Bringing the learning home (Australian Learning & Teaching Council)

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Kansai Gaidai, Osaka, Japan

I have been in Japan for about three weeks now. It’s not my first time here (in fact my 5th time), but it is my first time as a student. I’m originally from Finland, so I was already a ‘foreigner’ in Australia, but being a foreigner in Japan is different.

First of all, here I look like a foreigner, a ‘gaijin’. As a European, I fit pretty well in Australia and the locals do not know that I’m from a far away country before I open my mouth. But here they spot me from far, because of the same reasons why I fit in Australia. I’ve heard from my fellow exchange students how the Japanese shop clerks run away to avoid the embarrassment of trying to communicate in English. Furthermore, some hairdressers around the campus refuse to take foreign clients. Paradoxically, there are situations where the locals come and talk to me only because I am, indeed, a gaijin.

I did not really have any kind of ‘culture shock’ when I first came to Australia. It was pretty similar with any Western country I had visited. Of course there are differences, such as the climate, but culturally Australia felt very familiar. It goes without saying that Japan is different. Japan is truly Asia (sorry Malaysia for stealing your slogan) with some Western influence.

Every day activities, such as shopping or asking directions, are so much easier for me in Australia, because I speak the language. However, I have only studied Japanese for less than half a year and most of it by using self-teaching guide books. I have self-studied hiraganas and katakanas, but I can’t read many Chinese characters. I could write a long post about the complexity of Japanese writing system, but I will just state that it is a bit more difficult than the English alphabets, that are pretty much the same as we use in Finland. Thus, buying groceries and ordering in a restaurant becomes a bit of an effort.

Luckily, my host institution Kansai Gaidai has done great work organizing the exchange program. All the teachers and staff speak English, and all classes are concentrated in one building, the Center for International Education. We have Japanese every day, and we can interact with local Japanese students via ‘speaking partner’ program and in normal classes. Therefore, I can recommend this exchange program to everybody, even those without Japanese language skills. However, you can get more out of it if you speak the language.

Posted by  |  February 16, 2011 | Categories: Fish out of water, Japan | 6 Comments

Scotland

Another morning here in Dundee!

It’s been incredible over here. 

Well into my first month now, so much has happened!

First week:

I remember arriving in Edinburgh and seeing snow! Silly that I sound so excited, but its my first time seeing snow! From Edinburgh, I headed into Dundee, where its all ice instead of snow.

Defnitely did feel homesick, but I made an effort to get out and explore my surroundings for abit.

Over the week, I met my other housemates and their friends who’re really good fun and uber friendly. One of my housemate friends were exchange students from Belgium, but sadly they were finishing their semester and were preparing to leave. Although we’re just a couple of week old friends, I was really glad to have known them. I remembered my first night, they came and ask me to hang out with them, and at 2am in the morning to bake apple crumble! They were so spontaneous and random! But good fun nontheless.

Second week:

Uni’s begun. Over time, I met a few other exchange students as well – Sophie from Tasmania and a coupla others from Newcastle, Canadians, Americans and of course Scottish!

There was an international event called a Ceilidh (pronounced ‘kay-lee’), which was a traditional Scottish dance. There are various dances, and its pretty simple once you get the hang of it, as its pretty repetitive. And it can go on and on, making you super exhausted! We got to try some Haggis as well, which was their Scottish traditional dish, made of lamb offal, intestines, stomach, those kind of stuff we normally wouldn’t eat. But I apparently love haggis! The thought of it may sound gross, but its really not that bad as you may be imagining now (:

Third week:

Bascially getting into the routine of Uni now, and exploring Dundee and its surroundings. Our favourite hangout is at DCA (Dundee Contemporary Arts) its a really unique place, with only two cinema theatres, and they show artsy, historical, meaningful movies here (e.g King’s speech, Hereafter, Black Swan, Nenette etc.) and its cheap!

The main highlight was heading to Saint Andrews for the weekend! Goodness, it was beautiful. I really love it there, and apparently St. Andrews University was where Kate Middleton and Prince William met! We went to St. Andrews castle (which was bascially ruins really, but holds much history), the cathedral, climed St.Rules Tower which gave a spectacular 360 view of the town.

Fourth and fifth week:

The fourth week, was bascially getting my lab reports done, so not very exciting there. But I’m really enjoying my modules here. Yesterday was Valentines, and hope you all had a lovely one! As for mine, I celebrated it with my housemates, made  Thai curry, had a Belgium chocolate cake and wine for dessert and ended with a movie. Also, whats planned for this week is horseriding this weekend! And am really excited for that! So for now that sums up what’ve been up to in Dundee but pictures tell a better story anyway, so enjoy!

