I am in the new brochure

I found myself in the new EF brochure. It is a photo from the video that Linda and I made in London and a quote that I said. The quote says that “What I love about California is the weather, and the beaches of course!” It is fun that I got to be in the new brochure and that people now can go in and see the video and learn more about California from a former student’s perspective.

The student talk videos from the Crew weekend

Tags

California, crew, EF, london, meet the students, student talks

Hey!

Yesterday they posted the student talk videos on EF’s youtube channel. I’ve been waiting for it to be posted so I can show it here. I am quite happy with the result though there are a few things that they did not include, but I hope that it’ll help students who are thinking about travelling to California to actually do it.

Here is the video I’m in:

Here are a few videos from the others who were in London with me:

Ellimajja from France who studied in Hastings last summer:

Emilie from Denmark and Benedetta from Italy who both have studied in Oxford:

Kevin from Germany who studied in London:

Marte from Norway who studied in Torquay:

Miriam from Spain who studied in Somerset:

Roosa and Erika from Finland who studied in Malta:

Here is EF’s youtube channel where you can find lots of different videos, everything from student talks to videos from different destinations.
http://www.youtube.com/user/EF?feature=watch

EF crew weekend in London February 2013

Tags

crew, EF, international, london, meeting, sightseeing

Hi! I haven’t mentioned this here but I was selected to go to London for an international crew meeting this weekend. Robin (who also work as crew in Sweden) and I took a flight from Arlanda airport in Stockholm at 18.50 last Friday. We arrived in London at about 20.30 local time and then we went to the hotel we were going to stay at (Dolphin Inn in Paddington). We were about 16 crew members in total from all over Europe (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Italy, Finland, Spain, France and Russia).

This is how we spent our Saturday:

• Breakfast at 8 am at the hotel, followed by 30 minutes free time before we went to the EF office.

• We took the underground to the EF office in Chelsea.

• Each country’s crew representatives held a short presentation about tips and ideas on the best ways to get names and bookings.

• Lunch at the office.

• Half of the group filled in two questionnaires about what we like to do on our spare time and also about the EF website and the other half gave response on a first draft of the next brochure. The groups were switched after about half an hour.

• During the day, almost everyone recorded a movie about their time travelling with EF.

• After our day at the office we went to Piccadilly circus and had some free time for shopping.

• We went to London Eye at about 18.00 and saw London from above.

• More shopping at Oxford Street.

• Dinner at Fire & Stone at Covent Garden.

• Back to the hotel.

 

It was so much fun to see the EF office in London, record the movie, go shopping, all the sightseeing and most of all, meet other people who also works as crew.

I’ve only been to London once before and we didn’t really do all the sightseeing as I might have wanted to but this time I feel that I got to see so much more. Our schedule was pretty tight as you might have seen but we managed to fit a lot of things in the time we had.

The next day it was time for all of us to leave beautiful London and head back home. Robin and I arrived at Heathrow airport at about 9.30 and our flight was to leave at 14.05 so we had a lot of time there. Since we were so early to check in, we got really good seats. We then had about 4 hours inside the airport and fortunately there were a lot of shops. We landed in Sweden at about 18.00 and I was home again about 20.00. I would, without hesitation, do it all over again if I had the possibility.

As soon as I can get a hold of the video I recorded, I’ll post it here.

Thank you

Tags

California, crew, EF, host family, long beach, photography, questions, thank you, travel, two summers, vacation

I’d just like to thank all of you whom have followed me on my adventure in California. It has been a pleasure writing about EF, the Long Beach life and posting pictures of my adventures. These last two summers have been amazing and I thank EF for that.

I don’t have much more to update about here now since I’ve uploaded all my pictures and I have written about everything I’ve done but I’ll still have this blog left. I’d love to answer all of your questions regarding EF, the crew programme, host family and Long Beach residence. Just leave a comment here on the blog or email me on pagnes@live.se

I will continue to work as Crew this year as well so if you’d like to order a brochure about next summer’s dates and destinations (I’m not sure if it only works in Sweden though), you can do that on http://my.ef.com/Agnes.Milton 

Residence or Host Family?

