Insight: Tours, France Study Abroad
Last summer I visited Tours, France with a group of students from USC for four weeks. During this time I stayed with a host family and attended French language classes. To say this experience expanded on my cultural awarenesses and international experience, would be an understatement. Living with a French host family for four weeks and being fully intgrated into their lifestyle allowed me to learn so much in a short amount of time. Through eating every meal with them daily I realized how important it is to French culture to gather for dinner as a family and discuss your day. I also learned how important it is for them to eat not just good food, but a variety of daily food. Often, they were confused by the notion that during the school day, I would eat a sandwich for lunch every day, they asked me every day, and every day they recommended a different food for me to try in the town. For them, food is not just something that fulfills a necessary need, it’s a way to bring people together and bring joy to life. This taught me that everyday moments that aren’t even given a second thought in my culture can be something so instrumental to other cultures, and makes me want to continue to explore this idea and learn more.
This leads me to the next insight that I learned from the professor who brought us on the trip, Dr. Salamifar. He led us through the entire program from our first weekend sightseeing around Paris to all four weeks in Tours, France. He is extremely experienced in traveling and immersing himself in different cultures, and it seemed as if every day he was casually mentioning the most amazing experiences and insight from those experiences. This resulted in our group continuously referring to him as “just the coolest guy ever”, but beyond that, he taught me the importance of immersing yourself into different cultures and learning from them, repeating it, and from there sharing your insights with others. Dr. Salamifar taught me that if you do something you are passionate about and excited to share with others, then people will see that in you and it will make you that much more influential and credible. My passion happens to align with his, in that I would love to travel the world and learn and share with others, and this fact makes him that much more motivating. But I do believe that this insight can be applied to any passion.
I was able to take my insights from him into my long-term study abroad in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, where I was placed in a town of less than 30,000 people and less than 10 Americans, and I had to implement every piece of knowledge about entering a new culture that I had. My final insight also deals with a place where I gained knowledge about how to deal with such situations, that was my IBUS 310 class that I took before going abroad. This class allowed me real insight into issues from all around the world and provided an open and honest space to discuss them with my classmates. Each class we would read a case about a different topic going on around the world and during class we would debate these topics. Prior to this I only read articles and cases about countries and topics I was interested in and tended to have a close-minded opinion about them, so this course pushed me outside my comfort zone in what I was reading and what I was thinking. I learned that while reading I should keep an open mind and also form some of my own opinions to participate during class discussion, but during the debate listen with the intent to learn rather than to disagree immediately. This class setting helped me to do this in other aspects when forming opinions about controversial issues, or with cultures that I am not familiar with, specifically during studying abroad. Also, on a smaller scale, this helped me in day-to-day life to not be so quick to judge or form an opinion about something I have limited knowledge of and to allow myself to learn from others. I realized how difficult it is to be open to new thoughts and findings when you are set in your ways, and while I believe it is important to have morals and values for yourself that you are discerned in, it is just as important to be open-minded going into many situations.
This leads me to the next insight that I learned from the professor who brought us on the trip, Dr. Salamifar. He led us through the entire program from our first weekend sightseeing around Paris to all four weeks in Tours, France. He is extremely experienced in traveling and immersing himself in different cultures, and it seemed as if every day he was casually mentioning the most amazing experiences and insight from those experiences. This resulted in our group continuously referring to him as “just the coolest guy ever”, but beyond that, he taught me the importance of immersing yourself into different cultures and learning from them, repeating it, and from there sharing your insights with others. Dr. Salamifar taught me that if you do something you are passionate about and excited to share with others, then people will see that in you and it will make you that much more influential and credible. My passion happens to align with his, in that I would love to travel the world and learn and share with others, and this fact makes him that much more motivating. But I do believe that this insight can be applied to any passion.
I was able to take my insights from him into my long-term study abroad in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, where I was placed in a town of less than 30,000 people and less than 10 Americans, and I had to implement every piece of knowledge about entering a new culture that I had. My final insight also deals with a place where I gained knowledge about how to deal with such situations, that was my IBUS 310 class that I took before going abroad. This class allowed me real insight into issues from all around the world and provided an open and honest space to discuss them with my classmates. Each class we would read a case about a different topic going on around the world and during class we would debate these topics. Prior to this I only read articles and cases about countries and topics I was interested in and tended to have a close-minded opinion about them, so this course pushed me outside my comfort zone in what I was reading and what I was thinking. I learned that while reading I should keep an open mind and also form some of my own opinions to participate during class discussion, but during the debate listen with the intent to learn rather than to disagree immediately. This class setting helped me to do this in other aspects when forming opinions about controversial issues, or with cultures that I am not familiar with, specifically during studying abroad. Also, on a smaller scale, this helped me in day-to-day life to not be so quick to judge or form an opinion about something I have limited knowledge of and to allow myself to learn from others. I realized how difficult it is to be open to new thoughts and findings when you are set in your ways, and while I believe it is important to have morals and values for yourself that you are discerned in, it is just as important to be open-minded going into many situations.