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. INFORMATION PACKET . TEEN SPANISH CAMP PROGRAM
June 22 - August 17, 2008
La Catalina Natural Language School’s Teen Spanish Summer Program offers a complete cultural and Spanish language immersion program for adventure-minded teens, where students can learn Spanish, live in our small tropical beach community of La Manzanilla, and participate in exciting excursions in the surrounding areas. This is truly a once in a lifetime experience that teens will remember forever. We are accepting up to 14 teenage students in each week-long session from various parts of the United States and Canada. Participants in the Spanish camp should be mature individuals (ages 14 - 17) entering or enrolled in high school for the upcoming year. No previous experience with speaking Spanish is necessary for participation. Students must demonstrate outstanding behavior and a commitment to learning and will be admitted to our program through an application process including a letter of recommendation from a teacher or employer.
La Manzanilla is approximately three and a half hours south of Puerto Vallarta and one and a half hours north of Manzanillo by car, with the Manzanillo’s airport (ZLO) only 45 minutes away.
Our Spanish program consists of:
Spanish classes meet daily for two hours, Monday through Friday, in our beautiful outdoor cool and breezy Palapa classroom overlooking La Manzanilla’s beach and oceanfront. In addition to the classes, there are daily homework assignments that require a minimum of 30 minutes outside of class time. As part of their homework, students will be guided to keep their own travel journal throughout the course of the trip, which they will be provided with upon their arrival to Mexico. These journals will not only serve as a tool to develop their Spanish writing skills, but also allows students to reflect upon and record their experiences and discoveries on the trip. At La Catalina, we have integrated the latest research and findings on language acquisition, along with a holistic mind/body/emotion approach to learning. Our methodology puts very little emphasis on conceptual grammar with speakers who are not at a fluent level. Instead the emphasis is on familiarization and usage of Spanish. Our approach helps student see and experience first-hand that they can learn Spanish quickly and naturally through right practice and encourages students to take risks with the language and just “blurt it out” initially. Lots of games, songs, and age appropriate activities are used to create a fun and engaging learning environment when teaching classes to young learners.
During their stay with the family, students can participate in daily conversations with family members, join them for meals and receive assistance with homework and other questions they may have. It is also encouraged that the students participate as a family member, which might mean helping prepare meals or assisting with miscellaneous tasks around the house. To facilitate students learning experiences, it is a requirement that the Mexican families only speak Spanish in the household with the foreign students. This is an important component of the program, which allows students to truly “experience” the Mexican culture, develop life long friendships, and strengthen their Spanish acquisition skills.
Areas of Volunteer Work
TEEN
SOCIAL NIGHTS & LANGUAGE EXCHANGES WITH LOCALS Teens come together with their trip leader for fun and lively evening events, which may include game nights, movies, dancing, bonfires, moonlight hikes, a talent show, etc. The local Mexican teens may also be invited to some of these events to create a cross-cultural experience where new friendships can be forged. CULTURAL AND RECREATIONAL EXCURSIONS In addition to Spanish classes, we offer local excursions every Saturday, which will provide insight into Mexico’s culture, history, art, and local ecology, as well as plenty of recreational opportunities. Below you will find some of the highlighted weekly excursions that the group will participate in during their stay in Mexico. (A more comprehensive list of excursions with the dates they will take place will be included on our website soon!)
Sea Kayaking & Eco-Tour
Barra de Navidad Excursion
Tenacatita Beach Excursion & Riverboat Tour
Blue Bay Resort Fun Day!
Colima Overnight Excursion Students will travel 3-hours by bus to arrive to the city of Colima, known for its sacred volcano, ancient ceremonials ruins of the Nahua’s people, and beautiful colonial downtown area. DAY 1 - Students will spend their first day exploring the small city and its cathedrals, museums, parks, and fashionable storefronts.
Victor Amezcua and Julie Catton, former teachers from San Francisco, California, founded La Catalina School in 2002. They continue to be the Directors and work with a small, but tight knit staff which includes our experienced trip chaperones and Spanish teachers. Close communications, meetings and check-ins between the students, the Directors, their trip chaperones and their Spanish teachers will take place on a daily basis. Our supportive staff at La Catalina will work together to carefully oversee the students and help make every aspect of their trip a safe, fun, organized, enriching and educational experience.
La Catalina School hires very experienced bilingual trip leaders, who have traveled or lived in Mexico. We look for leaders with lots of positive energy and who genuinely love working with teens. Information will be posted soon on who our 2008 trip leader will be.