Tags

Atascadero, choice, comparison, EF, EF california, host family, long beach

A comparison between staying at Long Beach Residence and staying with a host family.

Before I booked my first trip I had a hard time choosing whether I was going to stay at the residence or in a family. My mom thought I should go to Long Beach because when she was younger she went away to America for one year and her host family wasn’t as good as she had hoped, while my dad was feeling that the family might be the best option for me. I went around thinking about it for an entire weekend, I asked friends and relatives what they thought and tried to come up with some sort of pros and cons list of them both. But after speaking to people and so, I decided that host family probably was the best for me because then I would get the chance to get to know an American family, celebrate 4th of July and actually see more of the American culture. And that was a great choice, because I lived with a great family and I got some amazing friends to share all new experiences with.
When I got home and heard about the Crew programme I thought I’d try it out. I honestly thought it would be close to impossible to collect enough points to go back to America but I decided to try anyway, and I actually managed to do it. And this time I chose Long Beach because I really loved California and I wanted to try the college life.

So now that I’ve been to both places and tried out both ways of living, I know a lot about EF California. It is so difficult to say which one was best since I had so much fun at both places. But it was so hard this summer not to compare with the previous trip. Last summer I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen and how things were planned so I just went along with it, but this summer when we for example were in San Francisco I just thought about how it was last year and a few things felt boring or/and not well-planned since those things might have been better last year. I liked the feeling of not knowing what would come next.
I got some great friends this summer but I feel like I got to know so much more people last year. It was so many students at the campus, I think it was about 500 in the middle of July and it was pretty hard getting to know people when there were so many other people around. Last year we were a group of about 60 students from three countries and I think I actually managed to learn everyone’s names. This year I didn’t even know the names of everyone in my dorm.
When people book the trip I see that almost everyone think they’re going to live in LA. That is not always accurate when you’ve chosen to stay with a family, but when you choose Long Beach, you know for sure exactly where you’ll be staying. I actually thought that I was going to live in Pasadena, close to Los Angeles, last year but that changed to Atascadero which is like four hours north of that.
At the campus, there are a lot of different optional trips to choose between, many more than in a host family but that is because the two first weekends are spent with the family and the two last are for the optional trips. The thing is that the family often takes you to places so that you can see a lot more. My family for example took us to Santa Barbara which we didn’t have a choice to do either as an option that year or at Long Beach this one.

I have to say that I liked the host family option the most. Maybe that’s because it was my first trip and that is always very special or maybe it was because that option actually suited me better. I like being able to be alone sometimes and at the campus, there are always people around.

What would you choose? Host Family or Long Beach Residence?

Photos from this summer

Tags

California, coldstone, EF, griffith observatory, las vegas. san diego, Los Angeles, san francisco, santa monica, school, sky line, universal studios, venice beach

Photo book

Tags

California, photo book, pictures, work in progress

Last year when I got back home, my dad had fixed so that I could make a photo book about my trip. I sat outside working on that book many days after work that summer and when I had finally finished it, I got it sent to my home. It is so much fun to have a book with all the photos in good quality at home. So this year, I’m doing one more. I’ve been working on it all day and it’s almost finished. Some of the photos failed to upload so I have to do it again but when that’s done, I can get it sent home. I knew that I was going to do this book so I thought about that when I was away and I focused on taking a lot of good photos. I actually ended up taking over 2000 photos with my camera and mobile phone plus about 150 video clips so I have a lot of material. Since I’ve only posted the best here on the blog, about 300 photos, it was easy to know which ones to use for the book.

This is what the book from last year looked like and the next photo is a print screen of my new book in progress.

