The downside of traveling abroad - Cultural shock

One of the biggest changes when we travel abroad is the cultural changes. Every country has different cultures and different ways to act. I think that the most common frustrations when you are aboard is information overload - you  have to learn so many thing many new things and information, Language barrier - it can be hard sometimes to talk a different language that you aren't so used to talking, and you can only talk this language to be understood, Homesickness - you will probably miss your home and family a lot, and sometime homesickness can really ruin the whole trip abroad.  

On the graph under you can see different phases of being abroad and the cultural shock.  The cultural shock is divided into 9 different phases. 

Phase 1: Everything is new, interesting and exciting. 

Phase 2: Differences become apparent and irritating. Problems accord and frustrations sets in.  in this phase you will be over the so called  honeymoon phase, where everything is good and you're happy. 

Phase 3: You may feel homesick, depressed and helpless.  You will miss your home country a lot, and your family. Depression will seek in sometimes.  Homesickness can really ruin your trip, all depending on how you take care of this problem. 

Phase 4: You develop strategies to cope with difficulties and feelings, make new friends and learn to adopt to the host culture.  It will be easier to communicate and everything when you have learned how this new culture works. 

Phase 5: You accept and embrace cultural differences. You see the host as your new home don't wish to depart and don't wish to depart or leave new friends. you have finally starting to love it here and the thought of leaving is devastating . 

Phase 6: You're excited to come home. To finally see your family after a long time. Still it is sad to leave all your friends and host family. 

Phase 7: You gradually adjust to life at home. Things start to seem more normal and routine again, although not exactly the same. 

phase 8: You may feel frustrated, angry or lonely because friends and family will not understand what you experienced  and how you changed. you miss the host culture and friends, and may look for ways to return. 

Phase 9: You incorporate what you learned and experienced  abroad  into your new life. 

School Presentation : Terrorism

Last week and a part of this week we had group presentations in international english. We could choose a subject of the board that we wanted to talk about in front of the class.  The group I was on decided to talk about terrorism. The reason why my group chose to talk about terrorism was because it was such a relevant topic in the news and all around the world at the time. I also wanted to talk about terrorism to show my fellow student that terrorism is something that happens every day, not just the few times it is in the news. 

 I feel strongly about the social medias impact on terrorism. I feel that because of the social media people are more frighten about terrorism, but I dont think there is a reason to be a lot frighten then what we were some years ago. Terrorism happens everyday, and more people need to realize that. Of course it`s terrible when someone attacks places near us, but at the same time that is what the terrorists wants - they want a reactions from us, the want us to be scared.  It has gotten to the point where finger pointing is a thing.  People get scared and point fingers at a group of people or religion just to have someone to blame everything on.  Terrorism has caused a lot of xenophobia, which is hate against strangers. Terrorism has also caused one of the biggest refugee crisis where a lot of refugees are neglected into countries because of the hate and the fear of them being terrorists, but also the fact that some people are scared that their country will lose its culture and that the foreign cultures will take over.  My opinion is that we should set ourselves into their position, where everything is taken away from you ; your home, friends, even family, education and  jobs and then depending on the rest of the world to help you, only for them to turn their back on you. We live in 2016 and to see that the younger generation, my generation, are more open to help people  then the older generations, is sad. That we kids can see what is wrong with the world, which is our future, only to have the grownups not listening til us and not doing anything.  Now I´m not trying to drag all the grownups under the same comp. Its just that what happened to the saying " treat people the way you want to be treated" that we always learned when we were kids.  We saw what happened in the wars before and then I'm asking myself why are we doing the same mistake over and over again.  We should rather help then make everything ten times worse. 

Every day someone loses their family member because of terrorism, everyday a child dies because of terrorism and I think many people forget about that and only focus on terrorism that happens in the area near, like when Paris was attacked. To think that what happened i Paris happens everyday in countries like Syria, is very frightening. 

This presentation made me learn a lot more facts about terrorism, like that since 2000 there was around 72 135 terror attacks and half of them happen in four countries.( look at the picture to the right).  That means that there was 4508 terror attacks every year and 12 attacks every single day until now. To have 12 attacks everyday in 16 years i a lot, and i wish it wasn't that much. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/ The_number_of_terrorist_attacks_worldwide_2000-2014.png