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Spain, Spanish and the English Summer

Hi again,

Welcome back to the Indie Travel Podcast. It’s been some time since I’ve experienced temperatures above 20 degrees (celsius) and I’m excited. Go the northern hemisphere summer!

We’re on the Isle of Wight, England at present and have just returned from a hike right around the island. It wasn’t very challenging although the middle day felt really difficult. Sometimes it takes some emotional effort to break through the hard patches.

It probably didn’t help that that difficult day was my birthday. Today is Linda’s birthday too, by the way. We’re not really celebrating in style — there’s too much to do — but we’re going to make sure we have a nice meal tonight along with a decent bottle of wine.

We’re heading back to Bilbao, Spain at the end of June for an English camp there. I enjoyed the brief time I spent in the city and all of the time I spent in northern Spain at the start of this year. It’s going to be good to be back. The question is what we are going to do afterwards! It’s anyone’s guess right now.

Site News

Once again there are some great new additions to the website this month. Firstly, we’ve introduced video podcasts which will appear on the homepage and in your RSS feed (or monthly email update). We’ve had some trouble uploading videos from the Isle of Wight, but we hope to remedy that in London next week and ensure we have an emergency cache of videos to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We’re also excited to announce that our website’s shop or choose a language below.

Language Guides

  • Learn Arabic on your iPod
  • Learn Chinese Mandarin on your iPod
  • Learn French on your iPod
  • Learn Hindi on your iPod
  • Learn Indonesian on your iPod
  • Learn Italian on your iPod
  • Learn Japanese on your iPod
  • Learn Lao on your iPod
  • Learn Malaysian on your iPod
  • Learn Portuguese on your iPod
  • Learn Russian on your iPod
  • Learn Spanish on your iPod
  • Learn Thai on your iPod
  • Learn Turkish on your iPod
  • Learn Vietnamese on your iPod

    • Phrasebooks

  • Chinese Mandarin iPod phrasebook
  • French iPod phrasebook
  • Hindi iPod phrasebook
  • Indonesian iPod phrasebook
  • Italian iPod phrasebook
  • Japanese iPod phrasebook
  • Spanish iPod phrasebook
  • Thai iPod phrasebook
  • Vietnamese iPod phrasebook

    • If you’re looking for travel insurance, I can recommend the homepage and their own articles directory, which also highlights a different author each week.

    Photo of the month

    There have been a dearth of photos recently. We’d love to see yours on the Indie Travel Podcast flickr group.

    Language learning

    Linda and I have been thinking about learning languages a bit recently. Not only is teaching English our major breadwinner, but we’ve recently started learning Spanish too. We don’t have enough spare cash for lessons, so we’ve got a book and CD and are supplementing it with other online resources. We’ve also been investigating language software but haven’t bought anything yet.

    Needless to say, progress is slow but steady. Hopefully by the time we make it to Spain there will be enough of a base-level that can be consolidated.

    There seems to be a flood of language-related websites out there and some of them have really good hints. These are the main points I have come away with. Will you email us yours?