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Cheers!

Joan

 

Posted by  |  February 16, 2011 | Categories: Scotland, Transition phase | 2 Comments

Bike lane, bus lane, it’s all the same…

So it’s been just over three weeks but it feels like it so much longer than that, still just kind of getting into the swing of things. Uni is off to an incredibly slow start, but nothing happens quickly/at all in Espana. I’ve been to two information sessions this week for exchange students held entirely in Spanish, so surprisingly, I’m still pretty unsure about everything in general but nothing really new there.

Took to the road on my bike today. No matter how many times you tell yourself to stay on the other side of the road it’s impossible not to panic when someone is coming towards you. Played a bit of the old this path ain’t big enough for the two of us and ended up in a bush for a brief but very embarrassing period on the main street of my university, but then back on the bike as they say. Also might have convinced my new friends that one lane was defiantly just for bikes, actually just for busses. Whoops. Very angry bus driver, four very scared Erasmus students peddling as fast as our little feet could take us out of the way. Let’s just say, I don’t think I’m going to live that one down, and I don’t think they’ll be taking my advice again in the near future…However, I did get us to the beach, which for a city is really quite nice.

The main beach

 

Other than almost getting us killed, I’ve had a fairly good look around the city. It’s pretty incredible. It has a really relaxed vibe, and everything is really well linked by the metro, and by my new friend Valenbisi, which is a system of bikes that you can hire all around the city – practically for free.

The centre of Valencia

Been out a few times. But over here everything starts so late! People don’t go to the clubs until 3am. I was reading a guide the other day that said, “This club gets going when the others start shutting down at about 6-7am!” So I’m struggling a bit to keep up but hopefully I’ll get there.

Sunset

Guess that’s all for now, having a great time and hope everything is going well at home.

 E x

Posted by  |  February 16, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, Spain | 1 Comment

American College Life

I am so glad and happy that I chose to study abroad in America. The experience that I’m already having is incredible and everyday I find myself doing something I wouldn’t do back home.

 At the moment life is crazy, I’m a pledge member of the sorority Alpha Epsilon Phi which is the best decision I have made here and perhaps one of the best decisions of my life. I’ve met so many people through this organization and have already found some friends that I know are for life not just a year. Everyone is so excited to hear about Australia and they just love my accent and new words like ‘Maccas’ for McDonalds and ‘singlet’ instead of ‘tank top’. Heaps of the girls from my sorority have told me I can stay with them during the summer so it’s great for networking because I have a home now anywhere I want to travel. Being in Greek Life is probably one of the most American College experiences to have and I’m loving every minute of it. I also joined a student run dance group and we meet once a week and have a performance in about a month, it’s interesting to see the difference in dance style too. Living in the dorms is also a typical American experience, it’s great that it only takes a few minutes to visit friends!

Very excited for Spring Break! – only 20 days away and I’m off to Cancun, Mexico with one of my American friends and 2 other international students, one from Canada and the other is Aussie. Again it’s going to be an amazing college experience that we wouldn’t have back home!

Classes are so different here and the work load is only getting more intense however I think grading might be easier, let’s just say I had a small paper (only 2 pages) to write and I know it wasn’t my best work yet I still received an ‘A’ – however that might be that physically I’m doing much more work!

Overall I’m loving every minute of the American College experience, I love the sense of community and the fact that it’s not just about academics, there’s a huge social aspect that I’m going to miss when I go back home so I’m going to try and not take it for granted now!

The picture below is a poster that was on my dorm door, it says ‘You’ve hopped your way into the hearts of AEPhi’ Which is the nickname of my sorority

Posted by  |  February 14, 2011 | Categories: The US, Transition phase | 2 Comments

Pa pa, Polska!

It’s the night before I leave Krakow and finish up my exchange experience. Obviously it’s time for a quick reflection.

I didn’t enjoy the university aspect of exchange much, I’ll be honest. I got through two subjects without reading a single academic article or piece of writing – I managed to write entire presentations and exams using Wikipedia and lecture notes alone. And to me, that is a complete joke and should never happen. Other classes I didn’t even bother turning up to because they were boring, because no one did the readings, because no one took attendance and it wasn’t mandatory and I didn’t feel obliged to sit through two hours of an old, fat jolly man enjoying the sound of his own voice while really teaching nothing we couldn’t really in a Norman Davies book.

And because I didn’t get the classes I’d organised to enrol in before I left Australia, my timetable ended up being five days a week, with the one class that attendance was taken for – Polish – being on Mondays and Fridays. No weekends away for me, really, I just skipped a couple of classes here and there but at the end of the day, I had to study and I had to pass. And again, it wasn’t terribly fun and sometimes I feel like I almost wasted my time here because I’ve only been to 6 countries, including Poland.

