Welcome and shanah tovah. Why shanah tovah? Because that is the Hebrew New Year greeting and it was the Israeli new year the day before this podcast came out. I learned this from Marion Burgheimer, an Israeli cross cultural trainer I spoke with about the most popular links on our Absolutely Intercultural Facebook Page. She also told me that Shanah Tova is a wish for a good new year rather a happy new year, as a good year makes you happy. Welcome to Christian Garry Kansil who is the latest person to like our Facebook Page. I wonder if you’re finding the links we post there of interest Christian? In this show I talked to two cross cultural trainers to find out more about their work and how they got into it.
absolutely curious
How do you become a cross cultural trainer? I’m sure that this isn’t something you told your careers adviser at school that you wanted to be when you grew up. So that was how I started my conversation with both of our guests in this show. First I asked Marion Burgheimer about how she came to be a crosscultural trainer.
absolutely linked
Then I spoke to Marion about some of the links which have proved popular on our facebook page and what made them popular. If you know of any interesting links which we should share on our Facebook Page then leave us a comment there or use our blog or send us an email. Also use the blog to contact us if you know of someone we should be speaking to for a future podcast.
absolutely lost
So now to our second cross cultural trainer, Margarita Gokun Silver, founder of the Global Coach Center; same questions, what’s your background and how come you became a cross cultural trainer and we’ll see that Margarita’s strength lies in helping the spouses of people who get stationed abroad and who are absolutely lost in some cases. Here are some of the things they say:
You can find more Global Coach Centre videos on their YouTube channel. In fact I spoke at greater length to Margarita and I hope that I can bring you a bit more of that conversation in later shows. But in the mean time search this post for all the links we talked about and the videos that Margarita has produced, visit us on Facebook Page or see the show on our YouTube channel. Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on October 4th so stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
If you like the podcast then please also LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!
During the past months our international exchange students have experimented with “Citizen Journalism”. They tried it out as a preparation for an intensive program in Izmir, Turkey. This seminar looked at journalism from different perspectives. One of the aims was to develop strategies for working efficiently in intercultural teams with students from several different European countries. In the end the students even created their own “intercultural newspaper” which was presented on the last day. Have you had the opportunity to work in an intercultural team yourself? Including absolute strangers from different cultural backgrounds? Do you think such intensive programs could be helpful for your future career? Improving your intercultural people skills?
absolutely diverse
Last semester, some of our international exchange students created an intercultural blog in order to try their hands at “citizen journalism”- as a preparation for a two weeks Erasmus Intensive Program in Izmir, Turkey. The seminar was about “journalism”. Lecturers and students from five different countries meet in one university, learn and work in international groups and spend their free time together for two weeks. Both, teachers and students have the chance to develop internationally and improve their social skills by working in teams with people from different cultural backgrounds.
absolutely shocked
So the students tried out citizen journalism as a preparation for their joint seminar in Turkey. As a preparation the group produced short audio files which describe their intercultural experiences in a foreign country. They were quite shocked by some conventions in these countries.
absolutely Erasmus
You may be asking yourself how these international seminars can be financed in times where all universities are hit by severe budget cuts. You are right, such complex international projects can be quite expensive. 25 students and lecturers have to travel by airplane and trains to the partner university and once in the foreign country they need accommodation and food, too. The costs for this international experience could be an insurmountable problem for students. In order to lower that hurdle students who are interested in intercultural experiences are supported by funding programs like the European Erasmus Program, which covers a part of the costs. What is your opinion about subsidizing international student excursions with European taxpayer’s money? Is this money really well spent? Matthew, Tehlia, and Lucy are going to give us some reasons why such study trips should be sponsored.
absolutely helpless
Even with the European funding, of course, the participants of the seminar in Turkey also needed to exchange money from Euros to Turkish Liras. In our last category “absolutely helpless” one lecturer shares how something simple like exchanging money can turn into an intercultural learning process, too. Reka, from Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary, shares her trouble in a bank.
Would you like to share with us your own intercultural experience in foreign countries? If so, we would be delighted to hear both positive and negative experiences, so don´t hesitate and share your intercultural experiences with it with us on our Facebook Page.
Our next show will be coming to you on 6 September from Anne Fox in Denmark.
If you like the podcast then please also LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!
