecstasy of passionate love.
Another interesting thing that Russell mentioned, is that because we fear that the world is cruel and cold, we build a shell around us.
But love can help us to escape our lonely shells, to overcome our fears, and to enriches our whole beings.

Buddha: Love is a misleading affliction.

Buddha proposed that we love because we are just trying to satisfy our base desires, and love only makes us suffer and soar. He explored the eight-fold path for extinguishing the fires of desire, so we can reach Nirvana, and live peacefully.
Later on, a Chinese novelist wrote one of China's greatest classical novel, based on Buddha's point of view (on love).
The story is about a man who falls in love with a woman, who tricks and humiliates him. The emotions of love and hate tears Jia Rui apart, so a Taoist, in order to help him, gives the man a magic mirror that can cure him as long as he doesn't look at the front of it. But Jia Rui does, and he sees the woman in the mirror. His soul enters the object, and he's dragged away in iron chains, to be executed.

Beauvoir: Love makes us reach beyond ourselves.

Last but not least, Simone de Beauvoir, a French philosopher was more interested in how we can love better than why we actually love.

Love is basically a great friendship. We help each other to find ourselves, support each other's passions. Love brings meaning to our life. It gives us new experiences, and enriches our world. However, if we only care about our love life, so soon we can be bored easily. We don't really need to depend on each other, to always be there for your lover is more important.

If I'm being honest, I don't really know much about love; I still have plenty of time to experience it, though (but it's still not one of my biggest worries).
If I had to choose, I would probably say that Simone de Beauvoir's theory of love is the closest to me. I'd write about what a perfect partner is like, or what is my ideal type and all that stuff, but actually, I don't really have one, maybe just a few "expectations". I also don't stress about why do we fall in love, or why do we find someone attractive. It just happens, I guess? (Well, of course it's not just like that, but... you know) What is more important to me - like Beauvoir said - is to learn how to love better. Everyone can fall in love, right? But not everyone can handle it in the right way.
Love can put us into different situations with different feelings, what can be either happy or either sad. It can make us feel whole, or even totally lost. Maybe love can be the only thing in our life that'll make us happy, or the one that makes us suffer and miserable.

There is only one way to find out.

# data[].attributes.body
1/3 My Friend

Amanda is one of my best friends. We met in elementary school, and she came to our school in the third grade. We just clicked, and we've been really good friends ever since. Amanda is literally everything: a shoulder to cry on, a person you can laugh with, and someone you can have deep conversations with about anything.
She has long, brown hair with big, brown eyes.
She's not skinny, but not fat either. She likes comfortable clothes, and also shirts.
She has a great personality. She is very charming and outgoing, ambitious and always works hard, but still knows her limits.
Even though we don't go to the same school now, we still keep in touch, and if we're not busy, we always try to meet up somewhere.
She can be stubborn sometimes, but if you tell her that there is something you don't agree with, she will listen to your opinion and even think about it, so she's mostly and agreeable person. Fortunately we don't fight, but we do have little arguments when both of us wants to prove our rights (we're also both competitive, so).
But yeah, our personalities and tastes are quite similar, we have many inside jokes and sometimes we say or think about the same thing, which can help us to understand each other even without any words.
We have been through so many things, and we could always find a way to fix our problems, so I'm pretty sure that our friendship will last long, and we'll continue to be there for each other through thick and thin.