But 6 countries is still a lot more than a lot of other 20-year-olds I know at home have seen. How many 20-year-old Aussies can say they’ve hiked up Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh,  have best friends in Hungary and Slovenia, touched the Berlin Wall, seen Manchester United play at Old Trafford, enjoyed the charm of Stockholm’s Gamla Stan or – more to the point – managed to stumble through four months of living in a still somewhat developing post-communist country where they didn’t know anyone, didn’t speak the language and had never been to before?

Not a bad effort, in my books. I wouldn’t come back to Poland to study again, and I don’t know if I’d come here to work in anything other than an EU-sponsored or funded job because organisation and bureaucracy is terrible here. But I hope there’s an infinite amount of visits to this incredible city in my future.

Posted by  |  February 9, 2011 | Categories: Poland, Re-entry, Time to reflect | 2 Comments

I LOVE TRAVELING!

A friend of mine and I went on our first trip out of our college town this weekend. We went to Milwaukee and we fell in love with it the second we got off of the bus! We went to some cool shops before meeting our couch surfing hostess Felicia, who took us back to her place – giving us a little tour along the way. After putting our bags down and relaxing for a while we decided to go ice skating, it was fabulous – just like rollerblading but a little bit harder. Both my friend and I forgot to bring our cameras so we didn’t get any pictures 😦 After that we just went home and had some sleep before waking up on Saturday and doing even more fun stuff.

We figured out the county transit system quickly as we made our way to Mayfair shopping mall in Milwaukee. Most of the locals think it’s an ‘okay’ store, not much happening in it and not many shops, but when Claire and I walked in, we were amazed. It was two storeys, shops from wall to wall. We saw American Eagle, Gap, A&F and all those awesome places. We went into a shop called Pacsun and managed to buy 4 things each for only a total of $21.00, we couldn’t believe it. They had a half price sale on and when you went to the counter they took another 50% off… unbelievable. It was also a really cool shop, had many Aussie surf brands like Roxy, Billabong, Quicksilver etc. It was great. After having a pretty productive shopping trip we decided to go home again.

Saturday night we went to an NBA basketball game. It was amazing, so many people and an awesome amount of community spirit. One of the basketballers on the Milwaukee Bucks team (the one we were cheering for) was Australian. Andrew Bogut. He was 7ft tall… he was a great player – apparently one of the best in the league. When they announced all of the players they mentioned that he was from Australia and everyone cheered. Throughout the game we tried yelling Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi, but I doubt he would have heard it in the slightest.

On Sunday (today) we did a little more shopping, I learned some songs on the piano and we caught the bus back home. I’m currently sitting in my room listening to people yell and scream out of their windows (hundreds of people) every time the Green Bay Packers get a touchdown… I kind of got into the spirit by buying a T-Shirt that says “feelin’ so fly, like a cheese head” on it… a cheesehead being a Packers supporter or someone from Wisconsin.. it’s great. So once the superbowl is over, everyone will go back to normal and the craziness will die down… eventually.

I’ve noticed many weird things about Americans and their slightly skewed perception of Australia. The first thing (as said in a post below) is the fact that the kangaroo is the first thing that comes up in conversation. When I first got here it was about the time of the floods in QLD and EVERYONE asked me if I was from there, which is nice and considerate. I’m not though, so I didn’t have much of a story to give them. Many people try and do the Australian accent, every person fails. One of my friends has taken it upon himself to incorporate any sayings or little phrases that I have into his own vocabulary, he’s pretty good at it. He likes to say pulling the piss and footy a lot haha.

Anyway, until the next update.

Cheerio!

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Posted by  |  February 7, 2011 | Categories: The US, Transition phase | 2 Comments

It’s amazing how far a smile can get you when you show up for your flight two days early…

So at 6am in the morning when I double checked my departure terminal I noticed something that didn’t seem right. Today was the 24th wasn’t it? So why did my phone say it was the 22nd? Sitting on the edge of the bed, brain still muddled with jetlag it takes me a while, but eventually I begin to realise that yes, I’ve made a pretty large mistake, and yes I am about to get the shuttle bus to Heathrow two days early. Shit.

“Ah, excuse me? I’m accidently here two days early, any chance I could fly to Madrid please?”

It’s amazing how far a smile can get you. The nice lady from British Airways and I have a bit of a laugh and what do you know, hello to the 8:15 flight to Madrid. What are the chances? I thought I’d got away with the blunder pretty well until I had to explain to the check in lady and baggage man my embarrassing predicament. Humiliation aside, I was on the way to Spain, with a window seat and whole row to myself.

