Staying Connected from Spain

Posted by Amanda Walsh (from Spain)-
Now that I'm getting settled into my new home in Madrid Spain, I will be able to bring you some of my thoughts and experiences from this wonderful country. I was always a big Internet junkie at home, but now that I am halfway across the world I have realized my need to stay informed. With big news in politics and the financial crisis occurring back home in the U.S., I have become more and more dependent on staying abreast of news stories via the Internet.

When I was living in the States, I frequently visited sites such as CNN.com, BBC News and the New York Times.com. However, now that I am abroad I find myself relying on these sites much more often for news updates.

During my time here, I hope to connect with even more communications professionals. I have been growing my network in Spain and have found that the Web site, Twitter in conjunction with Facebook has been an important vehicle in helping me network with communications professionals like Steve Rubel and Octavio Rojas, who both are social media experts for Edelman.

I was able to meet with Octavio in Madrid last weekend and we had a very nice afternoon chatting about communications, global issues and blogging ideas. I wrote about the experience on my personal blog about my life in Spain.

Bloggers often read other blogs to generate ideas and/or make comments on others' posts. Since I've been blogging about my life in Spain and for Furia Rubel, I find the Web site, Bloglines to be very useful. Bloglines is a "feed aggregator" which neatly organizes all of the blogs that I subscribe to and keeps track of new posts and blog updates. There are many similar sites out there but I was first introduced to and feel that Bloglines is the best way to manage the different Web sites that I surf daily.

Keeping on top of the news has become more difficult for me since all of the news programs are in Spanish here. I am still learning the language and am becoming accustomed to the culture, so these English news Web sites are important to me to staying connected.