Our international exchange students from different cultural backgrounds sometimes describe their first cultural experiences in their new surroundings as if they had “intercultural special needs”. They say their experience is as if they were re-learning to walk, or as if their vision was impaired and they needed to navigate very carefully in their new surroundings, for example during their first trip to the supermarket or to the gym. Have you had that experience yourself? That in a foreign culture you suddenly felt as if you could not move normally but it seemed as if you were walking with crutches while everybody else did not have that impediment and seemed perfectly comfortable in the situation?
In this episode we will talk to Judit from Hungary and Thelia from Australia who will share their experiences in Germany which made them feel like they have ‘special needs’.
We will also speak to Paul Halligan, from Ireland, who will tell us about everyday challenges of people who really do have special needs in the medical sense, in this case visually impaired people. Paul tells us how he helps these people.
absolutely foreign Two international exchange students Judit and Thelia have designed an audio blog in order to try their hands at “citizen journalism”. Citizen journalism is a new kind of reporting which is done by the public, by people like you and me, usually through social media such as Facebook, Youtube, blogs, etc. Citizen journalism allows us to see what is really happening in the world. Judit’s and Tehlia’s blog examines cultural diversity experiences among their international friends who live abroad. Their slogan is: “Citizen Journalism – giving a Voice to Diversity”. So they collect some intercultural experiences and record them as audio files for their blog.
absolutely special needs Thelia and Judit mentioned that as foreigners in a new culture somehow they felt like people with special needs. But now we will turn to people who really do have special needs, in the medical sense of the word, in this case people who find it difficult to read from conventional computer screens. Can you imagine how these visually impaired people handle their everyday life – including their computer work? Solving communication challenges which aren’t problematic for sighted people? I interviewed Paul Halligan from Ireland. He is partially sighted and he is going to tell us about one of his everyday challenges as a Daddy with “special needs”: reading bedtime stories to his children…
absolutely intuitive Visually impaired people struggle with technical and emotional challenges which sighted people cannot even imagine. However, their medical limitations can also lead to a heightened problem-solving ability as in Paul’s case. He told us about his dream which some years ago he put into practice. He created a storytelling website which is made for visually impaired people – but not just for them – everybody can profit from it, also language learners as the special help that Paul offers will also empower them to understand the stories better.
Would you like to share with us your own intercultural experience in foreign countries? If so, we would be delighted to hear both positive and negative experiences, so don´t hesitate and share your intercultural experiences with it with us on our Facebook Page.
Our next show will be coming to you on 5 July from Anne Fox in Denmark.
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE! Congratulations to DIANA STROHMAIER who was our 200th like on Facebook! We hope you like the links we post there periodically.
absolutely YouTube!
See this show on our new YouTube channel to see a wider selection of the art associated with our topic today.
absolutely no excuse We are devoting the whole show to the topic of modern slavery and why we are all involved in sustaining this evil even though we may consider it to be going on very far away. There’s basically only one strand to today’s show and that is that there is absolutely no excuse. You will be hearing from Judy, who started the NoProject, Lindsay Clandfield about why it’s difficult to get the topic of slavery into course books, from Ismini Black about why she produces art about the slave trade and from Cody Brotter who wrote the two minute awareness raising video, ‘Now You Know‘ for a global audience.
absolutely hiphop
Request Dance Crew absolutely Amazon If you buy through our Amazon store you don’t pay any more while we get a little bit of the price which helps to pay our podcast costs. You will find links to our Amazon store on our Facebook page also. If you know of an item which we should add then do let us know. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany on June 7th with Laurent Borgmann so until then stay tuned!
What are the pictures that you have in your mind when you think about “volunteer work“? Do you think of people travelling to developing countries and teaching people the right way to do things? Is “volunteerism” the new “colonialism” dressed up in 21st century social responsibility? Or could it be a way for the volunteers to learn some new skills? And, do you even have to go abroad or is it possible to volunteer and learn new things through volunteerism in your own hometown from other cultures? In this episode we will talk to Elena Colunga Caballero and John Kaethler from Brock University in Canada who will demonstrate that volunteering is much more about learning than about teaching.
