English teaching podcast on front of iTunes Spain!
February 8, 2010 | Thomas | No Comments | Online business, Spain
This is just a quick update as we’re gearing up for the launch of our first IVOZI podcast workbook series here in Barcelona, and are working flat out. We’ve recorded & edited 9 out of 10 podcasts and will be releasing a pack of 10 accompanying workbooks in the next week or so.
We had some rather pleasant news yesterday, that iTunes in Spain are featuring our podcast on the front page of iTunes in a “New and noteworthy” category (see the little red square below). Must be the woman we put on the cover 
It’s bloody cold in England, LOOK!
January 13, 2010 | Thomas | 1 Comment | England, In the news, Travel
Every time I return to England, it seems almost immediately there is a weather-related superlative issued for the month I choose to return. We all know the Brits are obsessed with weather, but in June 2007 it was the wettest/worst June since records began (hundreds of years ago), this winter, it has already been the coldest Winter for 30 or 40 years. And counting.
With temperatures as low as -22 Celsius, and a decent covering of snow: 10,000 schools are shut, the economy is losing 600 million pounds a day, old people are burning cheap second hand books to warm their houses (it’s cheaper than coal!) and the RSPB is regularly publishing warnings about imminent irrecoverable bird deaths.
So what did I do (apart from feeding the birds)? I tried to get back to Spain, on Easyjet, from Gatwick. Not a very sound plan. I ended up wasting the day in queues of people whilst waiting for the inevitable “Flight cancelled” confirmation. In the end it came, and I headed back to Oxford, only to try again another day…
You’ll perhaps be pleased to know (I was) that I made it back to Spain having rescheduled my flight for 3 days later. I got to Barcelona, wasn’t as pleasantly surprised as I’d hoped by the ‘warm climes’ here, and have promptly set about sorting out my crap Sony Vaio (sounds like it has chronic wind) so that I can get on with my IVOZI audio work soon.
On that note, I finally got my hands on the Zoom H2 Recorder and will be starting recording again in a couple of days.
I’ll leave you with a photo of my mother’s back garden in Eynsham, England where I stayed during my weather related incarceration. I tried to feed the birds, but my nuts promptly froze.
My 5 stay-the-same New Year resolutions
January 1, 2010 | Tina | 3 Comments | Events and Activities, General, South America
First of all – Happy New Year to everyone.
Going into a new year usually makes people think about resolutions. They often consist of things they want to change – like stopping to smoke or lose 10 kg etc. I decided that I would rather like to focus on the things I like to stay the same.
1. Staying adventurous: I spent more than half of 2009 travelling all the way down from Costa Rica to Argentina, spent time in an organic Hare Krishna village in Peru, went through the Bolivian desert on horse, jumped out with a parachute in Argentina etc. I want to continue having the courage to do and live things that may seem risky and that may not have a guaranteed reward because only that way does life stay an adventure.
2. Staying open-minded: This is something I have to work on continuously because we are often not conscious about our own prejudism. Before I met Thomas I only dated Israeli men for about 10 years and couldn’t imagine going out with other nationalities. But I am happy that I did go out with Thomas because I learned an incredible amount of things from being with someone from a different culture and with a different mental pattern than what I was comfortably used to. My stay in the Peruvian Hare Krishna village is another example. Had I known in advance that it was a Hare Krishna village I would never have joined. Why? Well actually for no reason at all. In my mind Hare Krishna had a stigma and I don’t have any reason for this. I actually ended up finding out that the religion possibly fits my belief system better than any other I have studied so far (Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity, Islam), but I am not a devotee. But I definitely want to continue challenging my own prejudism and try to stay open-minded.
3. Staying healthy: I have been a vegetarian for 18 years now and feel very healthy. However, in the past I have been a bit of a cheese-bread vegetarian because I hated cooking. I changed this in 2009 and after my return to Denmark I started cooking and can actually make some fairly decent dishes now. Furthermore, being adventurous and fairly open-minded brought me to the Hare Krishna village in which I learned yoga. I have studied it before in Thailand but due to lack of a spiritual dimension I lost interest in it. Vaisnava yoga included the spiritual dimension and I fell in love. This made me take a yoga teacher training course in Cuzco, Peru and since then I have done yoga almost every day. I want to continue this practise because it keeps me healthy physically and mentally.
4. Staying friendly: 2009 is probably the period in my life in which I have gotten the most new friends in all my life and I really feel like my life got enriched in ways that I can’t even begin to describe. I love the company of people and I really believe that the essence of life is the people we surround ourselves with (and animals of course). I want to continue making an effort to meet new people and to nurture the relationships I already have.
