Expedition America

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Emma Andersson, Sweden

emma yoseExpedition America is a travel provider that works with staff from examples EF schools to plan and create packages for every people unique needs. The organization main goal is to create a memorable and safe experience for everyone. I went to the Yosemite Park with Expedition America and I liked it a lot. The guide was really good and gave us good information about everything.

Expedition America is a full service tour and offer trips that includes hotel accommodations, activities, event tickets, sightseeing and transportation.  The organization prioritizes safety and security and keeps sure that every guest has an enjoyable and safe experience.   As I mention before, the guide we had on our trip was very good and it’s because everyone who works for Expedition America must undergo a training progress with several interviews. It is a high standard of the staff and its zero tolerance policy!

emma yosemit

The travel provider offer trips to examples Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Yosemite Park and a lot more. The Organization offers also their customers to create their own trips. You can choose between several options of sightseeing, theme parks, museum and shopping, as you want. While I was in the Yosemite Park, the guide took a lot of pictures that he shared and sent to the whole group later.emsi yose

From my own experience I liked it. We got a lot of free time and the guide was always available for our questions and helped us when we needed that. It was a long bus trip, took about 6 hours but Jeremy, our guide, made a Whats Up group that everyone could be a part in and decides together when we wanted to take a break or if we just wanted to ask any general questions.

Beauty 2.0

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By Natda Vongkhamchanh, Germany

 

What is beauty? That’s a question we have to ask ourselves before we start to discuss this topic. To be honest, it isn’t that easy to answer because everybody has his own imagination of beauty. Furthermore, it depends on where or in which time you live because it’s different in every country. Unfortunately, a common beauty ideal exists due to our generation of digitalization and media. We all know that being thin, tanned; having long hair, clear skin, big eyes and full lips are the accepted features of a beauty. While surfing on the internet, using different kinds of social media or just looking in some magazines, it’s remarkable how many advertisements and photos influences people in a negative way. They try to convey perfect looking women and men while using editing programs, for example Photoshop, to correct all the peoples flaws and delete everything they does not fit in the current beauty ideal. The following YouTube link will show you what is the impact of using Photoshop.

 

Even as a child we are confronted with a beauty ideal when we are playing with Barbies – a typical symbol for a perfect beauty. Little girls just look up to them and take them as an idol. Additionally, make-up plays a big role in a female society.

schonheitsideal-L-lrxkeRWomen try to hide their natural beauty behind make-up to feel accepted especially with men. What people mostly do not know is that there are also economic reasons that influence that industry. They try to encourage people to buy things to maximize their profits by convincing them that they feel more secure and more beautiful with their products. Furthermore,they manipulate us in an indirect way which we, and especially young people, do not recognize. The saddest part is that we can’t prevent it without feeling unaccepted by society. It seems like the only way we can fit in is when we fulfill the ideal.

 

FITNESS

Not only women are affected by this problem but also men who feel pressure to achieve the “perfect” athletic body which leads to the fact that a lot of men get into an obsession with fitness. In some cases, they can’t stop taking several kinds of synthetic proteins or other pills to push themselves.

 

 

magersucht

All the things I mentioned can have a negative impact on young people, especially girls who try very seriously to attain those beauty ideals. Some try with normal sports and others with  diets, but in worst case, they do not allow themselves to eat and lose fat in unnatural ways.

Bulimie

This easily leads to eating disorders or anorexia which means that these girls focus on avoiding calories by throwing up and/or excessive exercise. Their senses of themselves are distorted so they lose the relationship with reality. Furthermore, depression and self-harm can be a result of it.

 

But what to do about it? There aren’t instructions to avoid it but here is some advice which may help you. Just try to think about how advertisement really works. You have to make sure that a beauty ideal isn’t natural and only imagined. Just remember – NOBODY is perfect and that everybody is beautiful in their own way. It’s also good to remind yourself constantly about some of your own good features. Try to accept yourself the way you are and avoid comparing yourself with others because it’s in vain. Everybody looks different, so just accept yourself and love your body the way it is and you’ll find happiness.

There are some campaigns which support this viewpoint, for example the Dove ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign. They compare the typical beauty ideal with some realistic women with curves and as you can see the women on the bottom seem to be more happy than the Victoria’s Secret Models. They accept themselves and love their bodies how they are.

BEAUTY CAMPAIGN

Fairtrade Products

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By Esperanza Ortiz, Chile

FAIRTRADE PRODUCTS

esperanza

Fairtrade is an organization, whose products are made by companies who care about the right of industry workers and also about the product itself.

esperanza2

Fairtrade products are made by workers with reasonable hours of work, as well as  kind and  good treatment of all the people who work there. These products are made in an pleasant environment by employers who aren’t exploited and are willing to work.

