May I introduce Walter Elias Disney?

Walter "Walt" Elias Disney is one of the founders of the world-famous Walt Disney Company. It all started in 1901, when Walt was born in a city called Chicago, Illinois.

At this point, let's have a closer look at the state Illinois, so we can trace back Walt's roots more easily.
Illinois is located in the Midwest Region of the United States. While Chicago is Illinois' largest community, Springfield is home to the Illinois State Capitol, which makes it Illinois' capital city.

As you can see on the map, Illinois borders Iowa, Wisconsin, Lake Michigan (which belongs to Michigan), Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri. The latter was a very significant place in Disney's life. When he and his family relocated to Marceline, Missouri, Disney found out he was a passionate and talented draftsman. Walt carried four years on his back when he realized he would become a cartoonist one day!

In 1917, Walt moved back to Chicago. After being rejected by the army, Walt joined the American Red Cross where he was sent to France to conduct an ambulance car. For me as a  voluntary paramedic this was really interesting to read!

First steps

Disney and his friend Ubbe Iwerks formed a company named "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists" in 1920. The company soon ceased to exist, whereupon Walt joined the Kansas City Film Ad Company in Missouri. Eventually, Walt launched his own business. With his very first employee, Fred Harman, Walt wrapped up a deal with Frank L. Newman (I'm not kidding!) who was the owner of the local theater in Kansas City. There, Walt and Frank presented their cartoons ("Laugh-O-Grams") for the very first time.
In 1923, Disney signed a contract with M. J. Winkler to produce a series of Alice Comedies. This year is considered as the beginning of "The Disney Brothers Studio". Unfortunately, their costs exceeded their returns, which is why they soon declared bankruptcy. Roy O. Disney, Walt's brother, invited him to come to Hollywood, CA. Once again, Walt launched the Disney Brothers Studio together with his brother Roy.

Does anyone of you remember this cartoon on the right hand side? Do you know how this "sort of Mickey Mouse" was called back then? Well, here's the answer: Published in 1928, this cartoon was the very first Mickey Mouse cartoon created by Walter Elias Disney. He was called the "Steamboat Willie". Doesn't ring a bell?
Some of you might have heard that the story of Disney started with a lucky rabbit. This is absolutely true: Before Walt made some early drafts on the Mickey Mouse, he drew a rabbit called "Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit".

Walt Disney's Masterpieces

Over the years, numerous things happened: Walt Disney's first full-color cartoons are introduced, Donald Duck appears, the Disney Studio relocates to Burbank, California and the first Disney park ("Disneyland") is opened in Anaheim, CA. What's more is the release of several films which are nowadays considerer as The Walt Disney Masterpieces. For example:

1937: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the very first animated film in Walt Disney's history
1940: Fantasia, one of today's classics
1950: Treasure Island, Disney's first live-action movie is released
And so on and so forth... 

What is your favorite disney movie? Which ones did you watch when you were a kid? Tarzan? The Lion King? 101 Dalmations? Beauty and the Beast? I watched so many Disney films in my childhood, I could never list all of them. Today, I watch a Disney movie every once in a while. Aren't they just amazing? I admire all the cartoonists and graphic designers who put so much work into this. Lately I found some early drafts of several Disney cartoons. I am going to show you two of them, but if you would like to see more, click here.

Do you recognize these two films?

Walter's private life

Walt got married to Lillian Marie Bounds at the age of 24. He had met her while Lillian worked as a secretary at the Disney Studio. His wife gave birth to a daughter in 1933, Diane Marie Disney, although Walt had always dreamed about having a son. The couple adopted a second daughter, Sharon Mae Disney, who was born in 1936.
By the way: It was not Walter who named his most famous cartoon character "Mickey Mouse". At first, Walter wanted to give him the name "Mortimer Mouse", whereupon Lillian told Walt it sounded "too pompous". His wife then suggested the name "Mickey Mouse".

His whole life, Walter had been chain smoking. In 1966, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and soon afterwards died because of it. After his death, Lillian Disney gave a $50 million to the Walt Disney Company so as to construct a new concert hall. Six years after Lillians death, the Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in Los Angeles, CA.

