Global Business And Society Class Analysis

So far I have taken the Global Business and Society class and this one and I feel like they both complement each other and there are, in fact, topics that are expanded in the International Business and Cross-Cultural Communications course. I am glad that I took this class because it made me understand what I was going through when I was abroad for the first time. The material covered has given me the necessary tools to use for further encounters with people from different cultures.
One of the very first topics that I could relate to was cultural shock and its four stages. When going over every one of those I had flashbacks of my year overseas. I had lived my entire life in a small town where not much happened. Sure, there where foreign students …show more content…
I went to France as an exchange student with only a few French sentences in my vocabulary. I thought that it was going to be easy, but at the time I arrived and my host family started talking I felt overwhelmed. They were talking to me in French and I freaked out, luckily there was an Argentinian girl who translated everything. Language was definitely the first barrier that I had to overcome because I was in that environment and I knew that I needed to be able to communicate. Although the host father knew some English, he was at work most of the time. Therefore, I stayed alone with his wife, who had no idea how to communicate with me so most of the times we had to communicate through mimics. It was frustrating, but it did not matter because I was in this magnificent place. I was living next to the Mont Blank and the landscape was amazing. The view from my room is something that I will never forget as well as the international friends I made. This phase lasted a month until the host mother told me that I needed to integrate to their …show more content…
My next experience abroad was coming to Lindenwood University. This time I was more prepared to face this experience or that is what I thought. Honestly the idea that I had of how college life is was taken from the many movies that are out there. That was all my research and I regret that I did not do a deeper investigation of the college life. However, this time the transition was not as hard as the first one. I think that the main reason was because this time I was fluent in the “official” language. This time there were also a bigger foreign community on campus who I could talk to. One of the things that shock me about the American culture was how punctual people is. I come from a South American country and many of the Latin countries are known for not being punctual. Now that I think about it is sad that everyone else has that notion of us, but it is true, for us time is relative. This was one of the things that I had to adapt to as well as to fast