Weeklyletter.com - free weekly articles with audio to improve your English.

You haven't logged in yet Log in
Or register as a user. It's free.

Home >> Weekly letters by Gina Cariño

The Way to San José: Fallas

Posted by Gina Cariño

Some may still be nursing a hangover from the St. Patrick's/St. Joseph's Day weekend, so maybe we can talk about excesses and ephemera…

Coping with ENS

Posted by Gina Cariño

The empty nest syndrome. That's what you get when your children start to go away. Watch out! It can hit you harder than you ever thought possible

Skirting the Issue

Posted by Gina Cariño

Judging from the shop windows, we're in for another summer of big long soft skirts. Big long soft skirts are cool. Big long soft skirts are comfy. Comfort and joy. Why, then, for women only?

Postcard from Normandy

Posted by Gina Cariño

No, not everything has to boil down to sex, but thanks to a sexist education, I was never taken to Normandy. I had to wait to come here on my own.

Books: Berlin Noir, Rome Noir

Posted by Gina Cariño

Besides the usual guidebook, what do people read when they travel? It often depends on where they are traveling.

It’s not a sin to cry “Liberation!�? when the children go back to school. The summer vacation is long. THEIRS is. We’re sick of them. If we went somewhere, it was probably with THEM. Did we really have a good time then? That depends on us. Did THEY get something of value out of it? Only if WE had our fun.

A Four-Letter Word

Posted by Gina Cariño

Something was said to me when I was six that I have never been able to forget.

Brushes with Fame

Posted by Gina Cariño

On my 47th birthday, I have every right to be shallow. I am going to talk about encounters with famous people. Extraordinary encounters with extraordinarily famous people.

Child in a Horror House

Posted by Gina Cariño

In German, See is sea, but also lake. The Wannsee is a lake area where Berliners go to be beachgoers and do water sports, or just to hang out on nice days. Great for kids.

Postcard from Manila

Posted by Gina Cariño

Mail is slow, but here it is… just small talk on a hot and humid, languid Manila day.

A Town Named Cariño

Posted by Gina Cariño

My surname often invites a smile or a smirk, but every now and then someone will start to rave about a little fishing village in Galicia.

Un pueblo llamado Cariño

Posted by Gina Cariño

A menudo, mi apellido invita a sonreir, pero muy de vez en cuando alguien comienza a alardear de un pequeño pueblo de pescadores en Galicia.

A Backward Procession

Posted by Gina Cariño

Next week is a week of processions. This unique one I am going to tell you about was not a Holy Week procession, though, but a summer one, and a dancing one!

Postcard from Brooklyn

Posted by Gina Cariño

Brooklyn was just the name of a girl in my Manhattan school. I never came to Brooklyn unless we went to Bay Ridge to eat in Briones. Bay Ridge is the setting of Saturday Night Fever (Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive…). Briones is where I discovered carbonara and Caesar’s salad and where, in hushed reference to a small dining room at the rear, I first heard the word Mafia.

Postcard from Los Angeles

Posted by Gina Cariño

What's that in the picture? If you think it's the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, you're not so wrong. That's the Guggenheim-Bilbao's sister, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. They have a baby sister near us now, the Marqués de Riscal winery in La Rioja. Their dad is Frank Gehry.

Postcard from Cambridge

Posted by Gina Cariño

Greetings from Cambridge. Guess which. There are lots of Cambridge cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods in the English-speaking world. Sometimes the CAM rhymes with SAM, DAMN, and LAMB. This CAM is pronounced like CAME. I came to Cambridge.

Take My Eyes (Interview with an Ophthalmologist)

Posted by Gina Cariño

TAKE MY EYES was a Spanish movie about domestic violence. Luis Tosar played the wifebeater. But this weekly is about donating your eyes for the day you die.

Postcard from Lourdes and Stories of Altruistic Work

Posted by Gina Cariño

Every time my mother comes, she asks to be taken to Lourdes. Relatives come from faraway continents and I am expected to take them there. Friends and relatives of friends and relatives come in order for me to take them there. I have taken so many people there that I have earned my way to heaven!

Faith Got My Tongue

Posted by Gina Cariño

What makes people learn a foreign language, you ask. I know what made me learn a foreign language. My mother did. She made me take Spanish lessons. She also made me take piano lessons. And on the feast of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music, I would like to honor my three piano teachers… especially Anna Beck.

Postcard from Australia: Pasalubong Billabong

Posted by Gina Cariño

G’day. I come from the land down under… bearing gifts for everyone from 1 to 92. True to form, I am not Filipino for nothing. Forgive me if this is not so much about Oz.