absolutely reciprocal Elena is from Spain, where the majority of people are Christians. Through her international volunteer work she has developed an intercultural sensivity and awareness of different traditions and ways of thinking. She tells us how she embarked on this intercultural learning journey thanks to her parents, who encouraged her to get involved in a volunteering project at high school. Later she collaborated in an association called “Kala – Encuentro en la Calle”, located in her city , Córdoba, in the South of Spain whose aim it is to support children and young homeless and unprotected migrants from the Northern and Sub Saharan Africa. Also, a couple of years ago she was nominated to participate in a workcamp in the region of Kurdistan, in South Eastern Turkey. She is convinced that volunteering is a great recipe for reciprocal learning.
absolutely inexperienced Some time ago I interviewed John Kaethler from Brock University in Canada who told me that he had volunteered for two years as a development worker in Nigeria and again for two years in Papua New Guinea a long time ago. He points out that the international volunteer workers need to understand that THEY are the ones who are learning a lot and are growing in the process…
absolutely open-minded In our last category “absolutely open-minded” we will come back to the intercultural learning process triggered by international volunteer work. Elena tells us about a situation during which she learned about the frictions between the Kurdish and Turkish people and how the exposure to this conflict helped her accept the coexistence of different opinions on the same reality. This seems to be the key to intercultural open-mindedness. She also shares her first experience of Ramadan in a region with a majority Muslim population. We also learn that typical international volunteers seem to have some characteristics in common and finally she gives us some advice of how to start a volunteering experience through the European Voluntary Service.
Would you like to share with us your own experience as a volunteer in your own country or abroad? If so, we would be delighted to hear both positive and negative aspects of it, so don´t hesitate and share your intercultural experiences with it with us on our Facebook Page.
If you want even more background as to broader issues behind our intercultural stories in this podcast then you might consider visiting the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store where we have both classics, basics and specifics for sale, a small proportion of which goes to us to support the costs of maintaining this podcast.
Our next show will be coming to you on 3 May from Anne Fox in Denmark.
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE!
In this show we’ll be hearing about a new online training for foreign interns and if you decide this could be for you then you have the chance to take part free of charge starting in March! And not only that, if you take part in the course you could be in the running for a free trip to Brussels in September.
absolutely fake
My name’s Anne Fox and I wonder if you guessed correctly which of the stories we told you in the last show were true or not? Do you remember that we were asking students to imagine themselves in a future scenario where they take an internship abroad and some of them were true and some were not! This was a demonstration of the old adage ‘Fake it til you make it’ and we’re hoping that the effort that Younes & Philipp put into their stories will lead them to put at least some parts of their stories into practice anyway. You can read their comments about their plans on our Absolutely Intercultural Facebook page.
absolutely self-organised
And it was through Facebook that I discovered that Professor Sugata Mitra who was featured in Show 72, has been awarded the TED prize for 2013. TED is a growing bank of short talks by inspirational speakers which are freely available on the Internet. Every TED speaker is asked to describe their dream and this year it is Sugata Mitra who gets to put his into practice. Mitra’s research shows that we are are all capable of learning wherever we are and he wants to apply these findings to provide education in areas where it is poor or non-existent. And now with the prize money he has a million dollars to start realizing his dream.
absolutely entrepreneurial
So we’re in the middle of a financial crisis; there’s high graduate unemployment so maybe it’s a good idea for graduates of any discipline to find out more about how business works? They can do this through sponsored internships but today we’re going to hear about asking the interns to also follow a course during their internship to really get them noticing these entrepreneurial processes. And you could join them! The first pilot has just ended and we’ll be hearing from two interns who took the course and if you like what you hear and are planning to be an intern by April then why not apply to join the second pilot? The application form is at the Unikey website or you can contact me through our Facebook page or here on our blog.
The project is called UniKey where we invite foreign interns to go absolutely entrepreneurial. We hear first from a couple of the project partners and their vision of the UniKey project, Christina Langsdorf and Professor Dr Carsten Müller who teaches business subjects at Fulda University. The UniKey course is aimed at foreign interns, who are based in small and medium sized organisations and also social enterprises and the course is based on authentic entrepreneurial situations. We also hear from Nina Raiss, a German doing an internship in France, about why she agreed to do an additional Unikey online course on top of her internship.
We also meet Collette Wanjugu Döppner, the UniKey course director who you will meet online if you decide to do the course.
