David in Spain

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What on earth is a Word Portrait then? Tony who is the subject of the interview of this Podcast, BravaChat Podcast 08, makes word portraits, a book which is the life story of a customer as collected by a series of interviews. Tony listens to your story and turns it into a book. Essentially he is a ghost writer, but not at all scary.

Tony also talks about what it is like to move from England to live in Catalonia with his Catalan wife. He has been here for three or four years and for one of the years had work at Girona University. Tony uses his writing knowledge and skills to write short stories  and novels. There are many competitions available for writers and it is a good way to help push past writers block by giving a goal to aim for and kind of helps makes the writing happen.

You can listen to the Podcast by clicking on the image above, or use the links below to start the podcast running in your browser.

Did you know you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and each time I put up a new podcast it will come to you automatically. Even though you go through the iTunes Store there is no charge to get the Podcast.

You could even go one stage further and subscribe to the Podcasts’ RSS feed. All you have to do is to use a feed reader. I like the Netvibes RSS feed reader and I have set it as my home page in my browser. I have quite a few web sites that I subscribe to and I save myself loads of time by not having to go to a site and find that it is the same as the last time I looked. I will post up a video soon which shows you how to use RSS. I may even do one which will show you how to subscribe in iTuners.

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In this podcast I talk with Brian Buchanan and he tells us about getting work as a teacher of English both without the TEFL and with the qualification. Brian had a year in Japan which sounds like a real adventure and now has been here in Catalonia for just 10 weeks or so. We get the low down of his first impressions of Girona and Catalonia. Although it isn’t the first time in Catalonia, seeing as he did the TEFL course in Barcelona.

Brian has set up a shop with CafePress to produce tee shirts with a Japanese influence, maybe next he will do some designs inspired by Catalonia, perhaps the squatting figure that you can get here would be good on a Tee. What do you think?

Brian has an interest in music and he chooses the music for a show which is aired in Scotland each week. Sunday Night Leith time 10pm til 12 A900 SHOW or listen on FM 98.8. Links to Brian Buchanan can be found at leithal-music

You can even find Brian at MySpace

In the podcast I mention the British Society of Catalonia and the Witty Walks group. If you are a walker and like to get out and about  in the countryside within reach of Barcelona, you can check out their web site. Not sure if you have to be able to tell jokes while you walk though, get back to me and tell me. I will drag out a few shaggy dog story jokes from the old but good still cupboard.

If you would like to contact Brian then fill in the contact form below.

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I met Chris this year in Mas Nou near Barcelona at the Podcamp Barcelona event. The Podcamp was all about new media, like blogging, audio and video podcasting, Screen casts, mashups  and a sprinkling of politicians doing what politicians do (mostly talking rubbish). I presented a podcasting for beginners session and a couple of people turned up and listened even.

Chris tells us about what it is like living in Spain in a couple of different places and has lots to say about some tech type things here in Spain. He also talks about language learning from 2 perspectives, both the teaching English angle and also regards learning Catalan and Spanish.

You can click on the picture to the left to get the podcast. It is an enhanced podcast with clickable links. More links below for Chris also. You can contact Chris at Cataspanglish on WordPress and also at Podcamp Barcelona, he even has a web site about Spanish cooking called Spanish Sauce.

Check out Chris’s views on TV in Spain and the politics of internet and Telefonica. Have you wondered why we only get low speed broadband here in Spain?

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Chris’s blog post about living in Spain

His students blog about the programming for kids

and his students’ screencast page for office training

At podcamp Barcelona were people like Don McAllister of Screencasts online. Pim pam pum and their mash ups using Flickr and other sources.

There was Mark Pendleton from Coffee Break Spanish, You might like to subscribe to that to help you learn Spanish easily with a podcast.

You don’t have to have an iPod to listen to a Podcast. A Podcast is downloadable media that you can also view in your web browser, basically an internet radio show. Or an internet TV show if it is a video podcast like BravaChat Podcast 04 with the Catalan Human castles

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The Sponsor for the show is SkypeOut – A service from Skype that allows you to call ordinary phone very cheaply from your computer. I have used it and it does work very well.

Just got back from a few days visiting the Pays Cathares which is kind of from Carcassonne down to the Pyrannees. This will qualify for this web site because it is a Catalan region. The road signs in many of the towns were in both French and Catalan.

This is a wine making region and just about which ever way you look there are vineyards. I don’t like wine myself so there was no wine tasting being done on the trip, but there were lots of Domaine de ….. wine tasting places where you can taste the stuff and buy it if you want to.

I am reading a book at the moment about the area called Labyrinth by Kate Mosse and it is one of those books that once you have started you can’t put down. In the book it is centred in Languedoc and in particular around Carcassone, Foix and the castles of the area like Chateau Montsegur. I can tell you it certainly looks impressive at the top of the mountain. Quite a climb to get to it.

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I have a very short interview with a couple that were at the Girona human castles event. I didn’t have time to edit it before I went away for the few days in France. I have one more interview recorded but neither I not the interviewee is happy with it so we are going to re record it in the next few days.

Don’t forget to get in touch if you have something to say about living and working here Catalonia. Use the contact form below