Lucia Cascajo, a biomedical engineering student from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, also said she was “shocked” by the homelessness around the city. Vasilev adds that he thinks it’s dangerous to walk at night: “Why does the municipality not do something?” In Santa Cruz, something that catches their notice is the people on the streets. Some have been able to travel throughout the summer, mostly close by to San Francisco, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe and Carmel. This summer’s crew of Boardwalk workers say they don’t meet a lot of Americans, mainly hanging out together, and say that Santa Cruz is a fun place to experience. Reyes says such programs are common practice for companies in the amusement and tourism industries: “ incredibly valuable to the Boardwalk because the season extends past when local students are in school.” In addition, since UC Santa Cruz sees many of its students return home during the summer, that source of local hires needs to be supplemented. Local students have the opportunity to make friends from all over the world, and perhaps travel to visit those friends in the future. “It’s a cultural exchange,” said Kris Reyes, the Boardwalk’s director of strategic development and external affairs. ( Via Ambassadors Fund for Summer Work Travel) The State Department has been running a work and travel program for more than 30 years the Boardwalk isn’t too far behind, having hosted students for more than 20. Among other things, she mentioned students learning about capitalism and entrepreneurship, how to keep track of their shifts, and how to “literally punch in and punch out.” While Elkon recognizes that Americans can learn a lot from these visitors, she emphasizes that the learning experience on the side of the exchange visitors is incomparable. “It’s a win/win,” Nicole Elkon, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for private-sector exchange, said of BridgeUSA, the summer work travel program run by the agency. Through their combined work and travel experience, student visitors can connect with other workers from around the world, meet local people and familiarize themselves with American culture, “warts and all,” according to Casey Slamin, senior vice president of programs at InterExchange. Additionally, the work and travel visa, called a J-1 visa, allows for upward of 30 days of travel time at the end of their stay, as long as workers are no longer employed and travel dates don’t conflict with school schedules. for the summer in exchange for the ability to travel during their time off and to finance their traveling with their summer income. The sponsor - in Vasilev’s case, InterExchange - then coordinates with the State Department to place workers with employers throughout the United States. Department of State and one of the “work and travel organizations” that allow students to hook up with agencies that sponsor students abroad. He applied through the Ambassadors Fund for Student Work Travel, an extension of the U.S. Vasil Vasilev, a 20-year-old journalism student from Dobrich, a small town in Bulgaria, is one of those Boardwalk workers, and his path to Santa Cruz was a straightforward one. These students are among the roughly 100,000 young people, aged 18 to 30, from all around the world who are employed by amusement parks, state parks, ski resorts, hotels, bed-and-breakfasts and more across the United States each year. And this summer season, more than 300 of those 2,000 are students from more than 34 countries, part of a little-known program that’s brought thousands to Santa Cruz over the years. The Santa Cruz Seaside Company, which runs the Boardwalk, employs roughly 2,000 workers. Many of them hail from such cities as Sofia, Bulgaria Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Bogota, Colombia and Taipei, Taiwan, having landed here as participants in work and travel programs.
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