YouTube - learn and have fun!

Watching videos on YouTube could be a really good method of learning languages. I'd like to talk about 3 of my favourites english channels, which can actually teach us something new (besides the language of course). 

1) CrashCourse - as the name suggests, you can find here many crash courses of different subjects - Literature, History, Chemistry, Psychology (one of my favourites), Biology etc. Videos are made by teachers and professors in a really clear, simple and neat way. You always wondered how to say odczyn zasadowy in English? Now you have a chance to find out by watching Chemistry CrashCourse. You want to know something about American Revolution? US History CrashCourse is for you! You don't have to spend all your holidays watching 9gag or other stupefying websides. You can make a cours of biology and astound your friends. 

2) Fiddlerman - this is a great channel for violinists and violists. The guy who's making this channel is a very good musician which in a simple way can teach you how to make an arm vibrato, how to improvise some jazz or how to hold a violin without a shoulder-rest. It's not only for advanced players like me. It's also for people who think I think I want to learn how to play violin. If you're this person, Fiddlerman can help you chose a nice, not so expensive instrument for you, how to use it and how to care about it. Then, in a few simple and short videos he'll make you play! It's really wonderful to learn it for free. Besides tutorials he adds many of his own performances of numerous known and unknown pieces. I strongly recommend this channel!

3) Cracked - this is not actually a channel for learning, althought you can find out many facts about actors, movies, books and everything which is connected with contemporary popculture. The Cracked team produce many videos like "What if..." or "Did you know that..." etc. They make also their own gags, sketches and parodies (ex. a parody of Harry Potter's universe). Some of this videos are really mind-blowing. Like this one:

In case you don't know what to do during your free time - look above and enjoy :)

Some party board games.

Lately I was at the housewarming party in my friend's new home and I decided to bring some board games, just for fun. It was actually a great idea! I brought 3 games which I totally want to recommend. Their rules are simple, easy to get even if you have never played in any game but Monopoly or Scrabble. 

Firstly I want to introduce something for your creativity, imagination and capability to make associations. Dixit is actually a french card game which won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2010. The gameplay is simple. Each person is given 6 random card. One of you is a Storyteller, who make an association to one of his cards. He say his association and put his card backwards in the middle of the table. The rest have to match the card which will describe this association in the best way and also put it on the table (obviously among their own 6 cards). Then the Storyteller mix all of cards from the table and put them in order. The rest have to choose the first card, picked by Storyteller, by the secret vote. If the association was too easy and everyone has picked the right card, the Storyteller loose. Also, if the association was too hard and no one has picked the right card, the Storyteller loose. He wins only if there was someone who picked his card but there was also people who didn't do that. After this round the new Storyteller is the gamer sitting on the left from the previous Storyteller. We score when: we gain points as a Storyteller (3 points), someone picked our card even if it wasn't the right one (1 point for 1 vote) or when we guessed correctly which card is the right one (also 3 points). The end is when someone gained 30 points. 

Second game is one of my favourites: Time's Up! This game really easy check your knowledge about famous historical, contemporary or imaginary characters. You have to pick a deck with about 40-45 cards (depends on the number of gamers) with yellow characters on the top and blue characters on the bottom. Firstly you have to choose which colour you're going to play. When the number of gamers is even, you split in pairs. If the numbers isn't even, you gain points with your 2 neighbours - one from the left and one from the right. It's a bit more complicated, but I don't want to walk into details. The game has 3 rounds. 1 - you have to describe in the best way you can the character from the card so your partner can guess who's on the card. You have one minute for guess as many as you can. 2 - the same cards, one word - one answer. This time you can go on if you or your partner made a mistake. 3 - pantomime. You're allowed to use onomatopoeias, althought you can't hum "da-da-da-daaaa" if you have Ludwig van Beethoven on your card. You can also go on to the next card in case of mistake. The winner is of course the pair who guessed the most. 

The last game is Party Time (known before as Party Alias). It's also the game for teams (at least 2 person in each, at least 2 teams). You have 5 types of quests:

-alphabet - all the team have to give 20 words on the letter from this card

-celebrity - one gamer from the team has 5 cards, gameplay is like in the first round of Time's Up.

-rhymes - one gamer has 5 cards, he have to compose a line which ends with the word from the card, the rest from the team have to finish by giving second line which rhymes with the first one

-pantomime - one gamer has 2 cards, he has to pantomime an animal or a job from the card (he can tell if it's an animal or a job)

-black cards - one gamer has 6 cards, it's like celebrity but here you have just different words

For each quest you gain a proper number of points. The winner is the team who reaches the finish as first.

I hope I've encouraged you to game. If you want to play or borrow any of this game, I recommend GOSU once again. Enjoy!

End-of-term Exhibition - The University of Arts in Poznań.

My roommate studies architecture at UAP and she does many crazy THINGS during all the academic year. Projects, models, sketches, performances... I always wondered what they do with all this stuff after exams, and... I finally know! Every year the students of all faculties at the University of Arts create an exhibition, which is the effect of their whole year's work. In 6 different buildings we can see a countless amount of paintings, sculptures, posters, photos, designs and many others forms of artictic expression. This year the exhibition takes place from 2 to 6 June, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more practical infos I refer you to event's Facebook page. And now I'd like to share my opinion.

Today I was only in buildings A and E and I didn't have so much time to consider every single work from every possible point of view. In the first building I saw many paintings and sketches, especially nudes. Below is the photo from one of the studios of Painting and Drawing Faculty.

My favourite was this painting almost in the middle, with a bald girl with a gas mask. There was also a lot of posters made by students from Faculty of Graphic Arts and Visual Communication. Despite really strange topics (overwhelming gender, woman with a beard etc), they created many interesting things, like this:

Then I visited bulding E. It was a very short, but intensive visit. First, I watched projects of costumes made by students of stage desing.

