Maybe you will notice that we have a new editor on the show. Laura has left the Sunshine Coast, Australia, to come and take on a year here at RheinAhrCampus in Germany. We all think she is crazy to give up all that beautiful sunshine but are so happy to have her on our team. Thanks a lot to Younes Jaber who has helped us produce so many good shows in the past and is now about to finish his studies. Continue reading “Absolutely Intercultural 187 +++ Cultural Comparison +++ Learning German +++ Australian Culture”
Yes it may be cliché Scottish music, but Amazing Grace is the only bagpipe music that I could find with a Creative Commons licence, and I did like a bit of bagpipe music when I lived in Scotland a long time ago. A couple of months ago I was on a trip to Scotland where all the talk was about the Scottish referendum so I thought I would talk to a few people about it, but would they talk to me? Continue reading “Scotland +++ referendum +++ Ewan McIntosh +++ Absolutely Intercultural 184 +++”
In today’s show we will be going to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel twice, first with Mitch Weegman who was collaborating with leading edge researchers there for a two week research visit. We’ll be hearing about how just walking through Jerusalem takes you on an intercultural journey and then we’ll be hearing from Bjørn Zakarius Ekelund in Norway who was wondering if his team building tool, the Diversity Icebreaker, could help build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians. And finally thanks to Svetlana Kurilova who contacted us through our Facebook page to tell us about her travels through Europe with a Spanish friend. Continue reading “Jerusalem +++ Diversity Icebreaker +++ Svetlana Kurilova +++ Absolutely Intercultural 182 +++”
In this show we’re going to be featuring a new business dedicated to making it easier for all to apply to American universities.
The company is called AdmitSee and we’ll be talking to Stephanie Shyu one of the co-founders. One of the biggest sources of students to American universities is China, where the university entrance process is quite different. So what would you do if you needed help in applying to a foreign university? In China, they often turn to an agent who charges a great deal of money to help you out with language issues and especially in writing a personal statement, which most Chinese have no experience with. The idea that Stephanie Shyu and her co-founders had, was to create a site where students who had already secured a university place could share various aspects of their successful application for a much smaller fee than an agent would charge. Continue reading “Admit See +++ China +++ France +++ study abroad +++ Absolutely Intercultural 180 +++”
In this show we will ask is it possible to build a relationship with a teacher thousands of miles away?
I also have news of two free courses coming up later this year, which might interest internationally minded listeners based in Europe. The first one, called M-HOUSE, is for people who are home-based for whatever reason, be it unemployment, looking after children and so on and who might be interested in exploring whether starting a business would be a good idea. The second project called FLITE, is aimed at people either already working or who are well on their way to getting a degree in computer sciences and who are also interested in working on a business idea. These are two projects I’m working on where we will be needing pilot students who will be able to do the courses for free. Why is this international? Because you will be doing the course online and will be working with people from all over Europe.
absolutely global Do you remember we talked about the Living your Ideal Global Life online summit a couple of shows back?
Did you catch it all? If not then this show will give you a peek into what you missed and we also have news of next year’s summit, as well as a mini-event coming up very soon.
The idea behind the Living Your Ideal Global Life summit was to show how anyone can globalize their life, even by staying at home! But to be honest most of the contributions came from people who have done a fair bit of traveling. Anyway, I caught up with Sabrina Ziegler, one of the organizers of the summit and asked her how she thought it had gone.
Sabrina is based in Vancouver Canada and is keen to know what you want included in the next summit so do feel free to tell us on our Absolutely Intercultural Facebook page or as a comment on this blog.
And interspersed with Sabrina’s comments you will hear some short case studies of people who have taken the plunge in various ways. What about you? Are you planning to globalize your life? Find out more at Small Planet Studio or Authentizen.
Don’t forget we also have a Facebook Page where we share new links about 4 times a week. The most popular ones recently have been about culture shock in Russia, addressing foreigners in the workplace and a cheeky Valentine’s sign from the florists of Paris in France which I only uploaded as a whim but which turned out to be very popular. See those and more on our FaceBook page.
We have also added ‘The Suitcase Entrepreneur’ by Natalie Sisson, one of the case studies, to our Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store. Remember you don’t pay more by buying through our store but you do help us to meet some basic web hosting and maintenance costs.
The next show will be coming to you from Germany with Laurent Borgmann on April 4th so until Stay Tuned!
Happy New Year! So a new year traditionally means New Year resolutions and what could those be? Could they include improving your English? If so, have you ever wondered how difficult it is for course book writers to choose topics which will appeal to students all over the world? We’ll be hearing from Lindsay Clandfield, lead author of the Global series of coursebooks about some of those issues. Maybe your New year’s resolution is learning about one intercultural diagnosis tool such as the 4 Cs of culture? If so then you will want to hear Margarita Gokun Silver explain what they are. Or maybe you want to make a huge change in your life but don’t know where to start. One step in that direction may be to attend the free Living Your Ideal Global Lifesummit starting on January 13th. We’ll be hearing from Sabrina Ziegler, one of the organisers about some more of the interesting angles about living abroad and what is possible in this connected world.
absolutely global Have you ever wondered how your language course book gets written? In show 166 we heard about the topics that don’t make it into the course books, the so-called PARSNIP topics. But as I had Lindsay Clandfield, lead author of the new MacMillan Global series on the line, I took the opportunity to ask him how he decided what SHOULD go into his new coursebook. So let’s go absolutely global and start by asking why the world needed another coursebook for learning English!