And as if it wasn’t enough to be doing a course on top of an internship, we added a slight gaming element in the form of extra challenges which were not compulsory. But if you did do them, there was a chance of winning a trip to Brussels. I was able to catch up with two of the winners and asked them about their motivation: first Nina Raiss, and then Torsten Scheithauer who is doing his internship in Northern Ireland.
There are lots of other added touches to the UniKey course and one of them is the opportunity to meet with a different entrepreneur or expert in each of the seven modules and ask them questions. For example in the third module which looks at ethical dilemmas we meet Ilona Jehn who worked at Lufthansa Cargo.
So if you want to join the next course starting at the end of March then apply now! And full disclosure: I am a partner in the project which is why I know so much about it!
absolutely Amazon
By the way I just added a resource to the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store, a sort of do it yourself multimedia course in intercultural competence called Komunipass. If you buy through our Amazon store you don’t pay any more while we get a little bit of the price which helps to pay our podcast costs. You will find links to our Amazon store on our Facebook page also. If you know of an item which we should add then do let us know. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany on April 5th with Laurent Borgmann so until then stay tuned!
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE!
The sound we started with was an instrument made by Thomas Kubayi who sculpts, drums and plays music and who gave my daughter a sculpting lesson when my family stayed in the Limpopo region of South Africa last year. It just so happens that I am working with a South African partner in a European project, the Uni-Key project, so I was very excited to meet Marié-Tinka Uys on her home turf when she showed me round some of the many projects which abound in her region of South Africa which is centred on Hoedspruit just outside the famous Kruger National Gamepark. The UniKey project is about supporting university interns who choose to do their internship in small enterprises rather than the large well-known companies. This means that the interns have a better chance of working with the founder of the company and get a better feel for the entrepreneurial skills needed to run a company. Europe is starting to send interns outside the EU, for example to South Africa, and there are plans for promoting exchanges in the other direction too with South Africans able to do internships in Europe. The UniKey project has developed an online course for the interns to follow and what we needed from our South African partners was some feel for how well our online course would travel outside of Europe. For example when we talk about marketing and partnerships in the UniKey course, is our definition wide enough to encompass the African way of doing things? What about our definition of business even? Marcelle Bosch, a Dutch woman and former aid worker, has her sustainable tourism lodge business, Madi A Thavha where we stayed a few days. Can you make a living employing the former farm workers that gained their livelihood from the land that you just bought? I also spoke to Costas who works for a clinic supported by the farms, which in South Africa, are huge concerns employing thousands of workers who often live on site. This is very different to farming in Europe which is highly mechanized with very few employees. And while we in Europe depend on a universal health service paid for through taxation, South Africa is facing the HIV and Aids epidemic which affects mainly adults in their prime, so health projects are often centred around the workplace as in the case of the Bavaria farm I visited near Hoedspruit where the clinic is financed partly by the employers and partly by community efforts. We’ll also be hearing a new perspective on how to improve the status of women and how European experts can’t always cope with the differences they meet in the African context. Welcome to Melina, Akos and Omar who are the latest people to like our Facebook page.
absolutely sustainable
So let’s start at Madi a Thavhi by seeing how we can be absolutely sustainable in the Limpopo region of South Africa on a former farm near Louis Trichardt or Makhado as the town is also known. And by the way, why towns have two names in South Africa is a whole other story which we could discuss on the Absolutely Intercultural Facebook page if you want to know more.
absolutely positive
So that was an example of how to look after your employees in a small scale business and now you can hear the sound of my daughter having a go at sculpting wood with renowned local artist, Thomas Kubayi. While I was in South Africa I had the chance to discover that there is a wide range of community organisations working hard with the big employers to provide all sorts of health, education and other benefits for their employees. So this means that instead of local government or public sector provision, there is a much more local and volunteer based-coverage in South Africa. In the Hoedspruit area the two businesses I heard most about were the game lodges and the farms. So my next visit was to a clinic based on a fruit farm which treats mainly HIV and AIDs patients through the Hlokomela project. In speaking with Costas I learned that when you are HIV positive, a key indicator you need to look at are your CD4 levels and I also learned that, at least on this farm, the disease can be managed so that there are reasons to be absolutely positive!
absolutely equal
As I was driven around the projects by Marié-Tinka Uys my eye was drawn to a set of murals painted on the wall of the Bavaria farm showing desirable male behavior such as not drinking and not using physical violence against your wife. When I asked Marié-Tinka about these she gave me a surprising solution about how to affect gender roles.
absolutely tasty
Marié-Tinka also talked about another part of the Hlokomela project which is an organic herb garden which has been started to supply the many game lodges in the Hoedspruit area. As we were talking she mentioned why interns should come alone and gave one example where the foreign expertise just could not cope with the differences experienced in South Africa.
