Travel classes: what to choose from?

As an au pair you have to get a certain amount of credits / hours during your year. In a previous article we gave an overview of all the options you have in order to fulfill your credits. One of the options we will discuss further are the travel classes.

A travel class is one of the most expensive options there is to get your credits, but it also gives you a great opportunity to see more of the states. So you actually hit two birds with one stone during this class.

The different organisations

When you decide that you want to do a travel class you have to choose where you want to go and what you want to do. There are different organizations that organize these kind of trips. Keep in mind that most of these courses do include some dinners, snacks and beverages but do not include housing or transportation to and from the class. Sometimes they will give recommendations where to stay but the plane ticket and transportation to the class has to be added up to the costs.

Au Pair Weekend

One organization is Au Pair Weekend. This organization has 4 different types of courses in 9 different cities in the United States. Boston, San Fransisco, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Tampa and San Diego are the cities you can take classes in.

The different courses makes it very interesting for different au pairs. Do you want to discover the city that you’re visiting? Take the discovery class. Always wanted to dance in New York or get the artist out of you? Take the arts & entertainment class. Do you like to help people and want to help the community? Let’s do the Make a difference class. Or if you want to get to know more about the environment you can take the Explore our environment class.

Learning Across America

An other organization which is more focused on exploring the city is Learning Across America. This organization is a collaboration between a college and Cultural Hi-Ways, which is set up by an au pair and host mom who wanted to give au pairs the opportunity to travel.

The classes take place in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Washington DC. One day you will take a class and the other you’ll go to the travel destinations, which are: the Niagara Falls; Montreal, Canada; Amish country and Washington DC. You have to read the description very carefully. Sometimes the dates of the class and the travel itself are on different weekends, so you’ll have to fly two times. But the great part of this organization is that on some trips the accommodation is included, which will save you a bunch of money.

Silver Bay Au Pair Courses

These courses are mainly based in New York State with some also in Las Vegas, NV. This is so far the only organization we found which has classes in Las Vegas. With these travel classes you will earn 36 hours / 3 credits towards your educational requirements.

On their website you can find a schedule of what your weekend will look like, which classes (in detail) you can choose from and when the different weekend classes are being held. Housing and food is included with this class and that doesn’t make them much more expensive than other travel classes that do not include housing.

University of the Virgin Islands International Program

There is definitely a city you’ll like since they have 10 different locations to choose from. Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia (Arlington and Virginia Beach)., California ( Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego), Georgia (Atlanta), Illinois (Chicago),  North Carolina (Charlotte) and Tennessee ( Nashville). That’s a lot of choice and what is so cool about these courses is that there are also smaller amount of hours available. This way you can travel to one of these places, have one day full of courses and the other fully to yourself to explore the city.

The University of the Virgin Islands International Program has some fun classes like becoming a bartender or the art of glass blowing. But it is a little bit more difficult website to find your courses and information. When you are on the page where you can find the courses you have to get a good view on dates. What is very helpful is the ‘category’ option on the top of this page. With that you can choose the amount of credits you need or want to get with the certain course you’ll take. Just keep an eye out for the dates that the courses are. Some of them are on different weekends.

There are many more organizations out there that host au pair travel courses. These are just a few of which we thought are the best so far, but if you have (or are) an other organization that hosts these kind of classes then put it in the comments below, so we can add them to the list. Happy traveling!