New Year's RESOLUTIONS

1. Study more


2. Learn more english


3. Spend more time with the family


4. Read more


5. Eat more healthily and do more sport

Basically: GET OUR ARSES IN GEAR!!

The day of St. Tomas

The day of St. Tomas is one of the major holidays in the calendar of Donostia. Despite the name, it has no connection with religion. There is no clear agreement on the origins of the festival.
But the argument seems to thrive on 21 December, the day of the arrival of winter, was the one who fixed the owners of farmhouses and houses mostly lived in the capital, San Sebastian, to collect annual rents from tenants. For that reason, they went down to the city with plenty of money, and were loaded with the best products in their villages: all sorts of poultry, the best vegetables and handicrafts to exchange or sell in the city.
Over time, the custom evolved into tradition, and today is a fair field in which there is both exhibition and sale of products and competition.
In addition to the fair, it is surprising the habit of consuming chorizo sandwiches. On 21 December hundereds of people gather in the Old Town of San Sebastian at the stands where these snacks are sold. The countless bars from that part of town, also provide the public with chorizo sandwiches.
The stands are usually attended by organizations or groups of schoolchildren.
The chorizo is a type of fresh sausage, thin and uncured probably made from the ugliest and cruel killing of the pig which, in Guipuzcoa, is performed just before the onset of winter.
In the last years of the dictatorship the habit of eating this chorizo with "talo" instead of white bread began to take root . The “talo” is a kind of cake of cornmeal and water, without yeast, cooked on the grill. Since then, the “talo” has been imposed on the holiday as a vindication of the highest purity of tradition.

TREE OF GERNIKA

the tree of Gernika is an important symbol for the Basque people. The General Assemblies, attended by representatives form all Biscay municipalities, were originally held under its branches.

Located near the Assembly House an the platform, is home to the different generations of the Tree of Gernika. The present oak tree was planted in 2005, when it was 19 years of age.

the garden is also home to its ancestors; the "Old Trunk" is surrounded by columns and althought it was not the first of all the trees of Gernika, it is the oldest vestige that we still conserve. its successor was planted in 1860 and remained opposite the platform until 2004 when it dried and had to be replaced

Bank-Holiday!!

IT'S FRIDAY!!!!

This weekend is going to be loooong. We have hollidays until Wednesday because in Spain we have a bank-holiday. We are really looking forward to having a lie-in and resting a little bit.

EUSKERA

December the 3rd is Euskera's international day. Euskera is our own language and one of our culture's symbols. Many events, such as 'Mintzodromoa' 100% Euskera (a gathering of all kind of people speaking only Euskera) took place in honour of the celebration.

Abenduak 3 Euskararen eguna da. Euskara da gure hizkuntza eta gure kulturaren adierazgarria. Ekitaldi ezberdinak egin ziren, hala nola 'Mintzodromoa %100 Euskera Donostian, eta beste hainbat Euskal Herri osoan.
Agur bero bat denori Donostiatik !!!

The flu has hit our group!!!

Every day they get to know more people with cases of Gripe A. Although most of the cases are mild and with a positive development.
One of our team members has been hit by the flu.
We want you back again, so we hope you will recover as soon as possible!!!

Kaos Pilot

For two weeks, six students from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and China will be in Bilbao to open a training center to promote creative businesses. Their school, Kaos Pilot in Denmark does not have typical classes like here, their classes are based on practice. The motto of this school is: “Learn with head, heart and hands”. They tend to work in groups, and they have been very successful using this method of teamwork in their classes.

This six students are now in Bilbao displaying this new idea of studying business. It's a project that is still to be finished, they are looking for financial support of some institutions.

We think that it's a really good idea and it's important to improve these kind of projects because what really matters is working practice.

International day for the elimination of violence against Women.

UN General Assembly established the 25 November as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Violence against women is a violation of humans rights. Every woman is entitled to recognition, enjoyment, exercise and protection of all human rights and freedom. Violence against women is a serious social problem that, in addition to questioning fundamental human rights because of its size, has consequences that are becoming an obstacle for developing countries.
Yesterday the Spanish senate gave a gold medal to a man from Irun for protecting a women who was being attacked. Unfortunately in the end the woman died and the man was hospitalised for a week but later recovered .
Violence against women is a crime of great propoprción worldwide. It is a problem that must be taken with concrete policies to contribute to its reduction and eradication.

The best of gastronomy

From the world´s best chefs to the traditional Basque "pintxos". A variety of delicacies were there to be discovered in the nineteenth aniversary of the gastronomic congress held between Monday the 23rd to Thursday the 26th of this month, in Donosti´s Kursaal. 3000 chefs and professionals from the industry took part in the congress.
52 bars in Guipuzcoa participated in this celebration. Each bar thought up in 3 new "pintxos" and sold them with a 30% discount for everyone during this entire week.
Some of the well known chefs who were involved in the congress were Martin Berasategi, Pedro Subijana and Hilario Arbelaitz. This year we saw a real mix of gastronomic culture, in particular between the Japanese and our own Basque cooking.

In 2011, here in San Sebastian, there will be the first Spanish Gastronomic university that would form skilled workers from all around the world and they will offer grades of high cooking.

WE FINISHED EXAMS!!!!!

We can finally say that we have completed the exams, we have spent several weeks working very hard, but everything seems to have been worthwhile. Now comes time to "rest", but we can't stop working.

We hope that this term all of us will do very well !!!

Evaluation meeting

The firts quarter has finished and last week we had the evaluation meeting where we talked about any problems we have had during this quarter.
The most spoken topic was the absences. We can´t miss more than 25 classes per quarter. If we do it, we lose the opportunity of being evaluated.
There were some little problems with some of the teachers but we hope that after this evaluation meeting, problems would be solved.
In spite of this minor problems, we are very happy with the way of theaching of the school and also with the teachers.

