Taking things from a hotel room is now so commonplace that some hotels mark commonly taken items with price tags. What can you take from a hotel within reason?

People have been known to take the oddest things from hotels. People have taken everything from television sets (somehow arguing it’s built into the price of the room, I’m sure) to coffee mugs.

It can vary depending on the hotel but with some items you take, the room service will note their absence and add them to your bill.

So what is ok to take from a hotel room? Your safest bet is to stick to the bathroom. Things like the shampoo and soaps etc… The towels, bathrobes and shower curtains are also often taken but many hotels will charge you for these.

Newspapers are sometimes provided in the lobby or dining area and while you can take these, it may be considered bad form if there are few copies. Daily or perhaps weekly magazines may also be acceptable. The bible is usually also freely available.

Stationary is also usually provided in hotel rooms. Pens and notepads with the hotel watermark are common. A sewing kit and possibly shoe polish are acceptable as well.

When you’re asking yourself what can you take from a hotel, avoid the obvious. It’s obviously wrong to take the hair dryer or the television. If you take larger items and conceal them or deny taking items which you have, you’re crossing the line into theft.

If in doubt about what you can take, ask a member of staff. Don’t ask them officially; ask them casually what people usually take. If you don’t want to be up-front about it, you could ask if its possible to purchase the item and they might tell you, you can take it.

If in complete doubt and you cant get any confirmation, just don’t take it. There is only two things it can be. Something trivial which you could buy yourself for nothing, or something expensive which you’d be billed for.

And one word of warning, although hopefully you’ll already know this. The snacks and drinks available in your room is not included in the price unless already stated. These are usually astoundingly high priced. Just go down to the dining area or find a vending machine.

 All-inclusive places are wonderful for a ton of reasons. The price includes everything, your meals, airfare so budgeting is very simple. You have a variety of activities to choose from and if you don’t enjoy a certain one then you don’t have to do it. In all areas of the world these types of vacations are found. If you have in mind a particular are that you would like to visit there no doubt is an all inclusive resort there.

Another very popular vacation choice for seniors is what’s called a volunteer vacation. With a vacation like this you can visit a totally different part of the world, be able to assist others, learn fabulous things about their way of life and culture but still have plenty of time or relaxation. Volunteer assignment may be things such as teaching reading skills or cataloguing nature. Even if you may feel that you don’t have the right skills this is not a problem. Many are untrained volunteers and are taught.

Learning vacations are a great idea for seniors who would like to get their brain going intellectually. A lot miss out on this after retiring from work. During a learning vacation you will devote one to two hours a day to getting better and improving at a specific skill of your choice. During the rest of your vacation time you can decide for yourself what you would like to do. Things such as checking out the countryside, visiting a local sap or restaurant, or enjoying some relaxation on your own. The many different things that you can choose to learn on these vacations are limitless; you can enjoy learning to cook in France, take horseback riding lessons, or learn a new language. There are lessons available for all experience levels, from the beginner to the advanced.

What should senior citizens look for in a learning vacation?  Talk to those who have used the company you are looking into. If they only have good things to say and would take another vacation with this company, then you should be pretty safe. Take a look at what will be offered recreation on the trip. You will not be so involved with learning that you won’t have time for sightseeing. Make a plan about how to use your day, thinking about what your interests are and your energy level, take a ton of pictures, and enjoy your vacation.

German, the language of war, French, the language of diplomacy, and English for all there is under the sun. Foreigners meeting abroad try English first when they want to communicate; it is not at all uncommon to find two German tourists in the Czech Republic starting to talk English to each other until they find out that they are from the same country.

But most importantly English has been, is now and most likely will continue to be the language of commerce. This is why students all over the world, be it in Latin America, Africa or China, want to learn English. Their job prospects increase dramatically when they can show in their curriculum that they speak English. And this is why there are always openings for English teachers all over the world.

The market for teaching English as a second language has become kind of crowded of late, to say the least. More people want to learn it, and more Americans or other English speakers want to teach it. This is one interesting aspect of that particular market; you have a good chance of getting into it even if you don’t have prior experience as a teacher.

I’m not referring here to teaching jobs as let’s say a second grade teacher in a private school. There you will be asked for qualifications. I’m referring here to commercial institutes that cater to the needs of foreign and multinational companies that want to teach their staff to answer a fax in English, or attend some supervisor in the home office.

Mind you, the times where it was just enough to be American in order to land a teaching job have long gone. You will have to meet certain requirements, but they are relatively easy. For one, you have to be ‘teach-able’. That means that most serious institutes around the world want motivated and skilled staff, and are willing to send them initially through a training program of their own.

