New messages

Messages from 16 January to 7 January 2002

(sorry, there is no option on this new message board to turn the messages upside down so you can read them in the order they were posted)

Message:
Dear Tina any HC::::::::::::::::::: I would really like to join your chat room, but I need to play badminton every Thursday evening from 7:30 till 10:30. After that we go straight down to the pub that is my favourite part of the night. I have played for the local badminton club for over six years that is the only sport I am physically involve in. It is a very good clean fitness sport, which is not that easy to injury yourself in. It doesn’t have any affect by the horrible weather as it is indoors. I am so sorry I can’t join you to have some fun!! Let’s hope you all have a nice chat on Thursday. I think our JO will join you there, won’t you JO?

Message:
Hello everyone! Hi Benly! Please do not worry about going on our chatroom , because the majority that uses it are not native speakers. They come from all over the world! Everybody chats with everybody about anything, so, if you are a bit slow on the keyboard, nobody is going to notice because you won't be the only one! So, shall I expect you on the chat Thursday night (9pm GMT) ? :) And everybody, don't forget to always refresh as soon as you get to the site, so you can see any changes we have made or any new messages posted! Hope to see you all there! I'd love to talk to you!

Message:
Hi everybody. Remember me? I am that other English tutor from the North East of England! Just a quick note from Newcastle to suggest you have a look to our new website (November last year) to have a better understanding of what kind of organisation we are and also to have some feed-back about the site. Is it interesting, good looking etc.? The address is: www.firststepne.org.uk Read you soon. Sophie

Message:
Hi all, Just a quick one as I should be working ! Benly and anyone ,the chats used manly by non natives most weeks it's just me and G from Colchester who are English and we are the worst ! Tina is Cypriot as are quite a few who pop in there others from all over the world so don't worry about the English as it's just fun, we even start speaking in some other languages at times Japanise has been known ! Great to see you enjoyed the game ! shame about the result, but if they played well thats good enough ! Do them next time, as I want to see this result Southampton 12 Man u 0 thats what I'd like ! bye for now HC.

Message:
Benly, I did not think it was boring talking to you on ICQ! I understand what you mean though, 'chat' does put you under pressure to think and type fast! I sometimes don't read what other people are saying because I'm writing my next message - and then I repeat something somebody's said or my comment seems irrelevant by the time it pops up. But I guess that's part of the fun!

Message:
Dear Tina I went to the pub to watch the match with my son. In fact Southampton played their best game in this season against the mighty Manchester United. Unfortunately, the result was disappointing. Although they lost the game, everyone was clapping very hard when the game had finished. Never mind!!! We will look forward to next weekend for another match. Tina, we may not good enough to join your chat room. You all are English native speakers and most of you are English teachers, but we are just English learners. Most of us also do not feel comfortable with the keyboard. We are not in with the computer’s generation. I had tried it before with a Taiwan and Hong Kong’s chat room. They are slower than the native speaker. I still found it very hard to keep up with the speed. Especially, when you become stuck on some word you can’t spell and need to look for it in a dictionary. It will make the other side loose interest chatting with you. I had a chat with JO on ICQ several time before, she must have thought I was the most boring person to chat to.

Message:
Hello S. Hussaih::::::::::::::::::::: Nice to meet you. I am one of JO’s students. What are you doing up there? I have never been to Newcastle before, but I drove past it to Scotland a few years ago. It is really far away from Southampton. Have you been down here before? Do you like football? Newcastle United is doing very well this season. Our team will need to go up there and play against them soon. Hope you won’t “BOO” our team.