I think that this new book is going to be better because I have more and better pictures and I’ve also learnt how to use the program better. Can’t wait until it’s finished.

More than a week since I left California..

Hey! It has now been more than a week since I left California and came back home. I’m still jet lagged because it’s hard to get out of bed when I have no plans for the day and since I get up so late, I am not able to fall asleep until 2 am. But now I’m going up to northern Sweden with my family and then I need to wake up at a good time and fall asleep fairly early to have energy to do things. I actually thought that since I’ve waken up pretty early every day in California, I’d be able to do the same when I’m home and therefor it’d be easy when it’s time to go back to school. But no, because I totally forgot about the time difference.

Anyway, I would love to upload our EF project here but I don’t have access to it right now. The plan was that I would upload it to my youtube channel before we went to Las Vegas but I forgot to give the girl who has it my USB. I hope that she will upload it soon so I can post it here because I don’t think there is another way for me to get it.

Las Vegas in July

Tags

EF, fashion show mall, hotels, las vegas, nevada, new york new york, ontario mills, optional weekend, paris, video update

So, last Friday, we had a free morning and then after lunch, we sat down in the bus and started our journey to Las Vegas. After driving for about an hour and a half, we stopped at a mall called Ontario Mills. It was huge and they had so many stores. We stopped there to wait out the heat so it wouldn’t be so warm when we got to Las Vegas. We had dinner there, Panda Express as usual, and then at 6.15 we were back on the bus. We arrived in Las Vegas around 11.30 pm. But instead of going straight to the hotel, we went to Freemont street for a while and got back to the hotel at around 12.30 pm.

The next day, we had breakfast at the hotel and then met at the bus at 10 am. The bus took us to the Treasure Island hotel and we had about four and a half hours to do whatever we wanted. Teresa, Josefine, Arbana and I went to Fashion Show mall. After meeting at the bus at around 2.30 pm we went back to the hotel to have some time to take a shower, change clothes or take a dip in the pool. At 5 pm we were to meet at the bus again to go to the Stratosphere tower for a buffet and to spend the evening up in the tower and watch Las Vegas from above. The dinner was good and the view was really nice. They had a few roller coasters on top of the tower and right when we were on our way to go up and ride them, they closed them because of a risk of lightning.

The next morning we were supposed to have our bags packed and wait by the bus at 10.30 am. This time, they dropped us off outside the hotel New York New York. We had decided to check out all the cool hotels this day. It was so warm that we had to hurry from hotel to hotel to get in to the air condition. It was fun to see all the crazy hotels they’ve come up with. At 3 or 4 pm we met at the bus again and this time to go back to campus.

It was a really fun weekend but it was soooo hot. It was cool to see all the hotels and the city built in the middle of the desert. I don’t think I’ll go back there anytime soon so I’m glad I chose this optional weekend.

Here is a short video to show more of what we did.

To skip the intro, fast forward to 0.22. I’m sorry for the bad music but I’m not very good at choosing good music so I just took something from the iLife sound effects on iMovie. 

Limo ride in Los Angeles

Tags

back home, EF, limousine ride, Los Angeles, universal studios, video update

Now I’m home. Well, I’ve been home for a few days now. It’s nice to be back but I miss having things to do every day. I don’t have much to do during the days now and that’s a bit boring. And I miss all the amazing friends I got during this month in California. It feels a bit weird not being around them all the time.
Anyway, it’s time for me to write about the last things we did during the course. Last Thursday, we went on a limo ride in Los Angeles. We all got dressed up and we had a limo for all the Swedes. There were so much traffic so it took us about two hours instead of 40 minutes to get to Universal Studios. Since it took us that much time, we only went to a street with shops and restaurants outside Universal Studios and then we drove by the ocean at downtown Long Beach before going back to campus. I thought that we would have time to drive for a while in Beverly Hills but unfortunately we didn’t. It was fun anyway even though I got a bit car sick after a while.

Fast forward to 0.22 to skip the intro