Since staff turnover in these institutes is pretty high, they want to recover what they invested in your training by paying you a low salary first. Since most people drop out after a couple of month that makes sense for the language school. But you can be pretty sure that if you hang in there and do a good job, you will a. be allocated more classes, and therefore more pay, and b. your hourly rate will go up.

It’s not absolutely necessary, but it does help a lot if you have experience in general business matters, or if you have worked in a corporation yourself. Because you will find that your students are not so much interested in learning English, but to improve their communication skills. There is a fine difference. If they’re able to service a client better because of their command of English, that gives them a better standing with their company and better prospects for promotions And if you as the teacher can focus on those phrases that are used in negotiations, for example, or in sales presentations, that would help both you and your students. But again, it’s not absolutely necessary.

Image via Wikipedia

I have not been with a multinational company that sent me to those places. I’ve been doing it on my own, sometimes with money, sometimes without money, sometimes in company, most of the times alone.

When I started off I didn’t have a profession. I was a laborer, but I was (and still am) disciplined, so I usually had no problems, in England or Greece, to find a job on a building site or in the fields, picking this, that and the other.

I started to develop myself at the beginning of the nineties as a language teacher, by now I speak three languages and I am a successful teacher. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Let me tell you right from the start, it wasn’t easy, in fact sometimes I was downright desperate, because I found myself in a foreign country, not speaking the language, not knowing anybody, and on  top of it, broke.

But looking back on the past 30 years, I wouldn’t change my life for anything else. If you understand that living your life to the fullest implies taking risks, expanding your boundaries, and yes, suffering, then continue reading.

If you are the type of person who likes to work in a team, you are with a company that’s expanding and which needs to send some of its staff to some subsidiary abroad – do it! There is very little you can lose, and everything you can gain. Unless you are the first team member setting up that new subsidiary or field office, you will, on arrival, be greeted by your colleagues. They will teach you the ropes, what to do and what not to do in the particular culture you’ve been sent to. The human resources department will take care of your immigration issues, accommodation will have been set up most likely, and your new friends will tell you where to go in your free time, which places to visit, which restaurants to avoid.

The drawback here is that you will have left your home country only partially. You will be celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and your lifestyle on the whole will change very little.

Not that there is anything wrong with it, I’ve met plenty of executives who had been sent by their company to Mexico, and they are doing just fine. In fact, most of them don’t want to return, because here they’ve got the best of both worlds – living in a different culture and enjoying all the perks they would enjoy at home while getting paid more.

Maybe you are a schoolteacher, you’re kind of content with your life, but it doesn’t really feel as if you are living your life. Sometimes you have the feeling that you are ‘being lived’, and time just passes by. Maybe your kids have just left home, and you need that challenge. There is nothing worse than looking at your life and feeling ´Is that all there is?’

There are plenty of openings for teachers all over the world, google it, look for it, find it – and then go for it! You can always come back…….

On a personal level, as far as growing as a human being and learning is concerned, I hesitate to imagine what would have become of me if I’d stayed in Germany. I don’t know what life is about, but I might as well live it while I’m around. And that implies looking for and finding my limits, getting to know myself as I really am, and not some weird idea I have of myself. If you like self-discovery, if you’re interested in finding and develop you potential, go for that ‘stint’ abroad.

Another scenario is that you might either have lost your job or you are worried about losing it. If you have some skill, you’re a specialist whose knowledge is in demand, let’s say in India, then you might not be at all thrilled to leave your home country. But here my advice would be the same –  go for it. Most of the times the things we like the least turn out the ones that are best for us, particularly if it is something we haven’t done before. If you’re worried about going abroad, your worries are most likely based on hear-say. Find out for yourself.

As a teacher you might acquire new experiences by working abroad. You might be interested in working for a couple of years in Asia, for example. Imagine the wealth of experience and knowledge you would come back with to your home country! You would yourself grow as a person, immerse yourself in another culture, and get to know new religions, customs, develop new paradigms. You would literally broaden your mind, learn yourself. And as a good teacher you know that the learning process never ends, that even as an adult we have to continuously work on ourselves, expand our horizon.

There are a lot of perks involved when working for a serious school or institution abroad. In many cases you get paid less than you would earn at home, particularly if you are from the US. However, you have to take into consideration the cost of living in that particular country. In dollar terms you might be earning less, but when you do the math and see how much less it costs you to live there, you might actually be earning a lot more. And many times you earn a comfortable tax-free salary. Very often the school you work for provides you with spacious housing where your employer pays the bills. And there are those schools that provide you with a company car.

