Metablog Todoele

Today’s entry is a guest post by Karen Bryant from the Teaching and Learning Spanish blog. Karen has a very fine blog where she writes about Spanish learning tools she comes across in her search to teach her sons Spanish and to keep her own Spanish skills current.

For many people, learning is something that is confined to stages of one’s life. When we’re kids, it’s easy. We go to school 10 months of the year until the age of 18.

Photo of Ávila, Spain
Matias, the superintendent of my apartment building, always has a smile and a positive attitude. He genuinely likes his job and helping people. When I initially asked him to do an interview, he said yes, but then wanted to back out when he found out that I would be recording his voice.

Hola, ¿Qué tal?, a new online course from Instituto Cervantes, officially opens for business on Jan. 12, 2009.

Euphemisms are the verbal equivalent of a silk scarf that help cover or soften the appearance of ideas or thoughts that might seem a bit too direct or impolite. Not surprisingly, most euphemisms have to do with aging, dying or one’s physical condition or social standing.

A big “Thank you!” to all of you who visited this blog and downloaded the podcast during 2008.

Earlier this month I went to a Degas exhibit sponsored by the foundation of a Spanish insurance company. The friend  I went with told me that Spain had a long history of financial institutions sponsoring art. I figured there must be some kind of tax break involved.

“El enigma de Paris” by Argentine writer Pablo de Santis was last month’s book recommendation. I now have four brand spanking new copies of the book available directly from Harper Collins, the publisher. The novel is a detective story set in turn of the century Paris during the 1899 World’s Fair.

Spanish author Miguel Aranguren looks for the silver lining in the current recession.

Hey gang,
¿Cómo estáis?
A week has flown by without a single new post here. I guess I’ve been spending too much time over at Twitter where I’ve been microblogging like crazy. In a few short weeks I’ve gone from Twitter skeptic to Twitter addict. So much for my resolve.