This morning I had my first exam here. Well, this morning and day actually. You have 5 hours! to complete your exam here, and I used 4:45 of it :) I was a bit anxious (a thing we needed to learn for the exam) for this. In the Netherlands I normally have 1 to 2 [...]

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For my course I have to read some extra literature next to the required ones, literature I choose myself. After some search in old patterns (education, virtual reality) I got the idea to search for time, how we experience time and how that influences our behavior. We already had some of this in the lectures [...]

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I always had the idea that science was mostly researching things we already held for the truth. I sat with my mother at the kitchen table, discussing items from the newspaper. Here this idea sprouted; those small news items which only told us what we already knew. And, of course, holding a lot of information [...]

Continue reading about Science has shown.. duh!

At the same lecture we also talked a bit on non-verbal language. At the end of the lecture I invited everyone to take one of the tomato pies I had been making. I told it was common in my culture to bring some snacks with when you’re celebrating your birthday (my actual birthday is tomorrow). [...]

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Today I had a lecture again where we discussed about stereotypes. Tulips, cheese and drugs-friendly Dutch; family loyal, siesta enjoying and hard-working Mexicans; always on time, environmentally aware and reserved Swedes; and many more. What I particularly liked was that it came clear that stereotypes are not always negative, in fact stereotypes are mostly positive [...]

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We had this question in a group work for the anatomy of intercultural interactions course. Courses here are non parallel, so we only have one course at the time. Thats for the next 5 weeks and then comes the next course. Some exceptions, but then you probably won’t have more then 2 courses at the [...]

Continue reading about In what way does culture distort your view of reality?

This morning was the first lecture. Actually it was the second – yesterday the whole group got an introduction into ‘the swedes and swedish culture‘ – but this was the first one of my programme of courses. This first course I’m following is about the anatomy of intercultural interactions.. Yes, this first lecture was an [...]

Continue reading about Intercultural interactions