Jaunted

Tags: Education / Culture / → All Tags

More Than Just a Vacation: Learn Something

There was a time when we would have cringed at the thought of combining something educationally enriching with a holiday, but these days they do it so much better. The UK Times had a report on 20 different holidays with an educational bent that's given us all kinds of ideas for our next vacation.

There are a few of the stock-standard self-improvement kind of trips: learning to dance salsa in Barcelona, surfing in Lanzarote and scuba diving in the Red Sea in Egypt. For the more adventurous, you can become a Masai warrior in Kenya, go kitesurfing in Morocco or climbing in Mallorca. And for the cerebral amongst you, try a creative writing course in Turkey or a photography camp in Wyoming.

Our pick of unusual cultural vacations is, however, the Indian Head Massage vacation. And while you might expect that such a course should take place in India, this one's curiously run at the Oxon Hoath retreat in rural Kent, England. They even promise plenty of free love between workshops.

Related Stories:
· 20 Great Learning Holidays [UK Times]
· Oxon Heath Retreat [Official Site]
· Culture coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: JasonUnbound]

Tags: Education / → All Tags

Tongue-Tied

Want to master a new language before you travel? Unless you're five, you're screwed. That big adult brain of yours is already sclerotic when it comes to learning new tongues. It's hopeless, or at least that's Slate's assessment of Rosetta Stone's new software for learning foreign languages.

Instead of the classic textbook "My name is" conversations, pictures flash across the screen, and the user must match them to foreign words. The idea is to skip the mental translation that slows down beginning speakers. It's great, until you need to string useful sentences together with verbs.

Jaunted supports the "horizontal method" of linguistics; bed yourself a foreigner and you'll have no problems, at least until you accidentally tell a waiter "I love you" instead of "I'll have the goulash".  

Related Stories:
·   Am I Too Old to Learn a New Language? [Slate]