Moreover, fairtrade products are produced by small businesses, which suffer from economic problems, mostly because they are marginalised by conventional trading systems and big companies. The organization “Fairtrade International”  lends them money in order that the small business owners can sell and work for themselves. When one of the  businesses starts making money, it has the obligation of paying the money  back to The Fairtrade organization.

For that reason and because of the resonable salaries, Fairtrade products are more expensive. Paying more for Fairtrade products is totally worth it because you are saving yourself, your world, and industry workers. Besides it’s good for you and your health because the origin of the product you are buying is really important.
Nowadays there is a new thought which says that products can absorb energies. For example, if you buy something you are going to eat and it is made or harvested with machines or by tired, upset or mad people you are ingesting their bad energy.

For that reason, I’m sure that Fairtrade products are better than regular products for the buyer. Spending more money by buying Fairtrade products is not a waste. Also it’s a good cause for the world. The only way to end poverty in our world is by allowing poor people to earn money. If we continue supporting big companies, we are aiding  only a few businessman in our world who sell and earn tons of money while almost half of the population are poor consumers. That’s why by buying Fairtrade products we are helping tiny businesses and by doing that we are ending poverty.

Furthermore, Fairtrade products are good and necessary because they are making a difference. They respect workers and treat them nicely, which is something every single company should do. You never know, maybe someday you will have to become an industry worker, or  your kids. It is not fair that people who don’t have the opportunity of choosing where they want to work are forced to spend their lives working too hard and not been well paid. This is simply inhuman.  We have to support Fairtrade products so we help to grow the world’s economy and the health of buyers and producers.

 

California Cities

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By: Fahad AlOtaibi, Saudi Arabia.

 

California Cities

 

 

My first visit in California was so extraordinary; I arrived at the LAX airport on 22nd of July.a1 hollywood

I stayed in Los Angeles for a week and it was one of the best places that I’ve visited, I went to both Santa Monica and Venice beaches.

I loved Los Angeles for a lot of reasons which are Hollywood, palm trees, Beverly Hills, Melrose, the Grove, the weather and many more things.

 

After having fun and a good time in LA, I went to Santa Barbara to the EF School.a1 santa barbara

I loved many things in SB and they are the weather, the beaches, and so many nice people. I like to lie on the beach and drink my favorite soda with my friends.

EF school offers the students of the school plans on the weekend, wherever you want to go to.a1 las vegas

So, I went to the office and I got in the Las Vegas tour. It was so marvelous. It is a city that never sleeps, and I went into every hotel on the strip. They were so exciting.

a1 sf sd

The two last places that I want to visit in California are San Francisco and San Diego. I must choose one of them because I do not have enough time to visit both.

 

Zero Waste Lifestyle

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By Lea Schagen, Germany

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Some of you may have already heard the term “Zero Waste Lifestyle” or at least you can image what it implies. There are people in today’s world, who refuse to produce waste. Sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? This is what I thought when I became aware with this topic for the first time, which was in class here at EF. We watched a Ted Talk about a pretty young woman who lives a zero waste lifestyle in New York City.

First of all, I would like to explain to you guys why this topic is so important for us.

Trash is intimately connected to every environmental problem we face today, from climate change and habitat destruction to water pollution and chemical exposure. This is no exaggeration, it is the ugly truth. All the trash we produce in our daily lives has to go somewhere after we throw it in the garbage, but, unfortunately, the majority just ignore this question. We produce tons of trash, especially plastic. For example, when we go to “Ralph’s” for our lunch, it will be packed in plastic, or when we brush our teeth before going to school, our toothpaste comes out of a plastic tube. Of course in the end, the packaging will be thrown into the garbage. Then it ends up at one of the numerous landfills or, even worse, it soils the ocean. This leads to the deaths of millions of animals and destroys our ecosystem by polluting the water. Moreover, a lot of CO2 as well as other dangerous gases are produced while manufacturing the plastic packaging etc, as well as in the process of “recycling” or burning trash because there is no more space at the landfills.

A turtle is caught in a fishnet trap. The Rainbow Warrior is in the Mediterranean for a three month expedition “Defending Our Mediterranean”. Greenpeace is calling for the creation of marine reserves in the Mediterranean Sea, as part of a global network covering 40% of our seas and oceans.

From my point of view that it is an important issue, especially for young people, like us as EF students, because we want to enjoy our green planet our entire lifetime. For this reason we have to start today! It won’t change anything if we are not going to start with ourselves!

