Increasing the presence of the spanish language on the web?

Click on http://realacademiaespañola.es/ and you´ll notice that using the spanish language charachter ñ is completely valid in this domain.

The incorporation of the ñ letter on the net was possible thanks to a partnership between the RAE (Real Academia Española) and www.red.es - this last being an organization that belongs to the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Trourism of Spain and that also works for the positioning of the spanish language on the internet.

The are projects on the pipeline to allow the use of the spanish accents (´) and portuguese letters as "ç".

BARICHARA!

After lost of tries, finally we managed to go to Barichara! - a town that by many people is called "the most beautiful one" of Colombia! Javier, myself and two other friends were the group with the mandate to find out if all the comments heard were true.

Barichara is an authentic old world colonial town in the north east of Colombia, in a department called Santander. It is a very pleasant place to walk around and we stayed probably in the best place ever: COGOLLO CANEY. Seriously, if you ever plan to go to this zone of Colombia, make sure you stay there.

Even if officially recognized as a B&B, Cogollo Caney also responds to the concept of a family hostel, which means nothing else than staying in a house (that looks and works as a house, a residence) where also the family members live. Now, in the case of Cogollo Caney we are talking of a big, spacious house with so many different environments, that at moments one might think that it´s certainly a hotel. However the fact that there are only 4 rooms in the whole house and the close interaction with the family members, few employees that work there and even the pets (a dog and a parrot), brings you back to the feeling of just being visiting friends over the weekend. The other fantastic fact of having stayed there, is that the house is built in the traditidional architecture and with the traditional construction materials of Barichara: sand and wood. The house itself has won several architecture prices, and beyond that, the house is administered and decorated probably the best people in Colombia to do it: the owners (and family parents) are an architect and a interior designer. Here you can even take a look at the foundation that the owner has to educate around this type of ancient construction techniques. Finally another small detail that captured our heart was having ceiling-less bathrooms! I know it sounds weird, but taking a shower in a space without a roof, all decorated with plants and still having delicious hot water and a classy decoration, is probably one of the coolest things I´ve done.

Seems that the experience at the family hostel was more impressive than the visit to the town itself, right? Well, I can´t deny without COGOLLO CANEY the Barichara experience wouldn´t have been the same, but of course the trip went beyond that. Barichara and some of the other towns around in the department of Santander and known for being great places for adventure sports/also known as extreme sports (paragliding, jumps into dark caves, boggie driving, well and thousand other crazy things …!). Sad news is that we played it safe and did not do anything extreme … instead we went for walks around the town, for buying handcrafts, for a admiring wonderful landscapes as the one we found at the Parque Nacional del Chicamocha and for eating! eating! and eating! typical dishes of the region as Cabrito con Pepitoria (motton) and all kinds of random fast food…!

Again this is one of this posts (and trips!) where no matter how many pictures you show and stuff you write, it won´t describe the magic of the place. In those cases all you can do is endorsing to friends Barichara as a very nice destination to experience adventure, romance, relax and a special hospitality as only few places can offer.

Nice Barranquilla Carnival Photo Slide Show

To complement the few comments and phots showed in my recent post, feel free to take a look at this in my opinion very cool set of pictures of this last carnival:

It´s from Sarah´s blog, trainee from the US in Barranquilla - she was one of the organizers of the Carnival (AIESEC) Trainee Weekend and on her blog has a set of interesting posts on the carnival, Barranquilla and in general, Colombia.

HAPPY 5767

Last friday 22 of September we were invited (or better said, we invited ourselves) to a Rosh Hashanah dinner, which is a jewish new year celebration. The jewish new year commemorates both the Creation of the world and the birth and binding of Isaac. So, we celebrated the 5767 year. The way we came to attend to this event was very random (given the fact that we are not jewish): a girl from the USA sent a email to an expats email list that we make part of inviting all jewish people or just people that wanted to learn more about this to join this dinner. So, we went there ;-) These are the kind fo things that you do when you are an expat/trainee!

Some highlights:

1. We came late, and of course we arrived in the middle of singing, when everybody finished eating (well, the first meals). We arrived to the house of an indian jewish familiy where the whole ceremonial thing happened, it was very impresive at the beginning, I felt a little embarrased just popping up like this and sitting on the table, but these people welcomed us very nicely, and also the fact that there were other good group of non-jewish people learning of the whole thing made us feel also comfortable. It was also very impressve that a lot of nationalities were there this night.

2. After sharing these moment with the family, we moved to another small apartment in the same floor where solely expats were there (8-9 people) and we had dinner (very good one) but all was more informal! The great thing is that many of us just got to know each other this night, attracted by this email on the expats list.

3. We learned a bit of jewish culture and traditions, since our hosts not only were jewish, but also one of them religion student - it was very nice to see little stories and explanatios for dummies of their religion. Also we learned a lot from each other and how we came to India and how India is treating us, this is always a non-negotiable topic.

The good feelings that woke up in me that night, is that suddenly I realized seeing these girls being at moments so sentimental about the whole celebration, that I will spend christmas here in India! i am not a very religion-driven person, but I believe and I enjoy christmas as the main celebration of my Xtianism and all the familiy traditions behind - so I am already figuring out how to build christmas atmosphare for ourselves next december here in India... let's see how it goes!

May we all have a good and sweet new year!