The Winter Junior Program took place from January 3rd to January 31, 2015. The program was a mix between the ELC summer junior program and an adult program.
In total, there were 15 Winter Junior students this year in Santa Barbara. They were separated into two classes for grammar and conversation and had their own teachers for each. Every afternoon, the junior students were taken on excursions from 2:00pm to 5:00pm. On the weekends, students spent free time with their host families on Saturday and on Sunday they participated in full-day excursions from 9am to 6pm.
Some of their afternoon activities in Santa Barbara included shopping on State Street, Ice Skating, decorating cupcakes at Crushcake Cafe, visiting the Old Mission of Santa Barbara, and playing Lazer Tag. Their Sunday excursions included visiting Los Angeles, Universal Studios, Disneyland, and the Camarillo Shopping Outlets. The students expressed their favorite activities included Cloud 10, a huge gym full of trampolines, the Zoo, Lazer Tag, Ice Skating, and going to the beach.
Erika Fox, the Junior Program Director, said: “the students were high energy, so they seemed to really like the active activities like ice skating at Channel Islands Ice Center, Bowling at Zodos, and jumping on all of the trampolines at Cloud10Jump!”
The junior students all had host family accommodations. ELC provided transportation for the entire program from the student’s accommodation to school and to activities. This year, all the junior students in Santa Barbara were from Brazil. Chaperoning them were two wonderful leaders also from Brazil, Leila and Priscilla.
Brazilian junior student Gabriela said her favorite moment at ELC Santa Barbara was during conversation class. She said, “it’s good to talk what we want with a nice teacher that knows English well to practice.”
To celebrate the end of their program, they had a catered lunch at La Mesa Park overlooking the ocean. Each student was given a certificate of completion. Students were very happy with their time studying English and said they would recommend the program to other students looking to improve their English and experience Santa Barbara.
