After years abroad I returned to my home country. “Finally!” May be one thought. But on the other hand, “What a pity I couldn’t stay in my host country longer!” Upon arrival, I’m met with a rude awakening: The country I returned to is not the country I left! Everything is different! People speak my…
In North Africa we met a man who had lived in Munich for eight years and spoke passable German. We asked him whether he had had any problems settling in and being accepted there. No, he hadn’t, he replied, and went on to say that he had found out pretty soon that there are two…
All our languages plus Spanish, very funny and so authentic! Only the German is a bit weird while wrong – as usual!
One of the main sources of culture shock – or, as we like to call it, cultural annoyance – is mis-perception. Even though I may think that I know and understand a lot about the culture I’m living in, when something goes wrong, I find myself caught off-guard. I feel disoriented, helpless, out of place.…
For five weeks now we’ve been back in Aix in France in a conference centre. We’re chipping in with all sorts of practical jobs to help polish our French. If we thought we knew France before, we were mistaken: only now we are getting to know it for real. For here we are totally immersed…
As we have to deal quite often with French and French culture this here is amazing:
We are entering phase 2, according to the method. This means that we are using small picture books, little stories, to talk. For example, we start with the story of a bear who finds a shoe in a wood. He loves it and manages to put it over his left foot. Later he finds a…
I know I am going to stay in a foreign country for longer. I know what to roughly expect. I am excited and happy but also nervous. That is normal. But, how do I prepare myself for the inevitable culture shock? How do I stop any emotional irritation? Do I do a lot of reading…
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Anna sometimes felt she had missed something because she’d never been at university. Le voilà, as the French say, what do you know, then it happened: Anna is sitting at her desk and writes her first thesis on Guy de Maupassant’s illnesses. And take an expert’s word for it: that was certainly university level,…
I am talking! That’s already something. But, of course, the sentences are very simple, very basic and sometimes very stupid. And it’s very rare that I manage to get some kind of noise out of my mouth that my friend doesn’t have to correct. There is always something that is different from what he likes…