Some facts you surely didn't know about Disney

• Opinion polls show that Mickey Mouse wasn't the most famous cartoon, but Popeye the Sailor.
• Mickey Mouse was the first animated cartoon to talk. His first words were "Hot dog"!
• In some Disney movies, classic characters are hidden somewhere in the background. E.g. in the opening scenes of The Little Mermaid you can make out Goofy, Mickey and Donald. See for yourself in the picture on the right. If you want to see more scenes where other Disney characters are hidden, follow this link.
• Donald Duck's voice, Clarence Nash, created the dog barks for 101 Dalmations.
• Walt Disney's personal favorite character was Goofy.
• Bahlu (Baloo) is Hindi and means "bear".
• Lots of Disney films such as The Jungle Book or Pinnochio do not have a mother-character. Some say that's because of the early death of Disney's mother.  
• They used tiger roars for the Lion King as lions weren't loud enough.
• Simba is Swahili and means "lion".
• Originally, they wanted to name the film Lion King "King of the Jungle" until someone noticed that lions actually don't live in the jungle.
• Wall-E, the rubbish-compactor, was named after Walter Elias Disney.
• Sulley from Monsters Inc has more than 2.3 million individual hairs. It took the producers twelve hours to produce one single frame of Sulley.
• Cinderella's Castle was designed after Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria, Germany.
• The correct plural form of "dwarf" is "dwarfes". The title "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" still says "dwarfs" because back then, "dwarfs" was grammatically right.
• There is a club called Club 33  within Disneyland. Opened in 1967, the club has a list of 487 members who are allowed to enter. Good luck with trying to get onto the list; the waiting list is of around 14 years.
• The Disney World resort is about the same size as San Francisco.
• Steve Jobs was a member of the board of Disney's directors. If you ever watched the film Cars, you might have seen a white racing car with the Apple logo and the number "84" on it (the first Macintosh computer was released in 1984). See for yourself on the picture below.

You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

- Walt Disney

sources: thewaltdisneycompany.com, disney.wikia.com/wiki/, wikipedia.org, www.empireonline.com
image source (1): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walt_disney_portrait.jpg
image source (2): http://www.map-of-usa.co.uk/images/illinois.gif
image source (3): http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/sites/default/files/styles/775x/public/timeline-image/1928_11_18_3%20%282%29.jpg
image source (4): http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal05/2012/10/6/19/enhanced-buzz-32109-1349567318-4.jpg
image source (5): http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/10/6/18/enhanced-buzz-9106-1349562614-0.jpg
image source (6): http://izismile.com/2013/06/10/disney_characters_that_are_hidden_in_other_disney_27_pics.html
image source (7): http://bdd.worldofcars-forum.fr/bddcars/images/personnages/apple_car.png

How much money do you spend on food?

Have you ever thought about how much money you spend on food per week? Well, I did. And it's not that much, compared to what a family of four or five would spend. Additionally, there's a yawning gap between the amount of food an American family, for example, and a family in a rather poor country consumes.

To illustrate, I'd like to show you some photos of families of various countries, all presenting how much food they need per week. Likewise, I will try to name some groceries and foods that are shown in the photos. At the very end of the post, I will tell you how much money the families have spent on the foods they show in the pictures. Try to guess the amount of money first when you have a look at the photos.

At this point I would like to express a big THANKS to Peter Menzel who came up with this idea and shot these gorgeous photos. If you are interested in his work, click here.

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Our journey starts in Europe. This is the Melander family from Germany. Look at all the food they have! There's frozen pizza, lots of sausage, milk (I guess that these are milk cartons in the back), some bread, cheese, vegetables like pepper and tomatoes, lots of salad,... There is very little fruit, though, just bananas and some citrus fruits. It seems that they spend some money on drinks like beer and wine. They have, however, very little soft drinks. At least I can't make out any soft drinks, can you?
How much money did they spend on this amount of food? Can you guess?

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Say "Ciao" to the Manzo family living in Sicily, Italy. This family of five obviously consumes a lot of bread per week.  There is also lots of fruit like bananas, plums and pears. Can you guess what these red fruits are? They look similar to pomegranates, but I'm not sure. It looks like they have a lot of tinned food and some soft drinks in the back. Have you had a look at the shelf behind the family's father? There are some cereals and I think a glass of Nutella. What else can you make out?
Do you think this family spends more money on food than the family from Germany? In theory, they would spend more than the German family as they are five people. We will see...

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Going back west: North Carolina, United States: The Revis family.
All these groceries look so colorful, don't you think? What can you see there? What is different to the preceding families?
For the first time we have McDonalds and Burger King food. They also had pizza delivered. Unfortunately, there seem to be very little vegetables and fruit, except some tomatoes, apples and grapes. What's more is that they have this huge Coke bottle (or whatever that is) in the back. Can you see it? They also have crisps, tinned food, lots of sauces and some meat.
What would you say about their diet? Do you think they spend a lot of money on that kind of food?

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We're taking a trip to a country in Central America: Mexico. The Casales family says ¡Hola!
As you can see, this family of five has a great variety of fruit: bananas, lemons, limes, watermelons, pineapples, oranges... They have very little sweets, but lots of soft drinks instead. Would you say this family has a healthy diet? Why?

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We're now travelling to the western part of South America. These Ecuadoreans seem to have very little food compared to how many people the family consists of. What do you think is in these large white sacks? Do you think all this food will be enough for nine people for one week?

