Tag Archives: culture

Travel

Island Girl Takes Big (Foreign) City

By Connie Choy

In spring of 2013 I decided to move away from home for the first time and live in one of the busiest cities in the world: Tokyo, Japan. Although it has been four years since my five-month trip I am constantly finding myself reminiscing about the unforgettable times I had with the lifelong friends I made.

Conversely, even with all of the happy memories I will never forget the challenges I had to overcome when I first got to the big city. Just to put things in perspective, I’m from Hawaii (Oahu island specifically), which has a population of about 1 million people. Tokyo is approximately home to about 14 million natives and transplants – that is 14 times the size! Moving away from home on your own, especially in a foreign country is a very difficult thing to do, but I believe it will be one of the most formative experiences of your life. Notably, my hardships were what pushed me into a mindset that yearned for adventure and growth.

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Travel

What Parisian Cafés Taught Me About French Culture

By Nathalie Bradford

My heart was racing as I stepped off the plane and into the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. The exhaustion I felt from the twelve-hour flight melted away almost instantaneously. Having never lived on my own before, let alone in another country, I had no idea what the next five months had in store for me but I was excited to find out.

I crammed my massive suitcases into a taxi and did my best to pronounce the name of the street my apartment was on. After I arrived at my apartment I unpacked quickly and attempted to map out a way to get to my first class, which began the next day.

After about two hours of taking the wrong metro lines I managed to locate my classroom and ran inside. The professor gave a brief introduction to the course and began to explain our first assignment. We were to conduct a semester long ethnography on a Parisian café of our choosing. This meant we needed to choose a café and visit it at least 3 times a week for two hours at a time until the end of the semester, making detailed observations of everything and everyone while we were there. Initially, this assignment did not seem too intimidating to me; I mostly saw it as an excuse to drink copious amounts of coffee.

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Outlook, Travel

Living Abroad in Indonesia

By Stephen Kim

People say to me all the time: “Have you ever thought about studying abroad? Don’t you ever want to experience living in another country? Think about it. College is the only time for you to go out and do something like this!” I’m sure everyone has been asked this before. But my response to them is: “I already have! For six years of my life!”

After being born and raised in southern California for the first twelve years of my life, I moved to Indonesia and attended an international school during my junior high and high school years. Living in Indonesia has impacted my life tremendously, providing me with a broader cultural perspective and worldview, and has made me the person I am today.

One aspect of Indonesian culture that I experienced and was fortunate enough to learn was about good manners when you enter into another person’s home. Upon being welcomed in, guests will usually be offered some food or some sort of tea or coffee. However, you must kindly decline their offer. A little while later, they will generously offer food, tea, or coffee again for the second time. Once again, you must respectfully decline their kind gesture. Finally, some time later, they will offer it to you for the third time. By this time, however, you are free to accept it. The reason for this long and complex process is that the first and second times they offer you food and drink, they might not actually have anything in their kitchen to offer you! They are just trying to be good hosts. If you say yes to their first or second offers, you will put them to shame for not having anything to present you. This is an example of a small cultural lesson that I had to learn in my daily Indonesian life but, big lessons were also presented to me in various ways, one of which I’ll remember for my whole life.

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