Camino in May 2007, anyone?

[wichanee]

Hi
My husband and I plan to walk the whole camino in 2007 probably between May and June. He is 67 and I am 58. Both of us are reasonably fit as we run regularly. After the walk, we plan to spend sometime in that part of Spain with friends throughout the summer.
I need to brush up my Spanish and I've got more than a year to do it. Can anyone advise me how to get free Spanish language course over Internet?
We live in Bangkok, Thailand. Please feel free to drop a line or two if you need info about our area.
Cheers
Wichanee & David

 

[Peter Robins]

The 'official' Spanish-language tuition is coordinated by the Instituto Cervantes, courses both in Spain and via web - see http://ave.cervantes.es/ing.htm. These are not free, but I would question whether you would get anything worthwhile without paying for it. You can learn reading/writing reasonably proficiently from books, and if you already have enough Spanish to understand what's going on you can watch/listen to Spanish TV/radio http://www.rtve.es/ (really only feasible with a broadband connection). If you have Spanish-speaking friends, you could set up a voip connection over a broadband line and chat with them - but they would have to be good friends to be prepared to do that for the sort of time to make it worthwhile
For full oral communication there is no substitute for face-to-face contact with native speakers. Visit to the Philippines perhaps?