At this point I come to young Lauren Singer (26, NYC)

lauren singer

She was an Environmental Studies major in college and has always been interested in the environment, but then she experienced some moments through which she became aware of how much trash she produces every day. That led to the decision for Lauren to live a zero waste lifestyle.

On her blog http://www.trashisfortossers.com/p/the-steps.html the young women explains that “To me, Zero Waste means that I do not produce any garbage. No sending anything to landfill, no throwing anything in a trash can, nothing. However, I do recycle and I do compost”.

It sounded definitely far-fetched for me in the first moment and I guess most of you would think the same now, but, according to Lauren Singer, there are only two steps needed to attempt a zero waste lifestyle. The first step is to evaluate, which means that we all should be more aware of the impact we have on the trash that is sent to the landfill every day. Furthermore, we should ask ourselves every day if we really need all this stuff to be happy., or if we would rather be even more happy by protecting our environment. Ok I can see that this sounds pretty idealistic. Anyway in my personal opinion is that this is a good start to at least begin thinking about the trash-issue our generation will have to deal with in the near future.

The second step Lauren mentions on her blog is transition, which means we should start to downsize and properly dispose of the unnecessary things. You need to be creative and start making your own toothpaste, for example, or start with easy actions like using a glass bottle to refill with water or taking your own bag to the grocery store instead of buying a new plastic bag every time.

globe

To put it in a nutshell, the intention of my article was to create interest for a zero waste lifestyle and first of all to make you as EF students more aware of the importance of reducing our waste. I have to admit that I wouldn’t be mentally strong enough to stop buying make-up, which unfortunately, is mostly packed in plastic. Nevertheless, I am sure we can have an positive impact only by facing the fact that trash is a problem which we need to be aware of in our daily life.

 

Chile

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by: Isidora Canas, Chile  

 

 

 

Abortion in Chile

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By Isidora Villagran, Chile

I want to start this article making it clear that all of the things written here are based on official news, mixed with my own opinion. The abortion is a topic widely discussed in these last days in my country because the Chilean Senate approved the decriminalization of abortion in 3 cases on August 21st.

“In an arduous discussion, the Senate dispatched by a narrow majority and in its last process the initiative to the flexibility the strict regulations and to allow the legalization of abortion in case the mother is in danger, if a fetus is not feasible or when the pregnancy is the result of a violation. Chile is currently one of the few countries in the world where abortion is illegal in all cases, in a sample of its conservative tradition.

The Chileans woman had to wait almost three decades to regain the right to choose if they interrupt their pregnancies in case their life is in danger, fetal unfeasibility and rape. In a historic ruling that has been followed and expected both by the authorities and as citizens, the Constitutional Court rejected Monday the requirements of the right-wing opposition that sought to paralyze one of the projects of the greater symbolism of the second government of Michelle Bachelet.”(http://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20170803/43297583830/chile-aprueba-historico-proyecto-despenalizar-aborto.html)

I want to explain a little bit about the 3 situations, so after they can be related to my point of view. (http://3causales.gob.cl/causales/)

1 Risk the woman life: When the life of the pregnant woman is at risk, one of the three causes of the bill that decriminalizes voluntary termination of pregnancy seeks to enable women to have access to the necessary medical treatments to preserve their lives, even when the same imply the interruption of the pregnancy.

2 Fetal Infeasibility: This causes that in cases where the embryo or fetus suffers from a congenital structural or genetic alteration of a lethal nature, the woman can decide whether or not to interrupt her pregnancy. Forcing the woman to carry out the pregnancy, or forcing her to wait for the death of the fetus, is to keep her in a permanent state of mourning.

3 Pregnancy due to rape: This reasoning establishes that the pregnancy can be interrupted when it is the result of a violation. In these circumstances, the bill states that if the woman who has been pregnant due to a rape, does not want to go ahead with the pregnancy, she can’t be required to continue it. What is proposed is that she has the possibility to decide and thus prevent a new denial of her will.

 

In my personal opinion, Chile, despite having made great progress with regard to the issue of abortion, there is still much more to do. Since we are in the year 2017, and only three cases have been approved, I think that already it is time for women in my country to have the right, duty and freedom to decide what they want to do with their lives and bodies without depending on what the government and state decide. We are one of the 7 countries in the world, in which free abortion is still not legal, due to the thoughts that this will increase abortions and deaths, as well as creating depression for mothers. But proven by experiments and figures, countries in which free abortion is legal, the number of abortions has not increased. The number of deaths from illegal abortions has decreased. Chile is considered an underdeveloped country, but I think that related to this topic, Chile is too traditional.