Message:
Dear Jo, I have received your e.mail. You said that you don't answer straight away but you answerd my letter. Thank you very much for answering me back. The life in Newcastle is the same as anywhere else in the UK. It's up to you how you want to spend it. I am trying to write English without making too many mistakes so I will keep writing to you. I hope you won't mind. English is my second language but I would love to be able to write and understand it properly. I will be looking forward to hear from you soon. Bye for now, S.H

Message:
Dear Kit WELL!!!! Surprise!!!! Surprise!!!!!! We have been waiting for your message for a long long time. By the way, we all warmly welcome you to join us. Now you know where you can find us and have some fun. I hope you will come back more often. I think Rosanna and Sandra will join us soon. They have been visiting us on this message board but they just haven’t put any message in here. May be they are shy or they are not used to writing something on the message board. Kit I have sent your E-mail address to Yoshie, because she has something to discuss with you. I know that is a secret, so that why we can’t discuss it openly in here. See you in the class!! Bye!!

Message:
Thank you so much, Jo, for your kind words! We'd love to have you in our forum and chat! As Jo said, our next group chat will be on Thursday at 9pm GMT, but you can join the chatroom any time you like, as quite often there are people in there. PS HC says Hi Benly! Shame about the result yesterday. Man Utd of all teams. That's the game I wanted Southampton to win most! :)

Message:
Have any of you ever used live 'chat' on the Internet before? Last week I had a chat with HC and Tina from Cyprus last week. They have visited our mesasge board a few times and they also have a website with a message board and live chat.

If anyone is interested in seeing what live Internet chat is like, their site would be a good place to start because it is not too busy, it's easy to use, and they are very friendly!

They will be meeting there again this Thursday at 9pm GMT (British time). If you go, I'll go.

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/163615

Message:
Hi Kit! Nice to see you here! Have you seen the pictures of the Christmas party too? They're at www.btinternet.com/~trifonovs/party.htm

...and how are you all getting on with the homework this week? Any questions?

Message:
To Benly Thank you for your Christmas message. You keep complaining to me about never going to the message board. Now I have gone to the message board and see all the messages. Everything is very interesting and exciting. See you in college. Bye =)

Message:
Dear Jo I had just read all the message from everyone. I am excited. I hope I can join in the message board with all of you. See you all on Thursday at college. bye =)

Message:
Hello, everybody! Hello Haruka! Shinnen Omedetou to you, too then! Happy New Year everybody!

Message:
Dear Haruka I am so sorry about to spell your name wrong!!!! That why I am not good in Japanese!!! Forgive me please!!!!!

Message:
Dear Hurada............. I think I am not late if I say “SHINNEN AKEMASHITE OMEDETON” and KINGA SHINNEN” to you in the “UMADOSHI”. I don’t know any Japanese at all, my classmate told me all of that. So that your New Year is the same as the European. You have the “horse” year one and a half months earlier than us, don’t you? That means you are already in the “UMADOSHI”, have you got any special celebrations on that day? My brother was in Japan at the Christmas and he said there wasn’t that much festive atmosphere over there. Maybe you all save it for your New Year, is that true?

Message:
Hello, Benly. Our New Year has started on Jan. 1. I would surely remember Feb.12. Hello, Tina. I would add another Japanese word to your glossary. That is "OMEDETOU" which means "congratulation", or in case of "SHINNEN OMEDETOU", Happy New Year.

Message:
Hello! Just realised I typed the URL address wrong. :) The right one is here! Check it out! ;)

Message:
Hello from Cyprus! Greetings to everybody! Happy New Year! Like your message board Jo! Congratulations! Especially hello to the Japanese because I've just started learning little bits of Japanese. Konichiwa!

Message:
Hello Haruka........... By the way, when will be your New Year? Let's us have some celebration with you and we can say Happy New Year to you. Our Chinese New Year on the 12th of Februray, remember say Happy New Year to me!!!!

Message:
This is a message for S Hussain from Newcastle. I tried to email you but your address didn't work.

:(

Message:
Hello, Benry. You know what? Every soul in Japan knows what year it is though not many acknowledge the origin. We have a die-hard custom of sending greeting cards to all acquaintances to celebrate the new year(just the Gregorian calendar, though). Those cards without exception carry the animal image for the year. By the way our prime minister has just celebrated his 60th birthday which is supposed to be specially festive among all the birthdays.

