To my students

You are all Amazing! I have been reading through your company profiles and I love all of them. I even showed them to my bosses from America and they thought it was soooo good. Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing you this week in class. 

Translation on the internet

So if you are having difficulty understanding a website that is all English you can always translate the text from the website to Chinese. Here is what you do: 

1. Highlight the text from the page that you want to translate

2. Press Ctrl + C on the computer to copy the text 

3. Go to babelfish.yahoo.com and press Ctrl + V to paste the text into the box

4. Click below that you want to translate from English to Chinese

5. You did it!

If that was too much to understand just go to babelfish.yahoo.com and type in the words you want to translate and then click the English to Chinese option/ Chinese to English option. Ok that is all for now, I hope this helps. 

Company Profile Example

Since your company profile is to be turned in next week I thought I would show you an example of what I am looking for. 

Company Profile

Company Name: I Hate Tourists

Slogan: "People will be asking you for directions"

In the year 1980 a young man named Christopher Hankins decided to move his family from America to Chile. Chris had always had a love for traveling and when he finished college he decided to leave the country for many years. He had learned how to speak Spanish in his four years in college so he decided to go to South America where many people speak this beautiful language. While he was there he met a woman named Beth from America who had the same love for Spanish and traveling. He married her six months later and then one year later they gave birth to a boy. They continued to live in Chile for 12 more years and during this time they fell in love with the culture. The one thing that they did not like were the tourists who would always bother them and asked them how to find different attractions. After having a third child they decided it was time to move back to America to show their families the children. While in America Chris and Beth had the wonderful idea to start a Chile travel company from Houston, Texas. They knew all about Chile after living there for so many years. The main thing they wanted their travel company to do was educate people to go to Chile and not look like tourists. So because of this great passion against tourists they named the company, "I Hate Tourists." In 2004 the company was passed down to their children Taylor, Lauren, and Brooke. The company works with many Spanish speaking countries now and people can travel to Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Spain. 

There are currently four full time employees working at "I Hate Tourists." Taylor is the President and head of advertising, Ashley (Taylor's Fiance) is in charge of creating itineraries and the finances, Lauren (sister) is the vice-president and in charge of all art related material, and Brooke (sister) is the receptionist and in charge of the events and educational seminars. 

The main office is located in Houston, Texas. 

The company offers many services which include all inclusive packages, itineraries for up to one month of travel, country brochures, car rental, airplane tickets, hotel booking, and educational courses. The educational courses include "Oral Spanish" "Country History" "How to plan a budget vacation" and "How to look like a local." 

Deadlines for the project

Part 1- The Company (week 4)

Thursday Class- March 26

Friday Class- March 27 

Part 2- The Country (week 8)

Thursday Class- April 23

Friday Class- April 24

Part 3- The Itinerary (week 13)

Thursday Class- May 28

Friday Class- May 29

Part 4- The Brochure/ Final presentation (week 16)

Thursday class- June 18

Friday class- June 19

Project Information

"Create your own Travel Company"

Group Members: 

Country: 

The purpose of this project is to research a country and learn more about it's history, culture, and tourism. The project will be turned into Taylor in four parts. Each month a different part will be due. The final project will be a presentation of all four parts. The final presentation will take place during the final week of classes. This will be your final exam grade and will be worth 35% of your entire grade. 

Part 1- The Company (20%)

A. What is the name of the company? Make sure to create an original name that has special meaning to the other members of the group. 

B. What is the slogan for the company? This will be the tool for attracting customers to your travel company. 

C. Create a company profile. The company profile tells information about the company. It should be given to me in paragraph form. Your company profile should include: 

                1. The story for how the company started

                2. The number of employees working 

                3. Location

                4. Services offered

D. A good idea would be to look at other travel companies on the internet to see what services they provide and what kinds of all-inclusive packages they offer. 

Part 2- The Country (20%)

A. The history

    1. Give a 2-3 paragraph summary about the history of the country 

B. Popular cities to visit

    1. Make a list of 6 cities and tell about each one. 1 paragraph for each city

C. Culture

    1. Give a 2-3 paragraph summary about the culture of the country. Make sure to tell of any taboos in the country.  

D. Geography

    1. The country may have a variety of geography, so write 1 paragraph about all of it. 

E. Exchange Rate (U.S. Dollars) 

    1. Use the internet to find this information

F. Tourist sights

    1. Make a list of 10 or more tourist sights to see and tell about each one. 1 paragraph for each tourist attraction. 

G. Best time to travel

    1. When is the best time to travel to this country? 1 paragraph

    2. What is the weather like during the different seasons (summer, winter, fall, spring)? 1 paragraph

H. Time change

    1. What is the time difference between your country and Washington D.C? 1 sentence

Part 3- The Itinerary (20%)

A. There is a married couple who wants to work with your business and they want to travel for one week. They will leave on Saturday and arrive back to America on Sunday of the next week. The easiest thing to do would be to research the cost for one person and then multiply that by 2. So, 2 days of traveling to the country and 7 days of events. In the itinerary you need to include places to visit, meals during the day, cost per day. The budget for the entire journey including airport travel is 6,000 U.S.D. Pretend that you will be planning the trip for 2009. The airport you will leave is called Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C. 

B. Itinerary Example (4 days)

    

Saturday- January 10 Travel

       11pm- leave Washington D.C. 

    

Sunday- January 11 Travel

       10:05am- arrive in London, England

       9:30pm- leave London, England

    

Monday- January 12 Arrive in Thailand!

        3:40pm- arrive in Bangkok, Thailand

        5pm- check into Windsor Suites Hotel 

        5:30pm- eat dinner

        7pm- sleep/ free time 

    

Tuesday- January 13 Nature Day

        7am- wake up

        7:30am- breakfast 

        8:30am- Chao Phya River and Canals 

    

Part 4- The Brochure (20%)

A. Small- you can use one sheet of paper

B. Pictures- print them out and put them on the paper

C. Creative

D. Include the company name, slogan, website, country information, travel packages offered

Resources (20%)

A. You will need to create one page to give to Taylor at the final class of the resources that you used for your research. This can include websites, books, magazines, DVDs. Anything that you use to find information you need to write it down. 

B. The best source to find information will be the internet: 

        1. www.google.com - a place to find all information, search for "travel guides" or "Thailand" 

        2. www.flickr.com - a place to find pictures 

        3. www.lonelyplanet.com - a travel guide website 

        4. www.wikipedia.com - contains information about many things

        5. www.fareline.com - search for international airplane tickets 

        5. Taylor's website- I am going to put information to help you onto my blog.            http://findmeinchina.blogspot.com    

Final Presentation

A. For the final presentation you will present all four parts to Taylor

B. Make sure to bring a poster of your country with colorful photos (10 yuan)

C. Bring a picture of your company name and slogan/ logo

D. Bring brochure 

E. Everyone needs to talk 

Useful Links

Here are some websites that you can use for your research: 

Google

Search website, you can find everything here!

Flickr

Find beautiful pictures of your country here

Wikipedia

You can find information about your country (history, culture, geography, cities, everything!)

Lonely Planet

A good travel guide website

Fareline

The place to search for airplane tickets and prices 

Tourism "Travel Company" Project

Hello students! 

Hopefully you will be using this website to find useful information and websites dealing with your project. I will make sure to change this website constantly so you can find information on how to improve your English too! I hope that I can also put many pictures of you as well for everyone around the world to see!