I do not think abortion is a positive process, but I support the choice that each person has the right to choose and evaluate their own.

aborto 2aborto 1Marcha por el Abortoaborto-portada-620x349

 

Three Cities I Would Like to Live in

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By: Rika Takatani , Japan

I live in Japan in part of Tokyo. I have always wanted to live in another country because I love to travel very much,and I study English for that. I especially like London, U.K., Honolulu, Hawaii , and Santa Barbara, USA. It was  very wonderful when I stayed in these three places. Why did I want to live in these countries? I’ll try to give some reasons.

London UK

First of all, I love  the Harry Potter series very much. I think it can influence everyone in the world. When I was in London, I felt  like I was in the movie! My dream came true.

UK has two major areas. The first area is the Piccadilly Circus area. Here the heart of London is a spectacular area. In the old days it was said to be the center of the world. This square has many fashion shops. Also, on the West side there are a lot of big theaters and an area called Chinatown on the East side of town. I watched a musical named  “Wicked”. It was amazing. The second area is called Star area. Here the United Kingdom Royal family lives in Buckingham Palace. Another important location to see is Westminster Abbey. Prince William and Katherine’s wedding ceremony was here, and it’s a very beautiful church. I like to look at the streets lined with houses in this neighborhood.

But, UK has a big problem. British dishes don’t suit me.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Everybody knows that Hawaii has very beautiful beaches. My hobby is scuba diving. So, I wanted to go scuba diving in Honolulu and to get my scuba license in Hawaii.

Hawaii is warm year-round. I think it’s easy to live in. The people are very kind and they can speak Japanese very well. The best thing is Hawaiian food suits my taste!! Rice and many vegetables. The only drawback to live here is  living expenses are higher than in Japan. If I become rich I want to immigrate to Hawaii as soon as possible.

Santa Barbara, USA

I’m now staying in Santa Barbara. I really like this city because of the relaxed environment. The beaches are very beautiful and it has many nice Mexican food restaurants. I’ll leave here this weekend; I want to come again someday.

I really want to go UCSB to study English. I went to UCSB when I was in Santa Barbara. It was awesome! Huge campus and many trees and buildings of glass!! Every person was relaxed on the grass. My university doesn’t have grass. My dream is to lie on the grass and do my homework.

If I feel bored, I can go Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco easily from Santa Barbara. During my time here, I went Los Angeles and Las Vegas. They were amazing!! I can’t forget this trip forever. If I live here I’ll go to Las Vegas once every few months.

Japanese foods are essential to me. If my dreams come true, I would return to Japan once a year definitely. Thank you for reading!!

Ever tried. Ever failed. No Matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

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My name Is Marcel Bettges and I’m from Germany. I’m 24 years old and the city I live in is called Cologne. Cologne belongs to the biggest federal state of Germany. Germany has more than 82 million citizens and our national sport and our pride is football and, therefore, the German national football team.

 

Closely behind football follows tennis. I started playing football and tennis when I turned 4.Both immediately became my biggest passions. The trainers told me that I had a lot of talent and, because of that, it became my most fervent wish to become a professional player in one of these sports.

A long time passed and I did everything to become as good as possible in my sports.

One day I woke up and it was my 17th. Birthday. On that day I received my first professional football contract, but in that moment I realized that I ha to decide between being a professional football player, a tennis player or just a normal guy who was really good in both of his sports, but not professional.

One day I decided to give football a try and everything started well. The fact that I’m a left-footed, there were better chances to get a spot in the team. Everything went well and I got my place in the team and played very important roles for my team. One day we had a very important play-off game. The day started great and I scored the 1:0 goal for our team. Several minutes later, my foot got caught in the grass, but my upper body moved in a different direction. In that moment I destroyed my knee, so that I had to use crutches for the next 7 months. Junior professional contracts are restricted to one year. Because of my injury, I wasn’t able to play football for a very long time and I needed a rehabilitation program, therefore my contract was not extended. In short, I didn’t receive a new contract and because of that fact I lost the passion of this sport.This led into a kind of motivational depression because I didn’t know what to do from this moment on. Thanks to my parents, I had also been very good in school so I could visit the best sports medicine faculty in country. I need competition in my life, so I started to play tennis again. First, just for fun and now, for the last 4 years, I have been playing really well and I have a ranking in the best 100  players of Germany under 25 years old.This was my little story and in the following I’m going to explain the rules of tennis and why it is so easy to fall in love with this sport.

 

General:

Tennis is the second most famous sport in Germany and currently there is a big boost because of Alexander Zverev.

zverev

He is just 20 years old and has already won a lot of trophies on tour. He is the biggest talent of Germany over the last 10 years and a lot of people believe in him. You can play for yourself 1on1 in tennis or a doubles which means 2on2. There is also the possibility that the countries play against each other in the Davis Cup.

