the podcast about all things intercultural
Happy New Year! In this show, we are going to go back to shows 70 and 74 in 2008 and 2009 when I talked to Signe Møller here in Denmark about a new charity she had just set up.
This show, 234, is ten years later, so why am I re-visiting Signe’s charity 100% to the children? Because I bumped into a stall for her charity at a local Christmas market last November and I was curious to find out how this one-woman organisation was doing.
In this show, which could carry the sub-title “absolutely boquerones” we are going to focus on the culture of Málaga in Spain. And Boquerones is the typical fish grilled over open fire on the beaches of Málaga, but it is also the nickname for the inhabitants of Malaga. First, we will listen to Julian talking about his experience in Malaga, Spain, as he is doing a Semester abroad at our partner University, Universidad de Málaga. Juanjo, an Erasmus Student from Spain, who is currently studying a semester at RheinAhrCampus in Germany, will talk about the differences he noticed in the educational systems of Spain and Germany. And finally, we will listen to Trish, who is originally from Ireland but lived in various different countries and now lives in Málaga, will share with us why she decided to live in Spain.
What is a virtual exchange? Maybe not what you think. We’ll be digging deeper into that in this special edition of Absolutely Intercultural coming to you from Denmark. My name’s Anne Fox and this is show 232. Today’s show is mainly about promoting dialogue between different groups of people. So what is dialogue? And can you tell the difference between dialogue and, for example, debate?
In this show, you will hear about the grocery shop in India and believe me you will be surprised how different it is from European grocery shopping. Hari Gautham Somasundaram Dr. Arvind Sivaramakrishnan and Dr. TJ Kamalanabhan will talk about their own experience grocery shopping in India. In India, you need to go shopping early in the morning to get the best fruits and vegetables from the stalls. Hari, who is a student, tells us that he prefers going to the supermarket rather than the market or buying fruit from trollies in the street. Dr. Arvind, on the other hand, will talk about the challenges of grocery shopping in Indian markets.
Grocery shopping is a regular activity in our every-day culture. However, there seem to be different cultural aspects in our weekly shopping. At first, we will listen to Beate and Kati talking about the two opposite but equally strong movements in Germany: have you banned meat from your diet or do you buy big portions for your weekend BBQ? Javier from Spain reports how grocery shopping has changed through the generations in Spain. And finally, we will listen to Professor Scott Henderson from Canada, who talks about how the diverse cultures in Canada influence the choice of produce in supermarkets and how they differ from European supermarktes.
I have been curious about how you come to work in the intercultural field and have continued my conversations with people who are doing it. One thing I realise now after talking to several people is that there are many ways into an intercultural career.
Here for example is Dawn who was based in Ethiopia and formed Broads Abroad, a support group for expatriate women, based on the conversations that used to happen after the Zumba lessons she started giving.
And Franklin Yartey, a professor of intercultural communication at Dubuque University, Iowa, worked as PR manager of a dance school in his native Ghana before ending up in the US to continue his education.
And once you are doing it, it seems that intercultural work is its own reward as Joe Kearns describes!
So this show is the second in our series on how to get into the Intercultural field. Thanks to everyone who agreed to participate.
Another thing I noticed about today’s contributors is that they all had a connection with Africa, two with Ethiopia and one with Ghana. Listen to find out which is which.
In the show today I decided to contact three people who would describe themselves as intercultural trainers in order to find out more about what that entails and how they came to do this work. Predictably we ended up talking about much more than this so we will start with Lucy Fogarty, an Irish trainer based in London who has developed training that is based on cartoons. Why images I asked her?
Then I talked to Lisa La Valle Finan in the US who had a word of warning for the young.
And finally I talked to Brett Parry, an Aussie based in the US who was able to answer the question, what do you do on a Monday morning and much else besides.
In this show we are going to find out how a shaman does his work, as well as first impressions of Finland when you come from Zambia. Strangely enough, it was also my first time in Finland and we did discuss in the project team whether it was a good idea to visit in January but we are planning to go again in June when there will be 24 hour daylight and mosquitos out in full force so we will get the whole range. The occasion was a small-scale conference in which the Prof E Sus project was wrestling with the idea of defining, measuring and creating a sustainable mindset in the teachers of home economics. One of the participants was Dr Hosea Lupambo Chishala a teacher trainer from Rockview University in Lusaka and he shared with us that in Zambia you can mark your status by how much you are able to waste. This means that he is faced with a really big challenge. And we’ll also be talking to Mia Fox about how she stumbled across a shaman unexpectedly in Myanmar
To what extent does study abroad influence students’ future life both in academic and career perspectives? Well, in this episode, which will be the last of a series on the 30th Anniversary of the ERASMUS program, we will listen to my colleague from RheinAhrCampus , who works with outgoing students, and helps them find the best partner universities for their stays abroad. She will talk about differences in students’ behaviors and appearance which she notices after they come back from their host country. We will also interview two guest lecturers from Portugal and from our partner university Indian Institution of Technology, Madras. They will talk about staying abroad and an extraordinary campus in India, and how it was first established with German aid in the 1960s. And we will hear some voices of international professionals who were once exchange students in Germany and who will tell us what skills and habits they gained during their studies at RheinAhrCampus. Finally we will listen to my co-host Anne Fox from Denmark who was in Germany and took part in our seminar Managing Cultural Diversity.
Hello and welcome to show 221 of our podcast “absolutely intercultural” which is the fourth of series of “Erasmus 30” podcasts to celebrate and highlight the 30th anniversary of the most successful of all student exchange programs. In this episode, our two lecturers will share their exchange experiences and stories about their studies abroad. How did teaching in Germany under the Erasmus mobility program benefit a lecturer’s research activities and his academic life? Then we will listen to a lecturer from RheinahrCampus, he will talk about how he studied abroad two decades ago. Was it more difficult to arrange than an exchange semester today? What were the required documents in the past and now? And finally, we will look at the differences in student lives in different countries.