world travel guide

Sunday, May 2, 2010

famous european cities

Monday, December 28, 2009

Dubai – the glory of the Middle East 2009 2010

dubai4

For those waiting for a revived glorified Babylon, and its riches, they will have to look outside of Iraq. This city surpasses the elegance, richness and majesty of ancient Babylon, as well as anything in modern Iraq as well.

Dubai is a world center of culture, banking and trade. The genius and creativity behind these structures is truly amazing. This post is just to enjoy the architecture, and the view.

The current Burj Dubai project is building the tallest building in the world. In one picture, you can actually see the curvature of the earth from the its top. This makes me dizzy just to look at it.

It reminds me a little of how the original purpose of the tower of Babel was to reach heaven, and touch God. It looks like this tower is almost there.

A few are also underwater hotels.

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Thursday, December 10, 2009

amazing turkish airlines

Turkish Airlines (Istanbul) has put its leased Boeing 777-35R into revenue service.

Antony J. Best.

Turkish Airlines' leased Boeing 777-35R ER VT-JEE (msn 35164) arrives at London's Heathrow Airport for the first time on December 30, 2009. VT-JEE is being leased from Jet Airways. Copyright Photo: Antony J. Best.

turkish airlines

Sunday, December 6, 2009

istanbul pictures

istanbul city
One of the many smaller, but often no less distinguished, mosques in Istanbul dotting the Bosphorous shoreline.

Turkey is a fascinating place with a rich history. Secular in many respects, but with a large, relatively homogeneous and Muslim population, its ongoing quest to develop economically and progress socially, as can be seen by the present round of EU membership negotiations and a more general opening-up to foreign exchanges of all kinds, is bringing inherent political, economic, and social tensions and contradictions to the fore.

I came here several months ago to teach English as a foreign language (EFL) at a private merchant marine academy on Turkey’s rather splendid southeastern Mediterranean coast. I spent an intense month there before moving on to work at a Berlitz language center in Istanbul, the country’s financial, business, and cultural center.

Teaching English is a growing business in Istanbul and throughout Turkey. The Berlitz Istanbul franchise has two schools on the European side and two more up and running on the Asian side of the city. Work on a third is well under way.

English Time

It’s a Tuesday night in mid-March and I’ve been hanging around Berlitz Istanbul’s flagship school and office most of the day waiting to teach my first class. It begins around 6:30 p.m. and comes together in piecemeal fashion as five of my scheduled group of eight intermediate English language students assemble first in the kitchen to have a nosh of simit, something of a cross between a sesame seed bagel and a pretzel, and then head over to the small, efficient modern office style classroom.

As I’ve found is typical on the first day or night of a class, the students eye me somewhat warily. I’ve been told by my teacher trainer that they liked their previous teacher, so I expect that they will look to judge me against that standard.

The class turns out to be a mixed and friendly group eager to learn about foreigners and practice their English. Two are engineers from a company that manufactures boiler systems for export, another tough-talking but good-natured middle aged woman is a criminal lawyer, one is a young wife who has traveled abroad and just landed a secretarial job with a Turkish company that also does international business. The group is rounded out by a new father who is the limousine service manager for Shering-Plough’s Turkish subsidiary, two software engineers, and a well-read, middle-aged accountant who has also worked abroad.

Most come here on their employer’s tab and are taking English to help them at work and in their careers. But in class, which begins at 7:30 p.m. and lasts two hours every Tuesday and Thursday night, they mostly want to talk about life in general, their likes and dislikes, popular culture and to share their experiences and opinions.

Three of the five have taken the previous Level 5 class together while the other two are new to the group and to Berlitz. I quickly break the ice and happily find out that their English is better than I had expected and for the most part really is at an intermediate level. Though their comprehension and vocabulary are good, their spoken English lags a bit, particularly their grammar and pronunciation, which is not at all surprising or uncommon given that outside the classroom they don’t communicate orally in English much. This is English as a “foreign language” after all.

At language school franchises like Berlitz, you are trained to follow and urged to adhere strictly to a particular method, usually a communicative approach to second language acquisition that involves relying as exclusively as possible on the target language, using dialogues, conversations, role plays, and visual aids that have to do with common situations in order to model, illustrate, learn, and acquire spoken language skills and aural comprehension.

Invariably, teachers wind up meandering from the textbook and CD-ROM material a bit, going off on tangents suggested by students and mixing in their own materials that cover more practical aspects of the modern English language.

As the group is small and my students are adults honestly interested in other people, cultures, and the world any barriers quickly collapse. If you really tune in and listen to them, you can tailor the course to fit their needs, get along well, and still cover the material that is required. We hit it off well from the first night of class and as they are quick learners with a good basic foundation, I don’t mind meandering off the textbook path, letting students lead us into topic areas that otherwise would not be covered and using them to illustrate new language skills.