We have the certificate!!

Yesterday, 12 of November, 5 students of Business Vocational Training went to “Palacio Euskalduna” in Bilbao. There, some politicians of the Ministry of Education and Science gave us certificates for our work practice. A lot of Basque students where there in representation of their schools. The event was not as boring as a storyteller enlivened it. Here you have a picture of us with the certificate and another one with the education minister.

Suggestions

Thank you for taking a look to our blog. We have seen that many people around the world enter in the blog. We love to know who you are and where are you from.

Please help us to improve our blog adding suggestions.

Thank you :)

xxx

Ekinfest! Gaze on

On the 19th of October nearly 600 higher education students packed into the “Gipuzkoa Kursaal”. We all enjoyed the shows (monologue, txalaparta, hip-hop, break dance, verses, “clowncusiones”...), the dynamics and a group lunch.

The event was held so as to present the year long project reflecting proposals made in “GAZE EN TU CLASE” and “GAZE ABIAN.” These have been developed to a general member of parlament strategic lines of the Department of Innovation and Knowledge Society of the “Diputación Foral de Guipuzcoa”, Mr Guridi.

If you go to GAZE link, you can see photos of the event.

The exams

There are missing few weeks for finishing the evaluation. We have just started with some of the exams but still we have to do the rest of them. We have like 2 exams per week. We are a little bit stressed.
We are taking notes and doing schemes to have good marks so in the end of this studies, we could have a grant to work in the bank insted of working in a company.
We wish we´ll pass all the exams.

El Aprendiz TV

The Aprendiz gathers contestants that will become managers. They come from the world of economics, law, marketing and compete to get the job of their life. To get this job they have to demonstrate their cunning and intelligence in weekly challenges offered them by the host.

The leader in the program will be Lluis Bassat. he is considered the leading Spanish publisher of history and one of the largest worldwide. He has received more than 400 national and international awards, including the 'best of the Spanish professional Twentieth Century' in 2000.

The team that wins the challenge will receive a reward while the losing group will go to the room to see who will be dismissed by the jury.

The contest winner will receive a contract with the host employer. In the U.S. the winner got a one year contract in one of Donald Trump's companies with a salary of $ 250,000.

Here you can see the official intro of the program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYQLZ578EsU&feature=player_embedded#

Our images about innovation

Mejorando el presenteEs una evolución creativa al alcance de todos que nos ofrece facilidades para la vida diaria. Pasamos de un complicado proceso de revelado y una capacidad mínima, a poder sacar una infinidad de fotos con un revelado sin peligros, rápido, barato, ecológico...
Es bueno innovar pero sin descartar lo viejo.

Innobasque

The aim of the innovation in Euskadi is to improve the quality of life for our generation.
Innobasque is made up of agents from the Basque Network of Science, Technology and Innovation, private businesses, Basque public institutions, institutional representatives of Basque workers and business people and organisations of any kind related to innovation.
Innobasque's main objective, as established in its Articles of Association, is to lead the transformation process in the Basque Country towards a society fully innovative in all fields and to become the European benchmark for innovation.

NEW EVENTS

We will have three events this winter in Euskadi. We think they will be very interesting for us, so we would like to share with you.

1. GAZE competition.

The aim of this competition is "feel,think and demonstrake leadership"

1. You decide by taking part
2. Innovation for social sustainability

NEWS

The second vice president and minister of Finance, Elena Salgado, said that the rise in indirect taxes (VAT, tobaco, alcohol and hydrocarbons) is the least distortion of economic activity. Will this be true?

LANGUAGE ASSISTANT

Every thursday Michael,the language assistant,will come to help us with our english.
Last thursday he came and introduced himself.He spoke about the diferences in the university of USA and the Europe. For example: prices,years,selection,skills,...

Colleagues from Denmark

5 students from BEC Business Education, Denmark, came to our school for 3 weeks to do work practice. On Thursdays they had Finance classes with us and during the week in their leissure time they visited San Sebastian. Here are some of the things they did:

• Introduction the first day in the school



• Visiting the Diputacion of Guipuzcoa



• Surfing classes in Zurriola beach



• Work practice

A part from this, we are doing a project in pairs where we have to find Business schools from all over the world and contact them to exchange information about Finance and Administration.

Kontsumo eskola

Consumer school is a way to put in practice what we study in class. For example: what we have to do when we want to claim something or a way to be aware of our rights as consumers. We complited two workshop that helped us to view things from different points of view.
If you want to get more information you can click on the link.

Sustainable sea. Our first project

A great part of our every day life consists of communication. We talk to each other in the street, by phone, via internet. Development and progress of new technologies simplify our way of communication. We almost never send letters to each other, we use e-mail. For example, nowadays there is a great variety of sites and training programs aimed to bring people from different places of the world together. So we have joined one of these programs and have already started working on it. This project has been organized, to generate an ongoing relationship between language learners from different cultures within the framework of a VIRTUAL CLASS. By operating in a real context, pupils understand the need for working with foreign languages, they see that it is possible to work together and to learn how to write a professional-style report and how to organize an international survey. The system includes a number of steps you have to follow. The first ones require you to present yourself and the school you are studying at. The step we are doing now consists of finding information about the water system of our region. Once we are ready we will post it on the project page . We are all very interested in the program and looking forward to seeing the result of our work.

Our first day

This was the first time that we met each other. The first impression was good but we were very nervous. The first day was very hard and a little bit boring ja,ja, ja... (just kidding) because we have 5 hours of English. We are 6 students, five girls and one boy who is very happy because he is surronded by women.