Giving thanks for what we're given

Hi Cheikh,

Thanks for your last posting telling us what you imagine someone's first experience of air travel might have been like. It was funny and eye-opening! I particularly liked the part about wearing electronic hats and being able to chat together without language.

It's a fascinating thing to do – trying to think about an ordinary, everyday experience from someone else's point of view – and one probably all of us should try to do a bit more often.

It was Thanksgiving yesterday. You asked if we celebrate it here. The answer is mostly no – it's an American and Canadian holiday. But since my partner's American, I do sometimes get involved in a turkey with all the trimmings feast (well, a nut roast for me, because I'm vegetarian). Here's a snap taken at an American friend's flat last year where we all celebrated Thanksgiving in London.



And here's dessert – traditional pumpkin pie. I'll fess up now – I didn't really like it. Pumpkins are a vegetable to me. It just seems weird eating them in a pudding! If we're going for an American meal, give me apple pie and ice-cream any day.



Let's look now at some of your writing from your last post. Your meaning is very clear most of the time and you've used lots of interesting expressions. For example:
common ground
They are studying to get a job rather than to form a broad view of the world.
I can't deny the contributions that most celebrities make …
hindering
Your dog wouldn't take you to court

I couldn't really find a grammatical or vocabulary-based theme in your work today for me to focus on and give you feedback about. So instead, I'm just going to look at two or three parts of your posting in a bit of detail.

First of all, I'm not sure what you wanted to say here:

While I was wandering in the desert, for some description, suddenly the whole sky was lit up and I couldn't recognize what was going on.

Perhaps for some inspiration?

The beginning of this sentence isn't quite right:

All what I remember is that I felt I was traveling so fast.

You could either say:
All that I remember is …
or
What I remember is …

A note about spelling. I presume because you've spent time in the States that your spelling is American. But if you, or any of our blog readers, are interested in British spelling, travelling is a good example of one of the differences between American and British spelling. American spelling often goes for one l when you add –ing to a word that ends in l. For example:
traveling
fueling or re-fueling

Whereas in British English the final l is usually doubled in those words:
travelling
fuelling or re-fuelling

Another word that you spelled correctly in American English was the word practice, when you used it as a verb here:

The experience I got (had) there can not be taught or found in books. It must be lived and practiced.

In British English, we make a distinction between the verb and the noun in words like:
practise (verb) – practice (noun)
advise (verb) – advice (noun)

A general point about your writing is that you tend to use the pronoun he almost exclusively. It may be a deliberate choice, and if so, that's fine. However, you may like to consider being more inclusive in your writing. For example, let's look at one of your sentences (and I've re-phrased it a bit. I hope you don't mind):

When anyone wants to travel across the planet, all he needs to do is to specify where he wants to go and he is there in a jiffy.

You could make it more inclusive by saying:

When anyone wants to travel across the planet, all he or she needs to do is to specify where he or she wants to go and he or she is there in a jiffy.
or
When anyone wants to travel across the planet, all s/he needs to do is to specify where s/he wants to go and s/he is there in a jiffy.
or
When people want to travel across the planet, all they need to do is to specify where they want to go and they are there in a jiffy.
or
When anyone wants to travel across the planet, all they need to do is to specify where they want to go and they are in there in a jiffy.

Some more traditional grammar books might say that anyone … they is wrong, but actually this usage has been around for a very long time. And more recently it's become popular because people are trying to move away from using he to mean everyone and the other options above (he or she and s/he) seem quite clumsy.

Hope that helps a bit! That's all for now. Hope you have a good weekend.

Best wishes,
Nuala
Vocabulary
eye-opening – very surprising and which teaches you new facts about life, people, etc
a nut roast – a vegetarian dish made of nuts and eggs
fess up – fess is short for confess which means to admit or say that you did something that you know was wrong (here, I'm suggesting that saying I don't like pumpkin pie is wrong because it's such a central part of a Thanksgiving dinner)
weird - unusual
pudding – dessert, the final part of a meal where people usually eat pies cakes fruit or other sweet things
almost exclusively - nearly all the time
clumsy – awkward

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