Third year Bachelor's student
Meeting and Talking with International Students
How do you start communicating with people from around the world? Are the Portuguese so patriotic? How much do we have in common with the French? This is my fourth post about my exchange semester in a small Czech city Zlin and I’d like to tell you about communication with people from other countries. In fact, meeting people was the best part of the term, because first of all it has greatly enriched me as a person. You can find my other posts here.
Firstly, I’d like to tell you about a Taiwanese girl Ho. We met in a kitchen and she asked me what room I lived in. A few days later someone knocked at my door, I opened and saw Ho holding out traditional taiwanese tapioca sweets. I gave her Russian candies and she was over the moon. Actually, the biggest difficulty in communicating with other students during the few first days was the fact that there were too many of us and it was almost impossible to remember each other straight away. So at that moment I found out that giving traditional food to someone may be a great start. Fortunately, I had a lot of Russian sweets, and now I’ve got a lot of stories about getting in touch with international students.
The kitchen was the best place to meet someone, so one day I started talking with a Japanese girl Urino and then gave her a Russian treat. After that we met in the kitchen and talked about studies many times. Two months later I already forgot about the first meeting, but one day Urino gave me Japanese soup flavoring. In books about the Japanese, I used to read that they feel obliged for any good thing a person does for them. It means they always try to do the same, because they don’t want to be in debt, not because they really want to help you. I don’t know why she gave me the flavoring, but it seemed to me that now, two months later, she finally exhaled and calmed down. Anyway, the soup was really great and I was so thankful!
I have to tell you about the Portuguese. They’re such friendly and amazing people, that I even can’t find the words to describe. When we first met, they said the weather in the Czech Republic was the coldest in their life (it was February and +4 degrees). When I mentioned it was the warmest winter in my life, they asked what was the coldest temperature I had experienced. I answered that I was born in Siberia and it used to be there -40 degrees. They became very animated, as if I had said something very exotic. They even asked how to survive in such conditions.
I guess I’ve never met such patriotic people before! One day in Bratislava I had a chance meeting with Portuguese guy Joao. I noticed a small Portuguese flag on his backpack. I found this very funny and I asked why he was wearing a flag on his backpack. He said "Just imagine how cool to meet someone from Portugal here. They will always understand where I am from and it will be so cool to have a small talk!
Wouldn’t you be glad to meet someone from Russia here right now?'. Two weeks later I was visiting my Portuguese friends. I was shocked by the huge Portuguese flags instead of curtains in their room. In addition, when teachers asked us where we came from, the Portuguese ALWAYS answered that they were from the best country! Actually, I was in Portugal last summer and of course I noticed that the Portuguese really adore their country, but living in Zlin revealed it to me in a new way and much deeper than before.
The strangest story about foreigners was about an irish guy. He lived on the ground floor in a dormitory and paid for it every month. It sounds normal so far, but a weird idea came to him in the last month of staying there. I think you’ve already guessed he decided not to pay. I’m sure he had enough money, so it looked like he thought it could be an adventure. He told us about it in the last days. We were shocked, so we asked how he walked by the concierge every day. He answered she has understood that he didn’t pay, so she has tried to find him and that's the reason why he decided to enter and exit through the window. He said it so seriously that we burst out laughing. Unfortunately I didn’t communicate with the Irish, but other guys who did then said that it seems that all Irish are just crazy.
The people with whom we seem to have had the smallest cultural barrier were the French. I don’t know how to explain it, but all the semester I had a feeling that we can understand each other easily, although we had different backgrounds. For example, they always wondered why all exchange students started to call each other friends so fast. The French said this word was meaningful for them and it was astounding to use it almost for everyone. They’re the only ones who got serious about friendship, so maybe it was the main reason why we got closer to each other more than with others.
To sum it up, I feel like I got a lot of insights and revelations that helped me to push my own boundaries. I want to tell you that student exchange is definitely worth it because of two reasons. The first one is study abroad and the second one is communication with people from other countries. Actually, you always can visit all countries you’ve been during the term again, but you would never get a chance to end up in an international students community, ask guys about everything and break down all your stereotypes.