Guest blogger, Monique Palomares works with me on Mamá Lisa’s World en español. Monique grew up in a multilingual family in southern France. Spanish is one of the languages she spoke growing up.

If your parents or grandparents had a different mother tongue from yours and if you lived your childhood in such a multicultural context, you sure know how I feel.

I was happy when in August 2007, Pili, a Spanish student of Fine Arts in Salamanca, Spain, posted a comment on this blog to tell us about her podcast. It aimed to help improve people’s abilities in the Spanish language.

I listened to Pili’s podcasts as they came out. Throughout the podcasts, Pili would tell her American friend Lucy about her life in Spain.

I particularly enjoyed…

-Her stories about Spanish cultural events like La San Fermín in Pamplona, and hearing about customs like eating tapas, and learning about Spanish movies.
-The fact that she would speak clearly and a little more slowly than the very fast Spanish speech you normally hear.
-The fact that she now and again used colloquial idioms (not naughty ones!) that you might not find in dictionaries and that keep your language up-to-date.

Pili posted until December 2007 and her old podcasts are still available on her site.

Now she’s coming back with a renewed version including free podcasts and more extended material that’s available by subscription. You can check the guide to the podcasts on her website dpili.com, it’s in pdf format, so you can download it for free!

Well, to make a long story short, I’m glad she’s back.