Later I came across an interesting project of board game...

...and weird Jellyfish Project.

There was even more shocking, beautiful or puzzling works, but I didn't have much time to watch it all. I'm thinking about revisiting the exhibition on Thursday, because I'm very curious about all this stuff I passed by.

Coldplay - Ghost Stories

I decided to spare some money to invest in my cultural life. Each week I try to buy a book, go to the cinema, buy a ticket to opera etc. This week I bought the new album of british rock band, Coldplay. I always liked this group, but after a slightly disappointing CD Mylo Xyloto I didn't know what to expect. Fortunately, Ghost Stories finds out to be really refreshing. The album has 9 songs which make a great combination together. Let me introduce them.

1. The opening song is Always In My Head (I just realised how funny that sounds). Begins with a choir part, then a light guitar solo, so typical for this group. The three-bar's rhythm is a background for the whole piece, which sometimes create a blurred feeling with the vocal part.

2. Magic - You can catch this beat just from the beginning and stay with it to the end. Nice and soft piano parts mixed with this stiff rhythm... Simple, but pleasurable. One of my favourites on this CD.

3. What can I say about Ink? The music makes you think about the summer, holidays... Sounds like a very positive song, even despite lyrics. 

4. Next one among bests - True Love. Strings in background - this is just a little thing which make this song so magical. And the moment almost at the end - guitar solo missed the main rhythm... Just like I said - little things.

5. Mignight - starts like from outer space and keep going this way. Totally good song to read some science-fiction.

6. You can dive in first few notes of Another's Arms without a fear. Even though the song is sad, this sadness makes it beautiful.

7. Oceans - another enormous blue picture on our way. It reminds me the old, good one Coldplay, with this simple acoustic guitar. You can even hear waves spalshing on the stone beach and the burble mixed with ringing bells at the end. 

8. Quick jump to A Sky Full Of Stars - the energetic one with dynamic piano part and typical dance beat. So different than previous song, but still with the same marvelous vocal of Chris Martin.

9. O - another on my personal list The Best of Coldplay with another great piano part. A song with a lot of o's in lyrics, which make a very nice linking between words. 

In general, the whole album is quite calm, soft and very rhythmical. On the one hand it's like a journey back to the old style, but on the other hand it's new and fresh. I hope I encouraged you to listen and to chill out with the newest Coldplays masterpiece. 

Bubble Day

Today I had a really great time with my friends on Stary Rynek in Poznań. 11 o'clock, sun is shining and... Everybody is making bubbles! Kids, their parents, students... It was a wonderful time. At first we didn't know what to do, but then we joined the crowd. After a while we were in front of the stage. There was a band playing some kind of funk rock, I suppose, called Przed Wschodem Słońca. Their music was energetic and positive like this whole even and the people around me. At 12 o'clock we broke a record in making so many bubbles at once, with Koziołki staring at us. Even if someone looking at me this day may call me childlish... I don't care as long as I can make world a happier place to live. Be positive :)

Dreams.

I have really weird dreams lately, while my roommate doesn't have any. My friend said she remembers only nightmares. Sometimes they're just some visions, images, but occasionally I can see it like a whole story. Some people says our dreams are just representations of our reality, ordered while our brain tries to relax. Others think that we can have prophetic dreams or so-called lucid dreams.

Scientists claimed that our dreams don't have any meaning, they're just random thoughts which we can see in REM stage, when our sleep is shallow and our brain waves are similar to a waking state. In fact, when our dream seems to be an hour long, in fact it lasts about 20-30 seconds! During one night we can have about 5 REM stages, which means we can have up to 5 different dreams, but usually we remember only the last one. 

Lucid Dream (LD) is a dream in which we're aware that we're actually dreaming. Sometimes this state is comparable to Out of Body Experience (OOBE), in which we have an impression that our soul leaves our body. Anyway, in both states we can control the action of our dream. At the beginning it's important to notice signs which can show us we're in a dream, ex. if we look at the watch and after a while look again, the hour will be totally different. A good hint can be also reading - if you know what's written but you can't read the text word by word, you're probably in a dream. There are plenty of exercises for lucid dreamers, like writing down your dreams and trying to remember as much as possible, waking up in a specific sleep stage and waking your mind without waking the body, etc. I personally had a few LD, but I couldn't change anything, I could only watch knowing this isn't reality. 

Interesting vision of LD had Christopher Nolan, the director of famous film Inception, in which characters have several dreams in other dreams, could dream someone else's dream or even change one's way of thinking by implanting an idea into one's mind during the sleep, which is the definition of inception itself. 

An idea of profetic dreams is also interesting, if we believe in power of our intuition. Fortune-tellers say, that this images produced by our brain aren't accidentals. Using a book of dream interpretations we can see the past, the present and the future just like using the Tarot or crystal ball. 

There are so many explanations of our dreams, but even science isn't sure why we're actually dreaming. Maybe one day we'll figure it out, but for now it remains a mystery.

WA Music Ensemble

Two weeks ago I was hanging around in the university and I saw this poster - "Do you play any instrument? Do you want to play with us and do something marvelous?" it said. I thought "Why not?" and now I'm just before the first rehearsal.

We've got 24 members so far, including 3 violinists, a cellist, an ukulelist, a trumpeter, 3 drumers and many, many guitarists. I don't know what it's going to be, but I expect a lot of fun on the first place and numerous jam sessions. By now we've arranged little setlist and we'll try to do something with it on Thursday.

The main purpose of this group is to make music, to get to know other musicians from our university and to improve our english (the project is managed by UAM Department of English, so-called WA), especially music vocabulary. 

In case of concert, I'll get you know.

In the end I want to share with you one of the song from our setlist. Enjoy :)