As to why Turks want to learn English, the reasons are numerous and varied. But there are a few common threads. Perhaps the single most important reason Turks are signing up for relatively expensive English language courses, such as those offered by Berlitz, is a very practical one: English has become the de facto international language of business, education and diplomacy. Even if you are doing business with a European, German or Japanese person, chances are that your common language will be English. And as is true in a large and growing number of countries, Turks are exposed to English at an early age.

Most Turkish primary schools provide a basic English language course or courses as part of their curriculum. This is even more true at the university level, where most students are either required to do a year’s worth of preparatory English coursework or where a sizable percentage of courses, typically around 30 percent, are taught in English. Most of the 30 percent, however, were given in the first year and a half of their studies and by non-native English speaking Turkish professors.

istanbul sea

istanbul mosqe

istanbul underground

istanbul views

istanbul

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

world top and best jet blue airlines

Jet Blue Airways
Jet Blue Airways was founded by JetBlue Airways Corporation in 1998 and operated as an American low cost airline. The airline company has hubs in several airports including John F. Kennedy International Airport, Logan International Airport, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Oakland International Airport, Long Beach Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. With a flight coverage spanning over 53 destinations in 6 countries, JetBlue Airways serves cities throughout the United States the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Mexico.

JetBlue Codeshare Agreement
JetBlue signed its first codeshare agreement with Cape Air. The codeshare will allow JetBlue to serve passengers from Boston's Logan Airport to Cape Air's flight destinations which runs across Cape Cod and also the nearby surrounding islands.

JetBlue Airways Flight Routes Map

JetBlue Airways Frequent Flyer Program and LiveTV

TrueBlue Flight Gratitude is JetBlue Airways frequent flyer program. LiveTV is the main provider for airline in-flight entertainment systems. It used to be a subsidiary of Thales Group but is now a wholly owned subsidiary company of JetBlue Airways Corporation. LiveTV'sIts main product features includes the aircraft seat-back satellite television service, XM Satellite Radio, and movie programming.

JetBlue Airways Flight Schedule, Flight Status, Airfare Booking, Information, Offices, Contact Information And Other Flight Enquiry

Check flight schedule, flight status directly from JetBlue Airways official website. You can also check on the cheapest airfare, flight schedule, flight status, airlines offices, contact number, airlines packages, air cargo partners, air ticket prices and booking procedure, international airfares, frequent flyer and other flight information and travel deals and packages. When you are making an airfare booking, select from either economy airfares, business class airfares or first class airfares whichever you prefer. Have a pleasant flight journey and enjoy your holidays or business trip!

JetBlue Airways Flights To Airports In USA and Worldwide

Oranjestad (Queen Beatrix International Airport)	Nassau (Lynden Pindling International Airport)	Hamilton (Bermuda International Airport)
Puerto Plata (Gregorio Luperon International Airport)	Santiago (Cibao International Airport)	Santo Domingo (Las Américas International Airport)
St. Maarten (Princess Juliana International Airport)	Cancún (Cancún International Airport)	Phoenix (Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport)
Burbank (Bob Hope Airport)	Long Beach (Long Beach Municipal Airport) Focus City	Oakland (Oakland International Airport)
Sacramento (Sacramento International Airport)	San Diego (San Diego International Airport)	San Francisco (San Francisco International Airport)
San Jose (Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport)	Denver (Denver International Airport)	Fort Lauderdale (Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport) Focus City
Fort Myers (Southwest Florida International Airport)	Jacksonville (Jacksonville International Airport)	Orlando (Orlando International Airport) Focus City
Sarasota (Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport)	Tampa (Tampa International Airport)	West Palm Beach (Palm Beach International Airport)
Chicago (O'Hare International Airport)	New Orleans (Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport)	Portland (Portland International Jetport)
Boston (Logan International Airport) Focus City	Nantucket (Nantucket Memorial Airport) Seasonal	Las Vegas (McCarran International Airport)
Newark (Newark Liberty International Airport)	Buffalo (Buffalo Niagara International Airport)	Newburgh (Stewart International Airport)
New York City - (John F. Kennedy International Airport) Focus City	New York City - (LaGuardia Airport)	Rochester (Greater Rochester International Airport)
Syracuse (Syracuse Hancock International Airport)	White Plains (Westchester County Airport)	Charlotte (Charlotte/Douglas International Airport)
Raleigh-Durham (Raleigh-Durham International Airport)	Portland (Portland International Airport)	Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh International Airport)
Austin (Austin-Bergstrom International Airport)	Houston (William P. Hobby Airport)	Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City International Airport)
Burlington (Burlington International Airport)	Dulles/Washington, D.C. area (Washington Dulles International Airport) Focus City	Richmond (Richmond International Airport)
Seattle (Seattle-Tacoma International Airport)	Aguadilla (Rafael Hernández Airport)	Ponce (Mercedita Airport)
San Juan (Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport)	Bogotá (El Dorado International Airport)