Thanks to everyone who was willing to speak to me in South Africa and especially to Marié-Tinka Uys who introduced me to the wealth of activity going on in her area. She literally opened doors and gave me a peek into so much, which, as a tourist I would never have experienced. Thanks also to the UniKey project for giving me the opportunity to wonder about how people do business in other parts of the world. Who knows? This might even be the start of your own African internship adventure?
absolutely Amazon
And if you want even more background as to broader issues behind what people were telling me about in this podcast then you might consider visiting the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store here where we have both classics, basics and specifics for sale, a small proportion of which goes to us to support the costs of maintaining this podcast. You don’t pay any more to buy them through our store and every purchase contributes a little to the running costs of the podcast so if you’re thinking of buying, consider using our new store. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on February 1st so stay tuned!
Have you ever participated in a seminar with students and lecturers from more than 16 countries? The focus of the seminar “Managing Cultural Diversity”, was on “Corporate Social Responsibility”. Some of the participants were willing to share their impressions of this international event, talking about the organization, the different workshops and the explanation of a very confusing intercultural game called “BARNGA”.
absolutely ethical
Let us listen to Nadya’s emotions caused by a very dominant manager during a simulation about different intercultural categories in Corporate Governance. After Adelheid’s contribution, we will return to her in order to try to get an answer to the following question: “Can a Business Really be Ethical?” with the help of the Portuguese teacher Carla Pedroso de Lima.
absolutely similar
It is really surprising how people from different backgrounds have so many things in common rather than being completely different. Dr. Anna Potter from Australia, talked to us about a very interesting TV channel in her country and asked all the participants to devise a TV program related to issues such as migration, stereotypes, refugees, interculturality… which Adelheid Korpp enjoyed a lot. The fact that both students and lecturers were working together helped to create a very constructive atmosphere.
absolutely simulated
In our third category “absolutely simulated” we come return to Omar, a Jordanian student at RheinAhrCampus, who did a really good job creating tension and making the simulation more realistic by using “I…, I…, I…!” He really looked like a very dominant and bossy manager when actually he was only acting out his role card.
absolutely emotional Lukas and the rest of the participants got really confused and disappointed when he was sure to have understood all the rules of the intercultural card game named “BARNGA”. However, the more energy he put into winning the game, the more he realised that at the different tables people were playing to different rules. Now he says that the same effort of cultural adaptation is needed when going to a different culture or country, for example, when visiting Thailand, as he did during his holidays.
Our next show will be coming to you on 4 January from Anne Fox in Denmark.
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If you like the podcast then LIKE US ON FACEBOOK HERE!
Did you know that if you are a student in a European University you are able to take part in an intensive seminar with students and lecturers from all over the EU? We’ll be hearing from some students who took part in one such seminar in Lithuania earlier this year. Did you follow Karsten Kneese on Twitter last month? Karsten took over the ’I am Germany’ Twitter account for a week early in October. One thing I learnt about during that week was the German work canteens which are open to the public. So what do you think of this as a way of representing a country? You can add your comments to our blog here or on our Facebook page. Thank you An, Vian, Sammy, Katherine and Roman who are the latest to have liked us there.
So in May, 35 students and lecturers from all over Europe gathered together in Lithuania to work together for two weeks on an intensive seminar about entrepreneurship called RECEIVE. The topics explored included marketing, intercultural differences, digital communication, coaching and critical thinking. Critical thinking not only has an application to entrepreneurs but is also an important skill for students who have been taught in quite a different way across the world.