Message:
Ah! Well, it wasn't until you asked that I realised I can't delete your double entry. hmmm... the old board really is better from the point of view of the control I have over it (when it's working!). I can delete individual posts while they are on the 'current page' but once they have gone on to other pages (this happens automatically) I can either delete them all or leave them all there. Don't worry, we will just ignore it! And our Japanese friends are still posting to the old board now it's working again! Oh dear, what shall I do?!

Message:
Dear JO....... Sorry for my double click!!!! Can you help me to remove one of them please!! Thank you!! See you on Thursday.

Message:
Dear Haruka………….. I also love the galloping horse, but it seems to be a little bit too early for it. Never mind!!! Our Chinese New Year starts on the 12th of February. That will be the year of the horse. We call it “ MA”. So you are using the Chinese horoscope for the year same as we do. Do you use 12 animals to represent the year’s name? Do you know why we use animals? I heard some said that it was because lots of Chinese couldn’t read the Chinese number for counting the date and the year in the old days. It was very hard to remember them indeed, so the King thought of something that would be easier for everyone to understand and remember. Therefore, he selected 12 animals for each year. Each animal comes back in 12-year time. If you pass through three times of your animal’s year, which would mean you are 24 years old. In average a normal person passes through six of their animal years in the old day. It is a wonderful invention for the Chinese and everyone loved it. Until now it was still used widely by the Chinese, but mostly it is used for people’s age and by the “Fu Shui teller” (fortune teller). I’ll tell you all a secret, if a man wants to know a lady’s age. He will ask her, which animal year was she born in, then he can work out for himself. For example, if you tell me you were born in the Rooster year, that means you must be either 8 years old, 20 years old, 32 years old and so on (each time add 12 years on top). Then pick one to suit how you look. So all you ladies remember don’t tell which animal year you were born in, unless if you don’t care if they know your age.

Message:
Dear Haruka………….. I also love the galloping horse, but it seems to be a little bit too early for it. Never mind!!! Our Chinese New Year starts on the 12th of February. That will be the year of the horse. We call it “ MA”. So you are using the Chinese horoscope for the year same as we do. Do you use 12 animals to represent the year’s name? Do you know why we use animals? I heard some said that it was because lots of Chinese couldn’t read the Chinese number for counting the date and the year in the old days. It was very hard to remember them indeed, so the King thought of something that would be easier for everyone to understand and remember. Therefore, he selected 12 animals for each year. Each animal comes back in 12-year time. If you pass through three times of your animal’s year, which would mean you are 24 years old. In average a normal person passes through six of their animal years in the old day. It is a wonderful invention for the Chinese and everyone loved it. Until now it was still used widely by the Chinese, but mostly it is used for people’s age and by the “Fu Shui teller” (fortune teller). I’ll tell you all a secret, if a man wants to know a lady’s age. He will ask her, which animal year was she born in, then he can work out for himself. For example, if you tell me you were born in the Rooster year, that means you must be either 8 years old, 20 years old, 32 years old and so on (each time add 12 years on top). Then pick one to suit how you look. So all you ladies remember don’t tell which animal year you were born in, unless if you don’t care if they know your age.

Message:
Hi all ,Great to see you all had a good xmas and new year. Nice new board JO,sounds like you had a great time in Honk Kong Benly.I has waving like mad when you flew over Cyprus ,I think the present you droped landed on the Turkish side ! I hope all is well with you all and your ready to get back to class. We have started back since last week and all is well .... take care all from sunny Cyprus and hello to the USA and Japan .

Message:
Yes it worked! I just can't mess with the top of the page in the way I used to! So are our Japanese friends going to tel us what the year of the horse is all about? What does it mean?

Message:
I would love to bring the horse but I don't have the same freedom I did with the old mesasge board!

Maybe I can put it in the message. Let's try!

