Alone vs. lonely

If you're alone, it means there is no one physically with you, or no one is sharing your activity. You could take a trip alone, or do a project alone.

If you're lonely, it means that you feel a little sad to be alone. You wish someone were with you
.
Do you like to be alone?
Do you ever feel lonely?

Some people say that the worst loneliness (this is the noun form of the adjective lonely) is when you feel lonely when you're with other people. The concept here is that even though others are with you, you feel isolated from them, without a strong connection. Have you ever experienced this?

When you look at this image, what is your impression: is he lonely, or just alone?

Teaching at InfoJobs is great

It's true, I'm really lucky. Teaching at InfoJobs is truly great, because the people are curious and smart and interesting. Sometimes the best classes are the ones that go in unexpected directions, away from the plan.
My friend David stopped by the classroom and snapped this picture. Although there are some words about stress and anxiety on the board, you can see that I was ready to enjoy the class. And when Jordi, Alex and Humbert showed up, it was great to see them and have time to talk.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead of you, with a few good plans and maybe some time to be spontaneous...

Close call

A close call is when something bad almost happened.

You were almost hit by lightning... "Wow! That was a close call!"

You were almost in a bad car accident... "That was a really close call."

A tornado missed your house... "That was a close call... We could have been killed!"

Your friend almost finds out about the surprise party you're planning for her, another close call.

Keep practicing and keep noticing new things

This structure, keep + a verb in the -ing form, means to continue doing something. For example: "I keep hearing the same song everywhere!" Or, "Don't stop now, keep going!"

I notice that the longer I live in Barcelona, and the more I read books and newspapers, the more I learn. It's like a spiral, in the sense that I notice new things about Spanish and Catalan all the time. These things were always there, I just couldn't see them or recognize them.

The same is true with learning English. Even if you feel that you aren't moving forward, keep practicing and noticing things. Keep learning new words and asking questions.

When you're starting to learn a language, your progress feels quick, because everything is new. But soon, it seems that you're slowing down. This is right, because the more you know, the more you don't know. You may become frustrated. But don't give up! Keep going, and you'll discover that you're still learning and improving.

Something that can help you is to set some practical goals, like to learn a new verb every week. It might not sound like much, but at the end of the year you will have learned a lot of verbs!

Rad

My word for today is rad. I have a long history with this word; I grew up in a surf town in southern California, and this word was very popoular at my school. It's a short form of radical, but it means great, cool, wonderful.

I used to associate this word with surfers and surfer wannabees, but I see it and hear it now in all kinds of places. On the blog zenhabits, for example, you can see it: "rad readers."  My friend Harriet uses this word, and it sounds good when she says it.

So, I hope you're having a rad week!

Young-ha Kim: Be an artist, right now

In my opinion, is a great TED talk!

Downtime and quality time

These two expression with time are very commonly used, especially by speakers of American English.

Downtime officially means time that a computer system is not available, but it has come to mean time when you're relaxing: not working or doing much that is very structured.

Quality time means time with a person, or people, that's focused. For example, drinving your kid to football practice might not be quality time, depending on how distracted you both are. On the other hand, time playing with your kid, or having an experience together, would probably be quality time.

Here are some examples:

You: After this project, I propose that everyone have some downtime, at least a few days to relax and get ready for the the next one. What do you think?

Your colleague: I think that's a great idea, but some people won't want to do it.

*****

Your boyfriend: We really need to have some quality time as soon as possible! I feel like we're always running around like chickens with our heads cut off!

You: Yeah, I totally agree. What about going away somewhere next weekend?

*****

If you're interested in finding more time for downtime or quality time, I really recommend zenhabits. This blog has a lot of great ideas for freeing your time for what's really important to you!