absolutely critical
I talked first to Serge Koukpaki from Edinburgh University, which attracts many international students each year, about why he teaches a course on critical thinking and the effect on his foreign students. Then I talked to three of the students Serge brought with him to participate in the RECEIVE project who came from China, Thailand and Tanzania to find out what they thought of bringing a diverse group together to create joint products. Guangqian Li from China spoke about his experience of working in a multinational group. I was certainly surprised to learn that this intensive seminar in Lithuania was Li’s first experience of a truly multicultural educational setting. Didn’t he have that in Edinburgh I wondered? Next I spoke to Duanjam Surbpong or Mo for short from Thailand about the benefits of the Intensive programme; extending your network is certainly a useful entrepreneurial skill. My final interview was with Hassan Iddy, a teacher trainer from Tanzania who found that the communal living aspect of the project reminded him of life in Tanzania much more than in Edinburgh where he is currently studying for his Masters.
absolutely challenging So far we’ve heard a lot of good things about the Receive project but there were also a few challenges. For example the group visited holocaust memorial museums while in Lithuania which lead to a discussion on genocide and the question about whether China’s one child policy could also be classed as genocide. For Li, whom we heard from earlier, this was a problem as he explains. And that wasn’t the only challenge. In my own workshop where we were constructing the project website, we suddenly noticed after about four days of work that all the personal photos on the website were of males. This was quite a shocking realization which lead us to review all the photos on the website as well as discussing how this could have happened. In fact it wasn’t just about photos. You may have noticed that all my interviewees in this pod cast were also male. So lots of food for thought.
absolutely entrepreneurial
If you are interested in following up the cross-border entrepreneurial theme you can join me in the free online Global Education conference on Monday 12 th November at 18:00 GMT when I’ll be showing a way of helping interns make more of their foreign posting through online skills training. All details and links will also be on our Facebook page.
absolutely Amazon
And finally don’t forget that if you are interested in following up any aspect of intercultural communication we have put together a collection of books, old and new, theory and practical in the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon book store. You don’t pay any extra but we get a small contribution to help continue pay the expenses of this podcast. Now that the northern nights are drawing in, a book may be just what you need here! You don’t pay any more to buy them through our store and every purchase contributes a little to the running costs of the podcast so if you’re thinking of buying, consider using our new store. There is a permanent link at the top of this blog page.
Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on December 7th so stay tuned!
Our New Editor from Spain: Elena Colunga Caballero. Welcome to our team!
So what should we be listening to in this podcast:
How do you personally try to gain authentic information about a country and culture that you are interested in? Do you trust the official view of the foreign office website? Or do you go straight to Wikipedia? How about listening to some real people from that country? This way you will get the unofficial story from the citizens themselves. Perhaps it could be interesting to listen to a father of two children who can tell you what it is really like to take the two on public transport or to a restaurant? This is inside information that you may not find in any of the official publications of the country. Under a system which is called Rotation Curation Movement, Karsten Kneese will host the twitter account of I_amGermany for a week starting next Monday.
absolutely twitter
Let us explore what you, the listeners can find out about his culture if you follow him during that week. In our first category “absolutely twitter” I asked Karsten how the Rotation Curation Movement has developed since it started in Sweden last year. If you are interested, please find “I_amGermany” on Twitter on Monday and follow Karsten around for a week. This is grass-roots journalism on Twitter that I think you should not miss. You have the opportunity to find out the real story from real citizens without having to travel to the country.
absolutely stereotypical
I spoke to a group of students from the German-Jordanian University who jumped in at the deep end and decided to spend a whole semester in Europe. In our second category “absolutely stereotypical” I asked them what their parents and friends had warned them about before they left.
absolutely international
In our third category “absolutely international” I am talking to a young but very well travelled person. After spending all her holidays abroad since she was 15 she has also studied in France and has now started doing her practical training in the department of Languages /International Affairs at the University of Applied Sciences, Koblenz. I asked Elena from Spain what her friends and family had said when she was planning her big step.
absolutely different
Let us now return to the group of Jordanians who told me that in their country it would be very unusual for a lecturer to go to the university by bike, because there seems to exist a bigger “power distance” between lecturers and their students. We also learn that in Jordan, if you get invited to dinner you have to refuse several times in order to be polite before you finally accept. So one of the students politely said “No” to a dinner invitation in Germany but then learned the hard way that here you only get one shot, and he was not invited again. In our last category “absolutely different” I asked the students to explain major cultural differences which they have observed during the first weeks in Europe.
Our next show will again be coming to you on 2nd of November from Anne Fox in Denmark.
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