As our premier concern with this program is that our participants are safe, the school has a very strict drug and alcohol free policy and curfew that will be strictly enforced by the directors and trip leaders. In the event that a student violates this policy, he or she will be expelled from the school and the parents will be responsible for arranging immediate return of the student and will forfeit all unused tuition. Students with prior history of drug and/or alcohol abuse will not be admitted into the program. TEEN SPANISH PROGRAM WEEKLY SCHEDULE:*
*Schedule is subject to change There are two options for participants to travel to Mexico:
Option 1: Escorted Travel Option – Available from Los Angeles, CA $900 per week + $890 one time cost for round trip airfare and escort services. Includes:
Option 2: Independent Travel Option – Departing from any location $900 per week. Includes:
(Does not include airfare & escort services to and from Mexico.) STUDENTS STAYING 4 OR MORE WEEKS RECEIVE A 10% DISCOUNT OFF OVERALL TRIP TUITION & FEES Costs do not include: Student's personal expenses, including: shopping, e-mail use, telephone calls, postage for mailings, food eaten at airports or outside of the food pre-arranged by school (i.e. snacks purchased at the stores.) Estimated student personal expenses budget per week: E-Mail $ 5 - $ 10 Telephone $ 5 - $ 25 Postage $ 5 Shopping/Souvenirs $ 25 - $ 40 Food & Snacks $ 20 - $ 30 Misc. Expenses $ 5 - $ 20 $ 65 - $ 125 ESCORTED TRAVEL AVAILABLE OUT OF LOS ANGELES, CA (LAX): La Catalina School will provide an escorted trip to and from Mexico every two weeks during the 8 week program, with the group departing from the Los Angeles (LAX) airport. Families who would like to send their children with our school escort should arrange to have their child meet our school escort on the designated departure date at LAX three hours before the group’s departure time. Students will then leave LAX with La Catalina School’s escort who will deliver them safely to the designated Mexico airport (ZLO or PVR) and escort them back at the end of their stay. Scheduled escorted departure dates from LAX are as follows:
Students can be escorted back from the designated Mexico airport (ZLO or PVR) to LAX on the following dates:
(Escorted travel arrangements from other centralized locations, including the Houston airport, can potentially be made upon request for large enough student groups. Please inquire for the possibility of making such an arrangement.) Students may opt to purchase their own ticket and fly independently to and from the Manzanillo, Mexico (ZLO) airport, on any Sunday from June 22nd – August 10th, 2008 and depart any Sunday from June 29th – August 17th, 2008. La Catalina School will pick up students upon their arrival to ZLO and escort them back to ZLO at the end of their stay, seeing them on to their plane to their home state. While in Mexico, students are fully chaperoned. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR ALTERNATIVE TRAVEL DATES: If it is not possible to book your flight on one of the scheduled arrival/departure days specified above, you can make special arrangements with La Catalina School for an alternative arrival and departure date. You will need to check with us before booking your tickets to confirm that your proposed date modifications will work. (There will be an additional cost for making these special arrangements.) Email us at la_catalinagroups@hotmail.com or call us at (011) 52-315-351-5362 (from outside of Mexico). We will send the trip registration guidelines and forms along with information on how to make your payment for the trip. A registration fee of $100 must be sent in along with your child’s application form. This fee in nonrefundable and does not apply to trip tuition & fees. EARN $100 OR MORE OFF YOUR TRIP BY:
La Catalina Natural Language School Victor Amezcua, School Director Julie Catton, School Director
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La
Catalina Natural Language School 
Students
will participate in a private group Spanish course tailored to their
needs and interests. They will be grouped according to their level in a
beginner, intermediate, or advanced Spanish course. Classes are small in
size (limited to 8 students per level) and all students receive plenty
of one-on-one time with the teachers. Our teachers are native Spanish
speakers who are caring, professional, well trained, and experienced.
Living
with a Mexican family is an exceptional and heart-warming experience for
students as it gives students a real taste of Mexican culture, helps
accelerate learning the Spanish language, and can lead to lifelong
friendships. We place one to two students in a home with a Mexican
family for the duration of their stay. All families who participate in
our program are carefully selected and are genuinely interested in
welcoming their homestay students as another family member.
On
the second week of their immersion experience and for the remainder of
their stay, students will participate in a volunteer program, where they
will be placed in a volunteer position in the community for
approximately 6-10 hours per week. Participation in the volunteer
program allows students to become involved in the local community and
gain a deeper cultural understanding and appreciation of the workings of
Mexican society. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to
practice their Spanish outside of the classroom setting and may receive
credit at their high school for community service. Students’ volunteer
placements will be aligned with an area of personal interest. 
In
addition to the Spanish classes, there will be a one hour cultural class
everyday (Mon. – Fri.). Students will have the opportunity to
participate in some of the following options: beading, painting, Mexican
cooking, lamp making, singing, collage making, paper maché, and video
making.
Students
will spend an exciting half-day sea kayaking in the Tenacatita Bay with
Immersion Adventures, a local kayaking
company.
The group will receive prior instruction and be accompanied by an
experienced guide as they paddle out from La Manzanilla to a secluded
beach where they will snorkel (optional) over a fringe coral reef, do
some beachcombing, and learn about the coral reef ecosystems. 
Students
will travel by bus to the picturesque beach town of Barra de Navidad,
located 30 minutes south of La Manzanilla. There they will spend
the morning body surfing or swimming in the ocean, followed by a walking
and boat tour of the area. The students will finish the day
shopping at a number of the arts and crafts shops and enjoying a very
special authentic Mexican lunch. 
The
students and their trip leaders will travel to the beautiful Blue Bay
Resort located 15 minutes north of La Manzanilla for a day of fun and
luxury. There they can lounge around the beautiful crystal clear pools
overlooking the beach, have access to a galore of recreation activities,
including horseback riding, volleyball, boating, snorkeling, tennis and
more, and enjoy tasty meals at the resort. 
DAY
2
enjoy
a beautiful hike in the tropical forest and reach the rim of the crater
of an extinct volcano, where they’ll enter it using rappelling technique
(easy, even for beginners). They continue hiking and discover the
regional organic coffee, and its culture, and finally reach a beautiful
crater lake. On the return trip, the group will enjoy a typical Mexican
lunch accompanied by a Mariachi band in the quaint town of Comala,
nestled at the foothills of the volcanic mountain, six miles from Colima.
Everyday the group
will have an activity time where the trip leaders will plan a fun
recreational activity, which may include swimming at the beach, playing
volleyball or soccer with the locals, going on a group hike, gathering
to do their homework and journaling, and other activities. This will
also be a time for the students to debrief with their Trip leader and
share their feelings and experience about their trip experience. In
addition to day time activities, there will be evening social activities
including ice cream socials, movie nights, game nights and more!!!