As far as the actual work is concerned, more often than not you work with small class sizes, which make your job obviously far more pleasant. You’re able to connect or bond with your students, get them to know in more detail and therefore are able to focus on his or her particular strength or weaknesses. That obviously has a great impact on your job and makes it far more rewarding.

There are for example a lot of primary teacher jobs available in India. All throughout India teaching is considered a respected profession, and, depending on where you live and teach, you know that that is not the case in all countries. New Delhi has numerous renowned educational institutions, but not only that. As in most capitals of the world there are a lot of multinational companies that are actively hiring foreign teachers to either teach their staff English or work with the families of said staff. Particularly India with its booming economy should be a place to check out carefully when looking and applying for teaching jobs abroad – the potential is just tremendous.

Or imagine working in London! You could land a job in a private primary school, working with pupils from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. Would that make you a better teacher over time? You bet. And apart from you fine-tuning your skills as a teacher, you’d work from Monday to Friday and on the weekends you could go and explore Europe. The possibilities are endless.

There are a lot of teacher agencies online and off-line that can assist you when looking for a teacher position abroad. They usually help you pick the right country, and they have a list of available vacancies. Good Luck!

Here are some tips and advice of what to look for and ask about.

Using organic cleaning solutions

As we know each room is cleaned when a guest leaves, imagine how much cleaner that really is. Find out if that hotel, motel or bed and breakfast is using an organic cleaner.

Organic or Recycled Tissue Paper

I purchase green toilet paper, which is made out of recycled products. Find out and ask if they are using this type of product, which would include napkins in the dining area, paper towels, or even paper plates. Are they composting those items?

Cold Water in Laundry

Those towels and sheets should be washed in cold water only, this cuts back on emissions, and is a better option for the environment. How much laundry does a hotel or motel do?

Water systems

Special shower heads and toilets that use less water should be featured in every room.

The Office

All hotels have a reception and administration. Are they using recycled paper, or a stapler that does not actually require the staples?

These are only a few suggestions, I would highly recommend calling and asking what procedures and methods they use in these functions. A site I use to research on this topic to prepare for any given holiday I might go on would be Eco Green Hotel. They offer a newsletter, tips and advice of what to look for when traveling.

The Green Hotel Association offers a listing of hotels all over the world and lets you see which ones offer these services. Another tool I use. They actually have to approve the hotel for them to be listed on this site. This site can be used anywhere in the world you wish to travel.

Hotel green certification is very important to look for. When I stay at a hotel or motel, I look for this wonderful and crucial feature. All travelers should. The plane ride alone emits so much poison, I could not travel any other way unless I could find other ways to offset the damage of airlines. Conventions.net offer you a listing of places that are green certified too.

If you plan on traveling, green it up as much as possible!

Image via Wikipedia

In a move which straddles the boundary between bad taste and tempting fate, a trans-Atlantic cruise is being offered in 2012 to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Organisers have pledged to offer food that matches the menus of the original voyage, along with lectures from historians, and entertainment from the era. Whether or not there will also be a historically accurate shortage of lifeboats, the brochure fails to mention.

The aptly named Titanic Memorial Cruise is scheduled to leave port on April 8, 2012, cruising out of Southampton, exactly 100 years to the day after the ill-fated ship. Should it avoid all floating ice in its path, it is due to arrive at the spot in the North Atlantic where the Titanic sank one week later. At that point, a service will be held onboard in remembrance of those who lost their lives. Unlike the original ship, the cruise will then continue its journey to Halifax, where passengers can visit the cemeteries containing the graves of those who perished, before docking in New York, the Titanic’s intended destination.

With the original ship still resting on the ocean floor, organisers Miles Morgan Travel have chartered the Balmoral, a ship capable of carrying approximately half as many passengers as her unsinkable, but ultimately sunken, cousin. Industry news suggests that the cabins are selling fast, despite their hefty price tags, in a display of the enduring interest in one of the world’s worst maritime disasters. The Olympic-class liner and her disastrous maiden voyage still capture the imagination a century on, offering a contrasting tale of romantic luxury and the tragic loss of life. Intended to be the largest, most opulent ship ever built, the Titanic gave its passengers four days of exquisite comforts before delivering many of them to a watery grave. Millionaires, businessmen, politicians and artists were among those who succumbed to the same fate as the cooks and cabin-boys of the ships crew. Along with novels and documentaries, a multitude of films have been made about the Titanic, including the James Cameron epic which became the highest grossing movie ever.

