Around the world in 80 Mays

Hi everyone!! All of my travels this year (Germany, India, Italy, Ireland and now the Czech Republic) and work in general have meant that I’ve had very little time to edit videos, so I am sorry about the lack of updates to my site!! I have footage waiting to be edited for several videos and I hope to get around to it very soon!! Since I always translate each video to 7 languages, it’s a lot of work!!

Anyway, in the mean time I have started another website, that I plan on updating about twice a week (it’s only in English this time!!) Basically, I have decided to learn one of Europe’s hardest languages, Czech, in just 3 months!!! I am blogging about the experience, but not actually discussing Czech itself so much as giving general language learning tips that I’ve picked up as I have learned my other languages, which I am currently applying to learning this new language. Feel free to follow me on my other blog to read all about it at www.fluentin3months.com if you are curious about what techniques I use to learn languages, or are generally curious to follow this experiment and see if I’m successful! You can subscribe on the left of that site, and all comments are appreciated!

In the mean time, I still have some interesting videos that I will be posting here asap!! Thanks for your patience

I’ll be coming back from my blogging break very shortly with some funny short films about how to learn languages; starting very soon with “How to learn Italian”, followed by English and Irish Gaelic and getting into videos about other languages later. I’ll also be giving lots of other travel tips too! So stay tuned and make sure you are subscribed (by email or RSS)!

But for those of you who want to hear my best tips now, you can check out an interview that was just taken with me over on the More Oftens podcast/blog. It’s a new podcast by some friends of mine, Zac and Brady. They asked me some interesting questions and I gave some tips for how I travel so much and manage to learn languages quickly. You can see the post directly on their site or download the MP3 to listen to later. Be warned! The entire interview lasts over 45 minutes, so maybe download the podcast/MP3 to listen to later!

All comments about the interview appreciated here below or on the More Oftens blog.

This video is in HD quality. If your connection is slow, or the video is not loading, you can watch it directly on Youtube in normal quality. It is also originally on Sam’s blog here. I have also added subtitles to the video on the non-English versions of my site.

Today I have a guest video post from a good friend of mine, Sam Powers, who I hosted in my house in Buenos Aires through Couchsurfing. He also has a video blog, in which he and his friend William are travelling all around the world on a tight budget and sharing their story in a written and excellently edited video blog. Even though he recorded and edited it, I still feature highly in the video, so it’s only appropriate to include it here!
We show you an incredible event that we were a part of in Buenos Aires; a pillow fight that thousands of people took part in! It is what’s known as a flashmob; where hundreds or thousands agree to meet (in this case, with the help of a facebook group, other sites and word of mouth) and do something crazy to confuse the general public and have a great time. The result; 2,000 people and a huge pillow fight! Many, many thanks to Sam for sharing this video with us!
If you enjoyed this video, leave a comment below (or on Sam’s Blog!) and don’t forget to subscribe to our blogs to see more of our videos!

This video is in HD quality. If it is not loading or you have a slow connection, you can view it directly on Youtube here.
This video is also available in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Esperanto and Irish!

Have you ever wondered how to subscribe to updates on a website? Have you ever seen this symbol on web pages and wondered what it means?

RSS is all over the web, but so many people don’t even know what it is! In this short fast-paced video I explain it as I run around Buenos Aires and show how it can be used.
Some important links that you should refer to after watching the video include how to use Google Reader, and Google Alerts for RSS feeds on Google searches, and everywhere else just look for the RSS symbol or something similar! If you like this video, make sure to leave a comment and of course… don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed!!

This video is in HD quality. If it is not opening or you have a slow connection, access it directly through Youtube.

Before I get into sharing my funny and practical video ideas for this year with you, I thought I’d kick off the year by showing how I started it! This 1 minute video (in Esperanto, with subtitles) shows me in my ridiculous costume that won the “most catastrophic” costume of the Internacia Seminario event, followed by the countdown to 2009.
If you’d like to see more of what happened that week check out the full video (about 4 minutes) on my Esperanto blog and change “Esperanto 100%” to “English 100%” for English subtitles in the video. You can also see a very funny Jerry Springer sketch (also with English subtitles) that we did, in which my gay character’s boyfriend had a secret to confess! All videos of the week can be seen on my flickr account.

Leave comments if you like it!

I thought I’d take a quick break from posting videos to give a summary of what I’ve done on the blog this year and hint at what’s to come in 2009!

2008 was a great year for me; I started in London, travelled through the Northeast of Brazil and hosted 40 people during the Carnival, then went to Tenerife to hike up Mount Teide. I spent a nice summer in Ireland to improve my Irish, followed by a quick trip to Slovakia to learn Esperanto, then the states to camp in the desert and finally Argentina to learn some tango!

I started the year with the plan to share my travels on this blog through videos (since as you can tell from this entry, I’m a very dull writer!!) and I’m very happy with how it’s progressed. I’ve recently redesigned the site to include some “widgets” on the right, such as my upcoming travel plans, an easy subscribe option with number of subscribers (already over a hundred) and I’ll add more options as I expand on the website. I’ll constantly update these widgets so even though I still only post one or two videos per month (it’s a lot of work since I translate each video to 7 languages), but the right hand side of my site will change regularly.

For example I have included my twitter updates, and every day I will be writing in this miniblog in each of the 7 languages on my blog. It is somewhat like an independent facebook status update and you can always see what I’m up to on that! If you want to practice another language I recommend you try to write in such a miniblog daily in that language. The maximum character limit of 140 means it really isn’t that much work. It’s been great for making sure I write in each language that I want to practise every single day.

So what’s to come in 2009? My current travel plans include spending 2 months or so in the Goa region in India, followed by 2 months in Sicily. After the summer somewhere in Europe I’ll head back towards Latin America. However, these plans may change. If I find some interesting events or discoveries in those places I’ll make short videos to share with you in documentary style!

In the mean time I’ll be uploading a lot more playful advice videos, not related to where I am. These will be about some things I’ve learned in the last few years that I’d really like to share with you that help me travel better and use the Internet to work efficiently. My most popular video by far has been the hand-luggage one (over 16,000 views in just two months), so they will be in a similar ridiculous, funny (yet practical) style. Upcoming videos include the following:

* Hand luggage video part 2: How to bring all you want with you, this time using NO BAGS. If you liked my towel trick, you’ll love my other ideas…
* What is RSS?
* Stumbleupon video - channel hopping of the 21st century.
* How to avoid wasting time on the Internet

By popular demand I will also be sharing some language learning tips and giving hints as to how I travel so much while working and possibly giving some translation tips too. If you’d like to see any of these videos as soon as they are available and haven’t subscribed yet, just use the email (or RSS)  subscription option on the right!!

Your comments now and later will be much appreciated!! How I develop the site depends entirely on the feedback I get from you. What do you want to see, what don’t you want to see? Complaints or compliments? Just type them in below!

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming

This video is in HD quality. If you have a slow connection, you can watch it in normal quality directly on Youtube.

This video is also available in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto and Irish!

I was living in Buenos Aires for a few weeks so I took the chance to learn a little about the famous dance, tango, which is hugely popular in Argentina and Uruguay. I managed to master the basics and learn a few things about tango culture, so I made this short video (3:33 long) to show my progress! Many thanks to my instructor María José (”Majo”). If you enjoy it, make sure to leave comments and subscribe to see my future videos!