Word: elderhostelers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Today's seniors can be world travelers too. At Boston-based Elderhostel, a global network of educational and cultural institutions that offer 10,000 travel programs to voyagers 55 and older, participation has soared from 220 travelers in 1975 to more than 300,000 today. Spokesman Michael Frilling says clients are as old as 100, and the total number of participants could easily triple by 2020. In Chevy Chase, Md., travel agent Helena Koenig, 67, packages "Grandtravel" tours that bring together adventurous grandparents and their grandkids for trips to destinations as exotic as Kenya. "It's the most exciting travel...
They are retirees, some of them, queueing politely at the information kiosk by the escalator to the T, the husbands and wives in identical plaid pants and name tags that say "Elderhostel." The highlight of their visit will be a tour of Cambridge in the Old Town Trolley, which is actually...
...other key to Elderhostel's success is that it is stimulating without being too strenuous. Faculty members at host colleges and universities create their own curriculums, and academic difficulty varies accordingly. Required homework is taboo, but elders are often given the regular college syllabus for reading on their own. At Whittier College in California last month, Elderhostelers began their day at 8 a.m. with breakfast followed by a 9 o'clock class called American Politics on Film. A 10:30 class offered hands-on training with Apple computers. Afternoons, everyone hopped into the shallow end of the college...
...Elderhostel provides a camaraderie that many older people find missing from their lives. Says Mary Fox, 68, a former teacher: "The courses are terrific, but the people themselves are the best." At the end of Whittier College's program, Louise O'Farrell, 63, a retired bookkeeper, and Margaret Berlier, 72, a former teacher, made plans to meet again in London at an August Elderhostel. O'Farrell has attended 20 Elderhostel courses so far, ranging from entomology and botany at Eastern Kentucky University to Victorian art at the University of London. Says she: "Getting the Elderhostel catalogue...
Teachers find that Elderhostel students can be refreshingly different from seniors of traditional college age. Says Arnold Wettstein, a professor of religion at Rollins College: "These people know who they are and are quite willing to look at the professor and say, 'Now, Sonny, you don't have this straight.' " In one communications class at the University of 1 Northern Colorado, the teacher chose the bombing of Pearl Harbor "as an example of the result of poor communications. She was challenged by one of her students, who turned out to be a retired Air Force general. Besides...