Whilst the memorial cruise promises to draw the crowds, there are those who have questioned the perhaps macabre similarities between it and the original journey. What might we expect next, a high-speed drive through the Parisian streets in honour of Princess Diana? A New York fly-by in honour of 9/11? Whatever the intentions of the organisers, and those who take up their places on the Balmoral, there is the nagging feeling that the method employed in this memorial is perhaps a little ghoulish, profiting from tragedy through the guise of legitimate commemoration. Certainly, none of the original passengers will be there to trace that century old journey, the last, Millvina Dean, having died in May 2009. Our fascination with the Titanic already threatens to destroy the remains of the ship itself, with scientists suggesting that repeated visits from submersibles are hastening the deterioration of the wreck. Perhaps now is the time to let the memories of those lost at sea, along with the ship itself, rest in peace.

On a closing note, it is worth mentioning that the Balmoral is owned by Fred Olsen, whose parent company Harland and Wolff built the Titanic. Let’s hope that their iceberg detection machines have improved since then.

I have travelled a lot and I know difficult it is to pack for trip. On my first flight from Dublin to Berlin as a student, I thought it a smart move to take my stereo with me. However, when I got to the airport, I found that my luggage was overweight and I ended up leaving half of my stuff behind. Since then, I have developed a lot of packing techniques and I have learnt my lesson. Here are some tips that you don’t have to the hard way.

What to check before you start packing?

When you travel abroad, it’s a good idea to check the weather forecast for the country you are visiting. This will give you an idea of what kind of clothes should take with you.

Make sure you know what you can and can’t take into the country  you are travelling to. There are things you can’t take certain countries, e.g. wood into Australia or raw meat into Iceland.

Travelling by plane means that you have to check luggage security guidelines. For example, passengers mustn’t carry sharp objects in their hand luggage and sometimes they can’t take certain foods or drinks with them at all.

Packing for a four-day trip

Luggage

Try to take as little as possible with you. Don’t take a suitcase or a heavy backpack. A medium-sized bag is enough. This way:

• You don’t have to check on or wait for your luggage, so you save time.
• You can also save money because you don’t need to take a taxi. You can use public transport with ease.

Clothes

• Take as little as possible. Do not think of what you need to take with you. Think of what you couldn’t do without on that particular trip.
• Make sure that the clothes you take dry out quickly because sometimes you need to wash a piece of clothing and wear it again.
• Choose materials which do not crease so that you needn’t do any ironing.

I had that feeling when I was in the Netherlands on business five ago. I tried to make a good impression on my business partner, but I made a fool of myself , instead!

I all went wrong from the moment we shook hands. I held out my right hand, but kept my left hand in my pocket. From my business partner’s reaction I could tell the Dutch find that very rude. I tried to make things better, so I said: ” What a beautiful country Holland is! ” . My business partner wasn’t pleased with my compliment. He made it very clear that they never call the Netherlands Holland. Holland is just one of the regions in the Netherlands.

Try not to make a similar mistake in Brazil. You see Brazilians consider themselves to be Americans. That’s why it’s not a good idea to use the phrase ‘in America’ when you’re talking about the United States.

In South Korea, keep your voice down. It’s rude to talk or laugh loudly. Koreans, especially women, cover their mounths when they laugh; it’s rude to show your teeth!

In Arab countries, it’s not a good idea to admire something too much; the owner will probably give it to you as a  present. Just imagine going back home with a real live camel!

Real live camel

Therefore, you might find one type of service at one but not at the other. I have listed a few of the most common services that you will find being offered at most international airports

However, the most useful services provided by international airports is currency exchange. When traveling aboard you will find there is different currency for each country. Therefore, be aware of the currency exchange because you don’t want to be put into a difficult situation by not having the proper currency.

The next major service is mail service centers, which can be found in all international airports. They function much like our United States Postal System operates with a number of different purposes.

Therefore, one of the most convenient services is having the choice of mailing your newly purchase items back to your home state. It can be very costly but it is better than the alternative, at least you won’t be asked to turn your purchases over to airport security and  never see them again.

You will find internet services at most  international airports. You will be able to have access to your email, the news or just surfing the net. If you have contemplated on leaving your computer at home you might want to reconsider because you will have wireless internet inside the building.

International airports  offer wonderful retail shops and a multitude of eateries. Most of the international airports nowadays appear as small mall inside of them.