Our participant “Nick” is a 26-year-old international student currently doing a Master’s degree in Geophysics at Curtin University in Western Australia. He was born in March 1990 in the small town of Ciudad Ojeda located in the western state of Zulia, in Venezuela, South America. Nick was born in what he described as a “somehow typical Venezuelan family”, which consists of his father, mother and older sister, described to be really close, warm and understanding to each other.
Throughout his life Nick has experienced constant relocation both within Venezuela and overseas due to the nature of his father’s job as a petroleum engineer, which started taking him to several places around the world since the age of three, when he moved to the city …show more content…
It is emphasized how he enjoyed lifestyle in USA better even though he became aware of a sense of cultural identity and community differing from one another, he states that people in Venezuela have a more developed understanding of community and how easily approachable they are, to the point that he had lots of friends in the neighbourhood he used to live in Venezuela, which is not common in the USA. In 2003 Nick’s father was fired from the state oil company he was working for and banned from working in the industry due to political and economic instability in the country, yet this turned out to improve family bounds as they got to expend quality time as a family. After a couple of years helping his grandfather’s business, Nick’s father accepted a job opportunity in Saudi Arabia, where only mom and dad moved to due to strict cultural and religious policies held by the country, although he got to go there for holidays a few times and stayed in the designated compound for internationals, where he got to meet and interact with people from all over the world. He then moved in with his sister, who was doing college in the island of Margarita in Venezuela, where he stayed for a year, to later be sent to a boarding school in Switzerland for his final years of high school. Nick’s lifestyle before leaving to Switzerland was quite messy, involving …show more content…
The adaptation process was relatively easy as he had developed independence and maturity form living on his own, which continued at university, where he stayed on campus throughout the duration of the course. He describes this stage of his life as being really pleasant, full of social sports and interactions with different cultures, he highlights a romantic relationship he had with a Venezuelan girl to be quite nice due to similar cultural background and also contrasts it with similar experiences he had with American girls, where cultural differences were noticeable in terms of emotional needs and expectations. After finishing his degree, he then took a six-month break travelling between Venezuela and Spain, mainly focused on doing Brazilian
Throughout his life Nick has experienced constant relocation both within Venezuela and overseas due to the nature of his father’s job as a petroleum engineer, which started taking him to several places around the world since the age of three, when he moved to the city …show more content…
It is emphasized how he enjoyed lifestyle in USA better even though he became aware of a sense of cultural identity and community differing from one another, he states that people in Venezuela have a more developed understanding of community and how easily approachable they are, to the point that he had lots of friends in the neighbourhood he used to live in Venezuela, which is not common in the USA. In 2003 Nick’s father was fired from the state oil company he was working for and banned from working in the industry due to political and economic instability in the country, yet this turned out to improve family bounds as they got to expend quality time as a family. After a couple of years helping his grandfather’s business, Nick’s father accepted a job opportunity in Saudi Arabia, where only mom and dad moved to due to strict cultural and religious policies held by the country, although he got to go there for holidays a few times and stayed in the designated compound for internationals, where he got to meet and interact with people from all over the world. He then moved in with his sister, who was doing college in the island of Margarita in Venezuela, where he stayed for a year, to later be sent to a boarding school in Switzerland for his final years of high school. Nick’s lifestyle before leaving to Switzerland was quite messy, involving …show more content…
The adaptation process was relatively easy as he had developed independence and maturity form living on his own, which continued at university, where he stayed on campus throughout the duration of the course. He describes this stage of his life as being really pleasant, full of social sports and interactions with different cultures, he highlights a romantic relationship he had with a Venezuelan girl to be quite nice due to similar cultural background and also contrasts it with similar experiences he had with American girls, where cultural differences were noticeable in terms of emotional needs and expectations. After finishing his degree, he then took a six-month break travelling between Venezuela and Spain, mainly focused on doing Brazilian