Sooo... Tomorrow we start our first book in class! It's a simplified and abridged version of Dickens' Christmas Carol! :-D I'm quite enthusiastic about it, as it's our first "proper" read - a text that is longer than just a few pages and a good and well-known story :-) Although it's simplified, it seems to convey pretty much of the original reading experience and even features (slightly modified, of course) IMO one of the most iconic starting passages of English literature:
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything  he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

I'm really interested in how the pupils will react towards it - on the one hand, it's a great story and their first  book in English, on the other, it may be a bit tricky vocab-wise... We'll see. 

(snatched from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Scrooges_third_visitor-John_Leech,1843.jpg/220px-Scrooges_third_visitor-John_Leech,1843.jpg)

In other news, there's still plenty of work to do at the moment, and, of course, Christmas presents to think of and buy. For the first time, I've created a "presents" list where I keep track of which kind of presents I gave   away to whom for which occasion and I add ideas for possible presents in the future. Actually I hate lists - they pretend to simplify the complexity of a situation by packing everything in neat little bullet points. Plus, they have this terribly bureaucratic touch and tend to frustrate me and just don't look quite sexy. BUT - as I don't get any younger I don't want to run the risk of giving away the same kind of present to the same person in different situations...

What about you? Have you already started buying - or even thinking of - Christmas presents?