🇫🇷 🇧🇷 🇰🇷 🇪🇸 Translate this page ➡️
For FUN Students & Teachers of English!
“The Most Wonderful Words on the Web!”
(from FunEnglishLessons.com & RainbowEnglishSchool.org)
😲 NO VIDEO ABOVE? 😤 … ➜ Click HERE!
Sab’s INTRODUCTION
Hello Fun English Fans, and a Very Happy New Year!
It’s 2023 here in Europe and it is a good time to look back and reflect on the old year, 2022, before starting the new one.
1) What was the most fun thing you did last year?
2) What was the biggest success you had in 2022?
3) What didn’t go well and what did you learn from it?
My answers to these questions are:
1) The most fun thing I did was start a new website and blog about the lovely Lake District in England called The Lakeland Chronicles. 
The Lake District is a beautiful area in the northwest of England with lots of mountains, valleys and… lakes (did you guess?).
There are many picturesque towns and villages, and the landscapes are stunning. If you like walking or like taking photos or even writing poetry about nature, the Lake District is a wonderful place to be.
You can follow my adventures on my Lakeland Chronicles blog or visit for yourself. See you there!
2) My biggest success was creating a Creativity Masterclass called Infinite Creativity NOW! 
I run two wonderful masterclasses for creative people. One is called the Creative Smartphone Photo Masterclass. We all have an amazing camera in our pocket – our smartphone! This masterclass shows people how to take great photos with it!
The second is called the Infinite Creativity NOW Masterclass. This helps people be more creative and productive, whatever their favourite creative activity or hobby is.
This year, in 2023, I am going to create my final masterclass in this series, called the Creative Blog & Article Writing Masterclass. It should be ready for 2024!
3) What didn’t go well was my exercise plan and diet. 
I’ll be brutally honest: it was a disaster! I planned to lose about 10 kgs and to exercise three or four times a week to get in really good shape. This didn’t happen!
I learned that when I try to force myself to do exercise, it usually doesn’t work.
It’s better to start moving without thinking – Just do it! If I start immediately, before my mind finds an excuse, I have a great workout!
Next week, I will tell you about my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023.
What about you? What was YOUR most fun moment from 2022? What was your biggest success? What was something that was not a success, but that you learned a lesson from?
Share your ideas in our Facebook Group here.
Quick Quiz 
After looking on the internet for New Year’s Resolutions, I found that the three most common are:
a) Get organised / learn a new skill / travel more
b) Exercise more / lose weight / eat healthily
c) Quit smoking / reduce drinking / save money
*INTERESTING VOCABULARY
reflect (v) – to think carefully, especially about possibilities and opinions 🤔
valley (n) – an area of low land between hills or mountains, often with a river running through it
picturesque (adj) – (of a place) attractive in appearance, especially in an old-fashioned way 🏜
landscape (n) – a large area of land, especially in relation to its appearance
masterclass (n) – a class taught by an expert in a subject 🤓
hobby (n) – an activity that you enjoy and do regularly when you are not working
brutally honest (expr.) – telling the truth directly, even if it might upset someone
good shape (expr.) – fit and healthy, having an attractive body
workout (n) – a series of exercises to make your body strong and healthy 🏋️♂️
Try my… Fun English Lessons Sample Pack for just €7! 
4 Interactive Grammar Lessons + One Song-Based Lesson
+ 1 Video-Based Lesson + 1 Article-Based Lesson
IN OTHER NEWS…
Prince Harry’s autobiography released
In case you haven’t heard (maybe you live on the moon, or Mars…), Prince Harry, now the black sheep of the British royal family, has just published his memoires.
The book is called Spare because they say that a good king or queen should have an heir and a spare. The heir is the first born child who will become king or queen next. The spare is a second child or ‘spare’ child, just in case there is a problem with the first one.
