15 months on – a return to England

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.


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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!

Eynsham square

Being part of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15)

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”

Masturbation - SpainThis 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.”

Full Story on the BBC Website

Spain sets world record for wind energy

Earlier this week, the weather in Barcelona was very, very windy. Little did we know at the time, but as we chattered our teeth in unison, Spain was about to set a world first.

Spanish wind energy - wind farm near Tarifa

From 3am until 8am on Sunday 8th November 2009, more than 50% of Spain’s electricity was generated by wind – according to the Spanish Wind Energy Association, “For several moments, wind energy had the honor of delivering up to 53 percent of total needs”.

With high winds gusting across much of the country, Spain’s huge network of windfarms jointly poured the equivalent of 11 nuclear power stations’ worth of electricity into the national grid.

Driving around Andalucia with my family over the last couple of years, we’ve often found ourselves in discussions about whether the wind farms are actually more of a blight on the environment (at least aesthetically) than a solution to the problem of generating energy sustainably.

Are we generating sustainable energy at the expense of our pristine landscapes forever?

Read more

Stormy weather breaks Spanish wind energy record
Spain’s windfarms set new national record for electricity generation
Huertas Solares (In Spanish – Ben and Marina discuss the use of fields of solar panels to overcome energy problems in Spain, but wonder about the future of our landscapes )

New English teaching website IVOZI launched!

Aprender Ingles con IVOZIAfter a couple of months of fairly strenuous work since I arrived back in Spain, we’ve finally launched the initial version of our new English teaching website Ingles.fm.

Geared towards the Spanish speaking world, we will over the next few months be creating a range of audio-visual products to compliment the Tools of Fluency package that James – my partner in Ingles.fm – has already put together.

It would be really appreciated if you could help us out by becoming a Facebook fan of ours, following us on Twitter, or buying one of our fabulous products ;-).

For those interested in the technical side of things, we’ve built the site in WordPress (2.8.5) using a modified version of the Thesis WordPress Theme from DIYthemes. Thesis takes the already fabulous framework of WordPress and turns it into a Ferrari ‘blogging’ platform, with great support for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) ‘out of the box’.

Apart from this we are using Paypal for payment processing and E-Junkie to manage our Digital Downloads and password protection.

Finally, we’ve put in an affiliate system so that anyone can join up, place links and banners on their blog/website to ivozi.com, and make 40% commission per sale. Please support us, and sign up today! It takes 5-10 mins of your time and you can even make money by posting an occasional link to our website from the likes of Facebook or MySpace. Find out how here.

Thanks!

Returning to Denmark and doing the Danish thing

apartment

After one year silence on the website, I have returned home – both to my website and to Denmark.

Since Thomas and I are no longer living together or in the same country we will be writing from different locations and give you an insight into our lives from there. We hope this will give you an interesting experience.

Returning to “the happiest country in the world” has actually been quite a happy experience. I have been doing the “Danish thing” for two months now – which is redoing my apartment.

Danes take great pride in their homes and usually invest a lot of time and money in the interior decoration. And with good reason – we spend most of our time inside at least half the year and according to Danish custom we usually meet with friends in our homes for social gatherings such as dinners, coffee, lunch etc.

I am personally not into design furniture and fancy interior (cause after all we can’t take anything with us when we leave this planet) but many Danes spend a lot of money on these items. I have been redoing my apartment as a kind of occupational therapy which makes me feel connected to the flat and the city again and I am happy to say that it worked 🙂

Video: Windsurfing at Valdevaqueros beach, Tarifa, Spain

This is a short video compilation of clips taken at Valdevaqueros beach just outside Tarifa in Andalucia in the South of Spain – the principal destination in Europe for Kitesurfing and Windsurfing. It was a VERY windy day (force 8-9 for the sailors amongst you), which perhaps doesn’t come across as much as it should from the video. The windy girl is my sister, Laura, and the blob at the end is my mother. My, how she loved that wind…