28th JANUARY SESSION.

Good morning:

Our conversation topics reflect our worries and the latest news. So, it's not so strange that our first topic was pensions and all the changes of the new Spanish law about it. Then, we talked about human resources and we talked about languages (including Spanish regional varieties). After that, Elena proposed us to explain her particular view on human evolution, nature, tele-transport or dimensions. We became a bit philophical in this point because we turned to discuss about the universe, the infinite and space. Apart from this, Jairo talked about the dark period of the Middle Ages. Another completely different topic was farms.

Linguistically speaking, we learnt two new expressions: "pull strings" (I copy definition by thefreedictionary.com):

To pull strings - influence or control shrewdly or deviously; "He manipulated public opinion in his favor" Synonyms: manipulate, pull wires. related words: act upon, influence, work.  have and exert influence or effect;E.g. "The artist's work influenced the young painter"; "She worked on her friends to support the political candidate" The second one was: "be as thick as two short planks" (be very dumb, be as dumb as a brick, have no intelligence at all), what in Spanish would be "no tener dos dedos de frente". Meaning (British informal): to be very stupid. E.g. He might be good-looking but he's as thick as two short planks (from wordmagicsoft.com and thefreedictionary.com) There's something new to learn everyday... Bye!!