Every now and then, we hear stories of people who met on English, baby! visiting one another in real life. We believe that a social environment helps people learn English. So when our members form bonds strong enough to make international trips to see each other, we think that is a really cool thing.

Recently, some Ebaby! members I got to meet a few years ago had another international guest. Zeus from Turkey and Kinski from Ukraine met on English, baby! and got married a few years ago. I went to their wedding and made a video about it. It was an incredible good time.

Another one of Zeus’ Ebaby! friends, Rita, traveled from Brazil with a friend to visit Zeus and Kinski in Istanbul last fall. They are amazing hosts, so I’m sure a fantastic time was had by all. Zues describes meeting his online friend of 6 years at the airport:

“You can not imagine at that moment, feelings were maximum. We hugged and get happy to see eachother. Than we went to their hotel. We showed them Istanbul’s beauties and they loved much Istanbul.”

From the look of it, Istanbul loved them back, too.

They also visited some of the sites I saw on my trip. I know I was right here:

And here:

I wish I had visited this place. Looks cool! Guess I’ll have to go back.

Have you met your Ebaby! friends in real life? Tell us about it!

Our recent English lesson videos with US Women’s National Team star Ali Krieger have introduced us to the previously unknown world of fan-created animated gifs. Between Ali tweeting the lessons and the official US Soccer blog posting them, a lot of fans saw them, and a few were inspired to create these fun images.

Original post here.

Original post here.

Original post here.

Original post here.

Apparently, there are dozens of these gifs created by fans of the US Women’s National Team every day. We think it’s pretty amusing, and we’re glad they like our videos.

The Los Angeles Galaxy is a team of stars. They have David Beckham, the most famous player in the world. They have Landon Donovan, the best active American player. Plus they have a former MLS rookie of the year, goal keeper of the year, and many other well-known players.

So it was no surprise that there was lots of media hoping to talk to Galaxy players when they came to Portland to play the Timbers yesterday. Since we weren’t able to talk to him one-on-one, we were thrilled that David Beckham used the term “buzz” in his press conference. Perfect for a celebrity English lesson!

In fact, there was quite a buzz around town yesterday. It seemed like every other update on facebook was about Beckham or the match. People started lining up outside the stadium early in the day. You can read more about the woman with the sign in the video in this column by John Canzano.

When the Galaxy were getting off the bus to go into the arena, Donovan and Beckham got the biggest cheers, but next was Bryan Jordan, or BJ as he’s known. He was on loan to the Timbers a couple of seasons ago and is still a fan favorite here. We grabbed a few seconds alone with him to help our members learn the phrase “man on“.

Ultimately, the Timbers won 3-0. You can watch highlights of the game here.

The Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat are competing in the NBA Finals right now, and there are four players involved who have appeared in Celebrity English Lessons on English, baby!

Mavs guard JJ Barea, the smallest guy on either team, has been unstoppable all through the Playoffs. His moves under the basket are incredible, and that was the topic of an English lesson we taped with him last season.

I was happy to see Juwan Howard scoring a couple of points in the first game of the series. As one of the oldest players on the Heat, he is there more for his leadership than his scoring. We talked about team work and his college career for a lesson earlier this season.

The Mavs also have Roddy Beaubois, who is recovering from an injury. We hope he can get healthy in time to show off the alley-oop skills he talked about in his English lesson before the Finals are over. Zydrunas Ilgauskas hasn’t appeared in a Finals game for the Heat so far, but it’s good that he’s getting a second chance to win a championship after losing on his last visit to the Finals with the Cavaliers, since his lesson was on second chances.

What team do you support in the Finals this year? Leave a comment or answer our poll question on Facebook.

To give someone a buzz means to call them on the phone. We know a lot of the students who use English, baby! to learn English would love to practice speaking English on the phone with an American. So we decided to start something we like to call the Ebaby! Buzz in which one of the actors from our Ebaby! cast, calls you on the phone!

For the first Buzz, we asked our Facebook fans to change their profile photo to the English, baby! logo. Jaider from Colombia was the first to do it, so I gave him a call! Listen in:

My favorite part was Jaider’s mom shouting for him to come to the phone. He explained that he was in the shower because he didn’t think I was really going to call. But Ebaby! Buzz is for real! Watch English, baby! and our Facebook and Twitter to find out how you can win one of the cast members giving you a buzz!

Usually, Greg Graffin, who has a PhD from Cornell, teaches life sciences and evolution at UCLA. But at a recently appearance in Portland, he gave an English lesson for the ESL students of English, baby! as part of our Celebrity English Lessons series.

Greg was on tour with his band, Bad Religion, while also doing events on the side to promote his new book. I met with him at the book signing at the Bagdad Theater in Portland and, in addition to getting a book signed and one for a friend, asked him to explain what “against the grain” means, since it’s the title of a well-known Bad Religion song and album.

It’s interesting–while talking about “against the grain” Greg brings in another, similar idiom, “swimming upstream.” It’s probably because after 20 years of singing the song, the two are closely related in his mind. Take a look at the lyrics of the chorus:

Against the grain: that’s where I’ll stay.
Swimming upstream, I maintain against the grain.

I discussed the carpentry origins of the phrase in the lesson intro on Ebaby!, but it’s actually helpful that Greg brought in another image so that the English students on the website will have an easier time remembering the meaning of the phrase.