There are regular professional tournaments and you can earn points to improve your ranking in the world. Additionally, there are ATP 500 tournaments in which you can earn more points and more money.  Most recently, there are the big 4 grand slam tournaments (French Open, Wimbledon, Us Open , Australian Open)which give you the opportunity to earn more money, fame and points. In order to get a spot in these tournaments, you need a very good ranking or a high status in this sport to earn a wildcard. Every round is a knock out round. In tennis you get the chance to start as an individual, as pairs or mixed. As a rule you earn the highest reputation for playing as an individual.

 

 

  1. THE COURT:
  2. The court is a rectangle, 78 feet (23.77 m) long and, for singles matches, 27 feet (8.23 m) wide. For doubles matches, the court shall be 36 feet (10.97 m) wide.
  3. SCORE IN A GAME a. Standard game

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Counting Points:

A standard game is scored as follows with the server’s score being called first:

No point – “Love”

First point – “15”

Second point – “30”

Third point – “40”

Fourth point – “Game”

If each player/team has won three points, the score is “Deuce”. After “Deuce”, the score is “Advantage” for the player/team who wins the next point. If that same player/team also wins the next point, that player/team wins the “Game”; if the opposing player/team wins the next point, the score is again “Deuce”. A player/team needs to win two consecutive points immediately after “Deuce” to win the “Game”.

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  1. Tie-break game during a tie-break game, points are scored “Zero”, “1”, “2”, “3”, etc. The first player/team to win seven points wins the “Game” and “Set”, provided there is a margin of two points over the opponent(s). If necessary, the tie-break game shall continue until this margin is achieved.

The player whose turn it is to serve shall serve the first point of the tie-break game. The following two points shall be served by the opponent(s) (in doubles, the player of the opposing team due to serve next). After this, each player/team shall serve alternately for two consecutive points until the end of the tie-break game (in doubles, the rotation of service within each team shall continue in the same order as during that set).

The player/team whose turn it was to serve first in the tie-break game shall be the receiver in the first game of the following set.

 

SCORE IN A MATCH:

A match can be played to the best of 3 sets (a player/team needs to win 2 sets to win the match) or to the best of 5 sets (a player/team needs to win 3 sets to win the match)

 

SERVER & RECEIVER The players/teams shall stand on opposite sides of the net. The server is the player who puts the ball into play for the first point. The receiver is the player who is ready to return the ball served by the server.

 

BALL IN PLAY:

Unless a fault or a let is called, the ball is in play from the moment the server hits the ball, and remains in play until the point is decided.

 

BALL TOUCHES A LINE If a ball touches a line; it is regarded as touching the court bounded by that line

 

Current Tennis player ranking:

wta_damen_weltrangliste_august2015-300x187atp_herren_tennis_weltrangliste_august2015-300x188

 

My favorite Tennis Player is Stan Wawrinka. He isn’t the typical tennis player and even his body structure is not the typical body type of a top player, but he has the biggest heart and passion and always gives his best.

Off course there is one player who is the “GOAT” and everybody in this world loves him. His name is Roger Federrer and he is, in my eyes, the best tennis player of all time. Even at his age, he plays the most aesthetic, dynamic and successful tennis. He is like a good wine which means he gets better by getting older.

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The Three Most Beautiful Beaches in The World

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By Honoka Tsukakoshi, Japan

Do you like beaches? If you are beach lover, you should go to the three most beautiful beaches in the world before you die.

IMG_0163First, you should go to Thailand. There is a nice beach in Phuket named Surin Beach. As you can see, the beach has very clear water and you can enjoy seeing a beautiful emerald green sea and wonderful nature. Also you can enjoy doing marine sports such as diving, snorkelling, and surfing.

IMG_2733Second, Bora Bora island is a good place to go. International Thalasso Beach is the most famous beach there. This island is one of Tahiti islands. If you go there, I recommend you stay at the cottage on the sea. You can see the beautiful blue sea when you get up or you go to bed. However, the cost of staying at the cottage is a little expensive. If you would like to stay, you have to save money.
IMG_2735Third, do you know that there is a nice beach in Japan? Okinawa Prefecture is the best place to see beautiful beaches. The most beautiful beach of Okinawa Prefecture is Maehama Beach. This beach is located on Miyako island in Okinawa Prefecture and people who live there said this beach is the best. If you go there, of course you can enjoy marine sports and also local foods in Okinawa Prefecture.

What do you think about these three most beautiful beaches in the world? Do you want to visit there? I wish you can enjoy staying there and you will be a devoted beach lover!