It wasn’t until I was on the plane that I had any time to wonder how on earth I could have misread the ticket maybe 70 times? To be fair, the 22nd is the date I return home, so it is written just under the 24th – the day I was supposed to get to Spain. But to be honest, I’d been telling everyone that I’d be arriving in Spain on Saturday all along, I’d made an appointment to look at a flat on the Sunday, so really I have no excuse, it just happened to be one of those moments in my impeccably organised life where my brain suffers a small glitch and I make a mistake. Yes, as far as mistakes go, this was a pretty big one. But these things happen to all of us, well, okay maybe just a small minority.

Madrid Airport was an absolute joke! With old Barry Backpack weighing me down I asked about a million different people where to get my bag from – turns out you have to catch a train to the baggage carousels, of course, because that is so logical! Anyway the next hour and a half of my life was one I’d rather forget, but at 2:00pm I found myself on the high speed train to Valencia cruising at a casual 300km/h.

Turns out rocking up in a new city with a new language in the middle of siesta is kind of difficult. But the universe had been on my side all day, although about an hour later somewhere in the cobblestone alleyways of Valencia without a map, or anyone I to ask for directions it left me for dead. I eventually found a taxi and got to the hostel where I got chatting to the girls at reception, one of whom had a room for rent in her flat and just like that the universe was back on my side! Not only that, in my dorm I met a girl from the Czech Republic also about to study in Valencia on exchange. We were later joined by another Swiss girl who is studying in the same faculty as me in at the University of Valencia.

Anyway, there is much more to say, but I think that will do for now, I’ve just moved into my new flat, more on that story later… E x

Posted by  |  February 6, 2011 | Categories: LOL, Misunderstandings, Spain | 1 Comment

Switzerland2

Ok you may find this amusing but one thing that shocked me the other day is i walk passed a porn shop, which had a shop window, which contained things that would be considered an outrage in Australia, if displayed. Ill post one pic just so you can get an idea.

Window shop front for porn shop, couldnt not see this in Australia

Ok soo i couldnt just leave you with that picture alone because its a beautiful place here so here is a shot of a hill not to far from where i live.

St gallen

Posted by  |  February 6, 2011 | Categories: Only in..., Switzerland | 4 Comments

Americans

I’ve found that to most Americans, Australia is seen as a great holiday destination with strange animals and friendly people. This is a very good reputation to have but unfortunately, it is these topics which make up the bulk of the conversations I happen to have with Americans.

The kangaroo usually comes up first in conversation which I don’t really mind. In fact I enjoy talking about what is unique about Australia; although I am starting to suspect that Americans are not really interested in my version of Australia. They are more interested in simplified caricatures and national symbols, that offer them a more comfortable albeit conventionalised version of Australia. I suppose this is something that I’ve found difficult to understand, because I am aware that I don’t exactly represent the quintessential Australian, but I offer some diversity that could potentially educate Americans about Australia, and relieve some of the simplistic views they might have of us. I think that a country is more than just the image it projects, but sometimes the image is all people care to consider. It is not bothering me so much right now, but it is starting to dawn on me. I do miss my family, but I love being here. I don’t miss my life back home as much, because I definitely think I am having way more fun where I am.

Posted by  |  February 5, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, Fish out of water, The US | 5 Comments

Switzerland – first day

Luke Cassar – University of St Gallen from Wollongong.

So its 1am here and i cant sleep, so i thought this would be a great opportunity to make my first post.

So soo far Ive been mostly sleeping but i still have noticed some things about this country. Firstly their public transport is awesome, it may be expensive but sooo good. However on train trip from the airport to St Gallen I accidentally seated myself in the first class seating, and i really couldn’t tell the difference between first class and normal class except the seats were red and had less people in first class. I guess the red makes all the difference ay. Asking people for help is quite easy here, just you have to pick out the ones who can speak english, on the train asking people in business suits work for me hehe. Ok now to buses, which i caught 3 times so far without paying, because of the simple fact i don’t know how to. The machines are in German, the devil inside me wants me to see how long i can act like an innocent tourist, but the angel says im a guest in their country and i should pay, hmm.

As for the weather its not soo bad, snow everywhere but not to cold, apparently I brought the sun out according to university staff. Speaking of the university my fondest moment so far was walking into the exchange office and seeing a post card with wollongong harbour on it. Such a proud gong boy then.

Hmm anyways that’s all for now, hopefully Ill be taking photos soon. And gradually as I get used to wordpress my posts should get better.

Cheers Luke

Posted by  |  February 4, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, Fish out of water, Switzerland | 4 Comments