Susan Wildeboer

I took two courses for my educational component:

- ESL classes (free) on Palo Alto Adult School, mondays and wednesdays from 6:30 pm to 9::30. The class was really good but they changed the teacher so I don’t know how it is now.

- Hot Topics in Bioethics in Stanford. This class was one credit, once a week for 5 weeks and it cost about $200. I really liked the class, every week was a diferent teme and diferent teacher. We discussed about Ethics and the end of life, Ethics and food, Ethics and researchs…this kind of stuff. If you interessed in healthy studies you will love!

(STANFORD COURSE)

I took the Public Speaking course in Stanford. I took this course because I didn’t feel very comfortable to talk in front of a big group of people. Since English is not my native language this was also bothering me and so i thought this course could make me feel more comfortable with the language and with the “audience”. The tutor was the best I have ever had in my whole school career. Every week he gave us a topic so we had one week to prepare ourselves and the following week we talked about our topic in front of the class. The tutor gave us a lot of great advises how and what we could change. I learned a lot in just 10 weeks and the course is once a week and costs $400. This was the perfect course for me and I can recommend it to everybody!

Sofia

We took Italian Cooking Class at Sunnyvale Adult Education and it was so much fun. It was 4 sessions and everytime we cooked 4 different dishes. Our teacher Suzanne Vandyck is from Europe and had lots of cooking experience. You can find information for coming classes at http://www.worldchefs.net.
We hope you will enjoy it!

Hannah and Pauliina

I took two continuing studies classes at Stanford. I highly recommend the first class: Professional Presenting in English. It was great because there were a lot of interesting people in the class from all over the world who live here now. Interesting conversation outside of class and also a very interesting class. It was 10 weeks, $400 and 2 credits.

The second class, was OK, but not great. Introduction to Biotechnology. A lecture format, you go in sit down and learn. Not as much interaction with other people. Teacher was good, just not as stimulating.

I took 5 courses:

1. I took one of my courses, and that’s my favorite, at Stanford University. It was “Beginning Website Design”. I really loved this course, because I like to work with Computers and it was interesting how it works to create a website. And that is not as easy as I thought. This course cost $500 and takes 10 weeks, and I got 2 credits as well as I have my own website.

2. Then I took a Salsa dancing course at Sunnyvale-Cupertino Adult and Community Education. That was fun!
It was once a week and cost about $70 for 8 weeks. We were a group of about 16 to 20 people with different ages. We laughed a lot and learned all the basics about salsa.

3. In addition, I took 2 cooking courses at Sunnyvale-Cupertino Adult and Community Education as well. I like to cook, so I thought this is a good combination with having fun with cooking and get new recipes. The course instructor was Suzanne Vandyck, a professional chef. I had there fun, too. It cost about $50 per course.

4. Above all, I took an ESL course (English as a second Language). This course was for free and you need to count your hours to get your credits. I liked this course, because this course was really helpful to improve my English. People, from all over the world, it doesn’t matter if they were here as an au pair or for other jobs or because of something else, took this class. The teachers were very kind as well as the classmates.

Pauliina and me took a Positive Psychology Class in Palo Alto Highschool (Adult Education).

It was very interesting and we learned a lot about different ways to think positive. The teacher didn’t only talk, he tried to make the lessons fun. We had also group conversations, where we shared our thoughts with other people.

The class was really fun and we think it helped us to change our way of thinking in positive way. And you often have to think positive if you are an au pair and the kids drive you crazy ;).
By the way the teacher was really cute ;).

Hi everybody!!!

My year is almost over and I finally finished all my classes :)!

I can recommend to go to the Adult Education classes in Palo Alto and Mountain View. Here are the links, so you can see the schedule:

http://www.paadultschool.org/

http://mvlaae.net/

I loved the Pilates and Yoga classes! I also can recommend the hiking class, it was always on a Saturday, but you can easily get your hours and you see really nice places around the area.

So check it out
Nadja

I’ve been here 1 year. Since then, I’ve been studying in Palo Alto ESL. I took 5 credits in Foothill College also.

But I really want to recommend you Stanford! There is Stanford Continuing Studies. I’m taking a course about music. It have been really interesting and a great experience for my life.

This is the link

http://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/

Good luck!