absolutely how-to
Now I want to tell you about a new page on our website which is a 30 minute edited version of a workshop I did at the SIETAR Congress in Tallinn Estonia in September. The workshop was about podcasting for Intercultural trainers and we have released it as a special edition of the podcast on its own page. Thanks to Sigvor Bakke from Norway who did a magnificent job of recording on her mobile phone including a short snippet where we were looking at why you might want to podcast. The snippet included Matthew Hill from the UK. And if you want to hear the whole 30 minutes where I go into more detail about the whys and wherefores then catch it on its dedicated page.
absolutely coached In a globalised world it becomes even more important to understand intercultural dynamics within yourself and others. Margarita Gokun Silver told us about how accompanying spouses can be helped in Show 170. You may remember that Margarita is a trained coach so let’s ask if she has additional tools to help people deal with intercultural situations? Honouring your values is a key takeaway. Margarita’s website is at www.globalcoachcenter.com where you can find loads more information about the 4 Cs and intercultural coaching generally. I have added the book mentioned by Margarita to the Absolutely Intercultural Amazon store where you can find many other books relevant to intercultural communication. We receive a small amount of what you pay for every book which helps keep the site running. Browse our Amazon store here.
absolutely ideal And finally, I return to the unique idea of the Living Your Ideal Global Life Summit which is free and online for 5 days starting January 13th. In Show 172 one of the organisers, Sabrina Ziegler of Authentizen , told us about a couple of the speakers so let’s go absolutely ideal as I asked Sabrina about Terry Rogocki’s contribution. Do you have any ideas about how to live your ideal global life? Don’t forget that the summit is free.
Don’t forget we also have a Facebook Page where we recently got our 300th like! Welcome Hamdi Erestreams in Tunisia! Hope you are enjoying the page and the links we add there regularly.
The next show will be coming to you from Australia with Laurent Borgmann on February 7th so until then Happy New year!
In September I attended the SIETAR Congress in Tallinn Estonia where I met the two people who feature in this podcast. The music you hearat the beginning was being played by some street performers in Tallinn and Estonia is famous for the way in which it escaped the Soviet Union with its singing revolution. This involved thousands of people forming a line of over 600 kilometres while singing. So there was a lot of music in Tallinn and there is a bit more later.
SIETAR is the Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research and the Congress attracted many intercultural trainers and coaches who often work freelance. I was attending to talk about the results of the UniKey project which has just finished but I was also invited to do a workshop on how to podcast, as part of a pre-Congress set of workshops for freelancers. I promised those who attended that I would make a special edition of the podcast based on the How Tos we went through that day so watch out for that. It will be on a new page here when it’s ready.
absolutely global Sabrina Ziegler of Authentizen helped us freelancers in how to organise our digital media presence and is generally an advocate of a global lifestyle. What does that mean? Well Sabrina will help us find out by putting on a free online summit called Living Your Ideal Global Life in January 2014.
absolutely ethical One of the talks I attended at SIETAR was given by Iman Elshawaf talking about the unexpected difficulties she had when following the research protocols set down by her British university when she wanted to work with children in her school in Egypt. You have to get parental consent to work with the children and that means signing a form which can then be sent back to the university to document that everything was done ethically. So how easy was that?
Iman’s was just one of many fascinating sessions at the SIETAR Congress and we can’t possibly talk about them all. One thing I did enjoy very much was the graphics made by Raquel Benmergui of some of the sessions and I’ve used one of her visuals as the image for this show. Meanwhile on our Facebook Page we’re only a few short of 300 likes. Will you be number 300? In the last couple of weeks we’ve been featuring a great many links about stereotypes so if you want to know more about that topic then head on over to our Facebook page. And we’ll also be putting the podcast onto our YouTube channel.
We’ll be playing out with a short extract from the Estonian girls’ choir which entertained the Congress speakers in Tallinn Town Hall.
Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on December 6th so stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
Welcome and shanah tovah. Why shanah tovah? Because that is the Hebrew New Year greeting and it was the Israeli new year the day before this podcast came out. I learned this from Marion Burgheimer, an Israeli cross cultural trainer I spoke with about the most popular links on our Absolutely Intercultural Facebook Page. She also told me that Shanah Tova is a wish for a good new year rather a happy new year, as a good year makes you happy. Welcome to Christian Garry Kansil who is the latest person to like our Facebook Page. I wonder if you’re finding the links we post there of interest Christian? In this show I talked to two cross cultural trainers to find out more about their work and how they got into it.
absolutely curious
How do you become a cross cultural trainer? I’m sure that this isn’t something you told your careers adviser at school that you wanted to be when you grew up. So that was how I started my conversation with both of our guests in this show. First I asked Marion Burgheimer about how she came to be a crosscultural trainer.
absolutely linked
Then I spoke to Marion about some of the links which have proved popular on our facebook page and what made them popular. If you know of any interesting links which we should share on our Facebook Page then leave us a comment there or use our blog or send us an email. Also use the blog to contact us if you know of someone we should be speaking to for a future podcast.
absolutely lost
So now to our second cross cultural trainer, Margarita Gokun Silver, founder of the Global Coach Center; same questions, what’s your background and how come you became a cross cultural trainer and we’ll see that Margarita’s strength lies in helping the spouses of people who get stationed abroad and who are absolutely lost in some cases. Here are some of the things they say:
You can find more Global Coach Centre videos on their YouTube channel. In fact I spoke at greater length to Margarita and I hope that I can bring you a bit more of that conversation in later shows. But in the mean time search this post for all the links we talked about and the videos that Margarita has produced, visit us on Facebook Page or see the show on our YouTube channel. Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on October 4th so stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
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Happy New Year! So a new year traditionally means New Year resolutions and what could those be? Could they include improving your English? If so, have you ever wondered how difficult it is for course book writers to choose topics which will appeal to students all over the world? We’ll be hearing from Lindsay Clandfield, lead author of the 