Harry was the baby of the family, the youngest of Prince Charles’ and Princess Diana’s two boys. He was very close to his mother and suffered a lot when she died in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
The brothers are hardly peas in a pod. Prince William is very tall with brown hair and clean-shaven. Prince Harry is shorter (but still tall) with curly ginger hair and a ginger beard. In fact, they are more like chalk and cheese.
I think they both have blue eyes, but I haven’t got close enough to be sure!
William is like father, like son – he will be king one day, like his father, and he behaves exactly as a future king should act and never says or does anything wrong.
Harry likes to go to parties and has even taken drugs like cannabis.
Although Harry is William’s own flesh and blood, in his new book, Harry says they fought like cat and dog once, when William said something bad about Harry’s wife, Meghan.
Maybe one day Harry and William will prove that blood is thicker than water and become friends again like in the old days.
At the moment, though, the relationship between them is about as bad as it could be. Aren’t you glad you are not the ‘spare’ in some royal family somewhere?!
SEE BELOW for the definition of the expressions in purple! 
ENGLISH IDIOMS ~ Family Idioms
1) black sheep of the family ➜ a person who has embarrassed their family
2) an heir and a spare ➜ if the ‘heir’ dies, the ‘spare’ will become king or queen
3) baby of the family ➜ the youngest member of a family
4) peas in a pod ➜ two brothers or sisters who look very similar
4) like chalk and cheese ➜ two people who are completely different
5) like father, like son ➜ a son who looks or acts the same as his father
6) own flesh and blood ➜ members of the same family
7) fought like cat and dog ➜ to have angry arguments very often
8) blood is thicker than water ➜ the family is more important than other people
Now try this Family Idioms Quiz…
Visit the Facebook group HERE to chat about today’s English FunLetter and… have fun learning English with Fun English Lessons! 
WORDS in the NEWS
From BBC News: US and Canada
Storms relentless as California drenching goes on
Multi-million dollar beach homes battered by winds, cars swallowed up by sinkholes, and over a dozen people killed – after weeks of extreme storms, many Californians are wondering when it will end.
The state’s famously sunny southern coast has been hit by storm after storm since the December holidays, eroding roads, felling trees and causing landslides.
As of Tuesday evening, at least 17 people had died in weather-related incidents since the storms began, Governor Gavin Newsom said.
More than 22 million people are currently under flood watch, according to the National Weather Service – almost as many as the population of Australia – and thousands have had to evacuate.
In Santa Cruz, a surfing community south of San Francisco, the beach has become unrecognisable, with the sand now completely covered in timber from huge trees which have been ripped out of the ground elsewhere and smashed to pieces.
USEFUL DEFINITIONS
relentless (adj) – never stopping or getting any less extreme
drench (v) – to make something or someone completely wet
batter (v) – to hit someone or something repeatedly very hard
sinkhole (n) – a large hole that suddenly appears in the ground when the surface of the ground is no longer supported
landslide (n) – a mass of rock and earth moving suddenly and quickly down a steep slope
flood (n + v) – If a place floods or is flooded, it becomes covered in water
flood watch (expr) – flooding is possible in a specific area
evacuate (v) – to move people from a dangerous place to somewhere safer
timber (n) – wood that is used for building
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PHOTO of the DAY
One of my passions is taking photos and writing about Paris in France and the Lake District in the UK every day.
Here is today’s photo:
EXERCISE
Write about this photo or record yourself speaking about it in English.
What can you see?
Where do you think it is?
What time or season is it?
What is the weather like?
Can you see any people or animals?
What are they doing?
What are they wearing?
How do they feel?
Do you like the photo? Why or why not?
Would you like to be in the photo?
Where would you prefer to be?
Listen to the end of the video above and hear me describe this photo in detail!
Post your texts or voice recordings/videos in our Fun Facebook Group here, and comment on other people’s posts.
Quick Quiz – Answer
And the most common New Year’s Resolutions from the internet are:
b) Exercise more / lose weight / eat healthily
In the next FunLetter, I will tell you MY New Year’s Resolutions – how many of them will be on this list? And what about YOU?!
Let’s make the English love go round!