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Aren't you interested in what Asian people tend to eat? And how much money they spend on food weekly? Here's the Ukita family from Japan. Admittedly, there are several foods that I can't recognize. I can, however, see that there is a variety of seafood and very little vegetables and fruit. Can you recognize what all these foods are on the right handside? Do you think the seafood is expensive for them?

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Going from Japan to the western mainland: Mongolia. The Batsuuri family, consisting of four family members, seems to consume very little food in one week. There are plenty of eggs and potatoes and some bread and meat. Do you see any sweets on this photo? Can you guess how much money they spent on this amount of food?

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And this is the Aboubakar family living in Chad. No comment.

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So how much money did they spend?

It's really hard to take a guess, isn't it? You must be curious about the answers on how much money each family spent. So here's the solution:

German family (1): € 375.39 or $500.07
Italian family (2): € 214.36 or $260.11
American family (3): $341.98
Mexian family (4): 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09
Ecuadorean family (5): $31.55
Japanese family (6): 37,699 Yen or $317.25
Mongolian family (7): 41,985.85 togrogs or $40.06
Chadian family (8): $1.23 (!)

I assume you were as shocked as I was when I first saw these photos. How can a family of six people (African family) survive with so little food and water? For me, it's quite hard to imagine to do without all the food that we're used to eat. Do you think you could manage to live with so little food?

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If you found this article both intriguing and shocking, please don't thank me for providing this information and photos to you. Be grateful to the man who came up with the idea and made all these amazing photos.

source of information & photos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/26/102458/137/70/522670/#

Five ways to spice up your Blog

Howdy, language learners!

Today, I am going to give a few hints and tips how to make your blog (posts) even more intriguing to read. I hope you can take something personally for you from here.

1. Content

When deciding on a topic to write about in your blog, you should choose something you are really interested in. Your readers will notice if you're not really into a topic. For example, if I wrote about soccer, people would immediately see that I am neither interested in that kind of sport nor do I know the rules of it. Seriously, I really don't know the rules. Knowing that guys are running after a football is enough information for me, haha!

Long story short: Try to choose a topic that you love to talk, read and write about! If you write about a topic you like, people will like to read your thoughts about it.

2. Length of Blog Posts

At first, I would like to mention a helpful acronym: KISS. No, we're not talking about kissing here, guys. I am talking about

K - keep
I - it
S - short (and)
S - simple

Personally, I like to read blogs that keep their posts interesting, but simple. Going too much into detail might show that you really are into a certain topic. Your reader, however, is more likely to glance over or even stop reading your text if you get lost in details. That's why you should keep your posts "short and simple". Mention everything that's necessary for the reader to understand what you're trying to say. This can be difficult sometimes, I know. But hey, we're all learners here, so let's give it our best shot!

3. Style and Register of Writing

The reader of your blog should see that you are talking to them. I'm, for example, always trying to say "you" instead of "one": "you shoud", "you could", etc. What's more is that asking questions will get your reader's attention and they are more likely to keep reading: "Have you ever tried these?", "Have you ever been to Barcelona?", "Have you ever heard of this website?" etc.

When we talk about register, it's absolutely important to adapt the register to the situation and the person you are talking to. I.e. when you are talking to your boss at work, you will use a rather formal register. Instead, when talking to a friend, you would use an informal way of speaking. Therefore, a neutral register would be appropriate in terms of blogging.

4. Add photos

"A picture is worth a thousand words." Of course, we should focus on writing here and not on adding nicely photoshopped pieces. Pictures are a crucial part of a blog post, though. When adding a photo or infographic to your blog post, people are more likely to read through your texts. It is a natural habit of human beings to concern oneself with a text when there are pictures included. Let's be honest, none of us is fond of reading a 600-page book without a single picture in it. That's just tedious. Pictures jazz up your blog posts, so try to add at least one or two! But: Don't overdo it!

5. Template

Try to find an eye-catching template that makes your blog special. Keep it simple though, your template should offer a clear view. What's more is that you shouldn't use kitschy or neon colors. I guess your readers won't be that grateful for suffering from an eyestrain after looking at your blog. Along with the proper choice of colors, try to use a font that is easily legible. You should know that serif fonts are only used for printed papers. Sans serif fonts, however, are used for texts written for e.g. the world wide web. It's easier for our eyes to read sans serif fonts on a screen.

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And now, it's my turn...

to tell you what I would like to improve about my blogging habits. Firstly, I would like to write a lot more and about different topics. My preceding blog posts dealt with my favourite TV-series, places I've been to, my job within the Red Cross and all that jazz. That's all well and good, but as I said, I'd like to tackle some other subject matters in this semester. Secondly, I tend to just list some points about a certain topic instead of writing a paragraph. Writing a paragraph is more beneficial when learning a language, I believe. I need to practice paragraph writing for our progess checks anyway.

All in all, I will try to spend more time on blogging, write about diverse topics and focus on writing paragraphs instead of just listing some words or phrases.