5. Staying in the now: I spent the last part of 2009 just enjoying being in the now. I didn’t make any plans and hardly ever made any appointments more than a week into the future and honestly had no aim for my life – but I felt very happy. But I do realise that if you don’t visualise events – nothing happens (law of attraction) and although you can be perfectly happy like that – I do like the magic of visualisation. But I want to try to stay as much as possible in the now and enjoy every moment no matter what I do.
So when I say happy New Year to everyone I wish to add that in my experience happiness cannot be travelled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is felt when you don’t want to be anywhere else than where you are, be anybody else, have anything else or be with anyone else. It is living every minute with love and gratitude. May the New Year bring happiness and love to everyone.
A White Christmas in Yorkshire, England
December 26, 2009 | Thomas | No Comments | England, Travel
It’s my first Christmas back in England for 7 years and I have been lucky enough to be treated to the first White Christmas I remember. Perhaps it’s the fact that I have ventured North of the Watford Gap for nearly the first time in my life – heading up to Bedale in North Yorkshire for a family reunion.
Here’s a photo from today – Boxing Day – where we went for an afternoon walk (and sledge) in the grounds of the 12th Century Jervaulx Abbey.
15 months on – a return to England
December 23, 2009 | Thomas | No Comments | England, Online business, Travel
15 months after leaving the UK for Spain and Latin America, I’m now back in England. It’s been a quiet period for me on the Earthoria front for far too long. Part of the reason for this is the work I have been putting into our IVOZI English teaching business in Spain, and partly because I just needed some ‘anonymous’ time.
Since returning from Vejer de La Frontera at the end of September, I have been based continuously in Barcelona, or rather in Castelldefels – 24KM to the South of Barcelona on the coast.
During the last few months we’ve been working on setting up the IVOZI website and have most of the main systems working and in place. We’ve started to sell a couple of books, our audios en inglés podcasts have quickly entered the iTunes directory, and we’ve launched the Weekend Club – a live event for English conversation practice in Barcelona.
In the new year, I’ll be returning to Barcelona and the aim will be to get a team of people together to hugely increase our productivity – especially in the area of new product development, and with a focus on audio and multi-media products. We’ve already been advertising and have had a promising response.
I promise to try and keep Earthoria more up-to-date in the future, and I’ll leave you with a photo of where I am now in a small freezing village called Eynsham, 10km West of Oxford in England.
Merry Christmas!
Being part of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15)
November 29, 2009 | Tina | 2 Comments | Denmark, Events and Activities, General, The environment, Travel
Tina Noga worrying about the Climate change
Next week I start working as an attache to the Danish Foreign Ministry during the COP15 in Copenhagen. Although it is a short period of time (December 2 – December 19) the selection procedure and preparation for employees have been very long.
I applied for a position at the end of July this year together with 2000 other hopeful candidates (both Danes and foreigners). In August I received the first invitation to a job interview with Execute, a recruitment company, who had been chosen to find the candidates in cooperation with the Danish Foreign Ministry.
In September, I went to a group interview with seven other well qualified candidates. In this interview we were to prepare a one minute speech about ourselves in Danish, a three minute lecture in English (without papers) about Denmark and be prepared to answer a random question about the UN Climate Change Conference in English (we were expected to read the COP15 website in advance to prepare for the question).
On October 8 I was invited to the second part of the job interview which was a role-play session in the Danish Foreign Ministry. We were to prove that we could handle difficult guests at the conference with a smile 
.
On October 14 I received the final recognition that I was part of the team together with about 300 other candidates – but nothing about hours, start time or job function (and place).
I received my work schedule and job function on November 20 and since then I have been excitedly anticipating the start of the conference. Hours and place of work can still be changed any minute, but so far it looks as if I will be working 8 hours every day in the airport receiving the delegations who arrive, controlling passport and visa and supplying information to COP15 participants.
I am really looking forward to being part of this conference, which is the biggest ever held in Denmark, and I am hoping that the goals for the COP15 materialise.
Sex education in Spain – “pleasure is in your own hands”
November 13, 2009 | Thomas | 2 Comments | In the news, Spain, Travel
This fabulous story came out on the BBC website today…with the title “Spanish ’self love’ lessons row”.
In brief, the government of the region of Extremadura in Spain has launched a campaign based on the slogan “pleasure is in your own hands“, which gives advice on masturbation.
Of course, with the large Roman Catholic population in Spain, it has got a few people’s backs up. Pilar Rahola, a columnist in the Barcelona-based La Vanguardia newspaper, wrote:
“Extremadura should be pleased with itself…It may have the most unemployed young people in Spain but they will be the best at masturbation.”