Message:
OK, this is a kind of relocation. But Jo, can't you take that horse with you here?

Message:
Dear JO Seems like everything is ok for me! Nice to see lots of new friends in here to start the New Year. We are warmly welcome you to join us. I had a lovely time in Hong Kong. The weather was just right for us to wear T-shirts, it was about 20-degrees Celsius, and every day was sunny. We ate lot of good food, I ate so much and gained five pounds over there!!! We went to the major New Year count down in the centre of Hong Kong. That was my first experience amongst such a massive crowd. In fact we couldn’t even move a single step. We stood there for two and half-hours, it was very noisy and there were lots of foreigners over there. The atmosphere was great. After the count down we needed two hours to travel back to our hotel, luckily, their public transport was 24 hours service, it was so convenience. When we reached our hotel, it was three o’clock in the morning. Everyone was very tired. Now the holiday period is over, we should try and get normal and get ready for studying again. See you in Thursday. Bye!!!

Message:
Dear JO Seems like everything is ok for me! Nice to see lots of new friends in here to start the New Year. We are warmly welcome you to join us. I had a lovely time in Hong Kong. The weather was just right for us to wear T-shirts, it was about 20-degrees Celsius, and every day was sunny. We ate lot of good food, I ate so much and gained five pounds over there!!! We went to the major New Year count down in the centre of Hong Kong. That was my first experience amongst such a massive crowd. In fact we couldn’t even move a single step. We stood there for two and half-hours, it was very noisy and there were lots of foreigners over there. The atmosphere was great. After the count down we needed two hours to travel back to our hotel, luckily, their public transport was 24 hours service, it was so convenience. When we reached our hotel, it was three o’clock in the morning. Everyone was very tired. Now the holiday period is over, we should try and get normal and get ready for studying again. See you in Thursday. Bye!!!

Message:
Hi There, I just want to say Happy New Year to everybody! Best wishes for 2002! Some of the japanese people on the forum might remember me I used to be a regular on Jo's forum! I haven't had as much free time in 2001 and 2002 is looking quite busy too, I still drop in from time to time and see how things are doing :) Speak to you soon! Keep up the good work! Sylv'

Message:
Congratulations on being the first of Sophie's students to have a go, S Hussain! Don't worry about mistakes here. We all make them (yes, even the teachers!) How is life in Newcastle? I teach English in Southampton. My students will be back at college this week after the Christmas holiday and I hope they will write some messages here too. Not all of them have email yet but some do and some more are going to start learning next week, so I will encourage them to write to you. By the way, I don't usually reply so quickly! I just happen to be working on my computer and your messages keep popping up! It's a great relief after this morning when it stopped working!

Message:
Helo Jo, I am writting you to inform that all the other students at your college can use my E.mail address and send me the mail.

Message:
Hello Jo, I am trying to send you a message for the first time. I hope i wuold not make too many mistakes but if i do you would not mind. I will be looking forward to hear from you.

Message:
Hi Sophie, I am so glad you didn't give up! Sorry about the problems this morning. The joys of teaching with the Internet, eh! I look forward very much to 'meeting' your students right up there at the other end of England!

Message:
Hi everybody, I have tried to send a message this morning and it was not possible but now it seems Jo has been there and fixed it all! I am another ES0L teacher working at First step. I am originally from Belgium but moved here 4 years ago. Some of my students might post a message here soon. Read you soon.

Message:
Happy New Year to everybody. Say hello soon!

Message:
When you post a message to this board, you can ignore the parts of the form that say 'URL' and 'email' if you want to. I'm afraid I can't remove them. Tell me what you think of this board. Is everything clear?

Message:
Hello friends. I hope you find your way here. I'm afraid my mesasge board stopped working and I have had to start a new one. This one looks a little bit different but maybe it will be more reliable. It's worth a try! I hope you haven't all given up and gone away, especially those of you who were trying to post messages yesterday and today. I'm very sorry about the inconvenience.

Back