Bad Religion is actually my favorite band, so I was extra thrilled that Greg was willing to do this. I interviewed him once over the phone back in 2007, but it was an honor to meet him in person!

Last night the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics to win their second NBA Championship in a row. It was also the second for Sasha Vujacic, a point guard from Slovenia who was one of the first NBA players to appear in English, baby!’s celebrity English lessons. He and Kobe Bryant are good friends and they did a lot of celebrating after the victory (as you can see in the photo).

Sasha had a bit of a tough year with some injuries, but in the last few seconds of last night’s game, he made two free throws to secure the victory. Bu could he ever really have missed? He is of course, “The Machine.” Here’s the English, baby! lesson in which he explains the meaning of his nickname.

After the game, lots of reporters wanted to talk to Sasha about the free throws. This article has a video that shows his post game interview. It sounds like he will enjoy his summer!

When my Blazers and their Spanish Armada was defeated by the Houston Rockets in the first round of the NBA playoffs, I started rooting for the Rockets to go all the way. Yao Ming is a great player who has never won a championship and how huge would it be for China if he won.

But did you know the Lakers have a Chinese player too? His name is Sun Yue. He hasn’t seen any post-season minutes, but he’s a rookie. Give him time!

In fact, in the final match up between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Orlando Magic, there are lots of foreign players. Pau Gasol is pretty famous for leading the Spanish Olympic team to a silver medal last summer in Beijing and he and Kobe make a great combination.

One of the Magic’s leading scorers in every game of playoffs has been Hedo Türkoglu of Turkey. Apparently, back home he’s known as “the Michael Jordan of Turkey” because he’s so versatile and unstoppable.

In game one of the finals day before yesterday, Didier Ilunga-Mbenga, a center for the Lakers from Congo made an appearance in the final minutes of the game. He hasn’t seen much playing time lately, but when Andrew Bynum was injured earlier in the season, I remember seeing him a lot. He always looks confident to me when he gets in the game, which says a lot about him. It’s hard to come off the bench for a couple of minutes here and there and not be nervous.

How do I know so much about the Lakers? Because I’ve been watching them all year, rooting for Sasha “The Machine” Vujacic from Slovenia! You’d think he’s a starter for how much attention he gets. All the announcers know his nick-name and some fans made a special series of popular videos just for him! He’s also one of only 5 or so NBA players with a signature shoe in China and also sort of my close personal friend (sort of).

Rounding out the international players in the finals are Mickael Pietrus from France and Marcin Gortat from Poland. Both of these guys see significant minutes for the Magic and Pietrus in particular was deadly against the Cavaliers with his three-pointers earlier in the playoffs.

I can’t decide who to root for because I’ve got Sasha on the one side, but the Lakers are the Blazers’ rival and I also want to support my friends in Turkey by rooting for Türkoglu and his magic. Which team do you support? I better make up mind soon–game 2 is tomorrow!

Last week, thousands of people gathered in Pioneer Square in Portland at a rally for the Trail Blazers, who qualified for the NBA Playoffs for the first time since 2003. Each player said a few words, and one of the most memorable speeches was from Rudy Fernandez, who shouted, “Let’s go to win the playoff!” The line appears in the first part of this video:

I immediately saw a lot of people twitter this line because it was so charming in its enthusiasm and less than perfect grammar. Though Nicolas Batum is the only foreign player in the starting lineup, Portland has two Spaniards on its bench. When Sergio Rodriguez connects with Rudy for an ally-oop, the sports commentators refer to it as “the Spanish Armada.”

In both Sergio and Rudy’s first playoff game last Saturday, the Blazers lost terribly to the Rockets. I heard Sergio on the radio afterward saying he hopes the team “runs more” in this game. His English was a little rough–he seemed confused about what it meant to be tight (good) as a team and loose (relaxed) in a game. But of all explanations I heard of what went wrong in that 30 point loss, I like Sergio’s the best. The team did need to run more. Maybe it’s that simple. We’ll find out in 10 minutes when the game starts. I’ll be watching the Spanish Armada in particular because I really like the spirit they bring to the team at this climax of the season.

Post game update: The Armada did it! The Blazers won a very close game, and Rudy scored the final points by making a pair of free throws. Who’s your favorite international player in the playoffs?

The iPhone has an app that makes the screen look like a cowbell and makes a ‘ding!’ sound whenever you tap it. It also has an app that makes the screen look like a glass of beer, which you can pour out. So you’d better believe it has apps to help you with all the different aspects of learning a language. In fact, the folks at onlinecollegedegree.org compiled 50 of them in a recent post.

Of course there are the simple translators you’d expect, but there are some definite standouts. Take the idiom dictionary. That’s got to come in handy. When I travel and speak to non-native speakers, they commonly say, “Please, don’t use any slang!” So if they’re around someone they don’t feel comfortable asking to alter their speech, they could just slyly plug anything that doesn’t make sense to them into this app as if they’re sending a text.

But definitely the one that sounds most interesting to me is the Translator with Voice. While a lot of online dictionaries have an audio component, I feel that this app is one step closer to realizing sci-fi fantasy I hope to see in my lifetime. When, oh when! will there be an app that automatically translates whatever you say? You know what I’m talking about, the universal translator. We definitely need to invent that before we invent deep space travel. iPhone developers, go!