Study abroad, understand cultures with your own eyes

  Mike Hansen Hansen is a political
science and history student. Sooner or later, you will succumb to
his views. Send your objections to [email protected].

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Are you looking for some more excitement in your
life? Has walking down Bruin Walk and eating at Covel become
monotonous? Want to experience another culture and travel the
world?

Flash forward a year from now. This could be your life if
you decide to study abroad, something that every UCLA student
should consider:

You wake up in a foreign country, and you decide you
want some fresh air. So, as you’re lying in bed,
you simultaneously open the door with your right hand and the
window with your left hand. This is one of the many skills you
have learned by living in your “extra cozy”
apartment.

Class starts in 30 minutes, so you hurriedly get out of bed,
change your clothes and head out. There’s no need to
take a shower or put on deodorant. Doing these things daily is
considered wasteful by the locals, and you want to fit in.

While riding the bus to school, you sit down next to a local
student, your age, legs crossed, wearing tight, glittery
bell-bottom jeans, a mesh crop-top, platform shoes, long dangling
earrings and a fluorescent-pink backpack. Your seat-partner is
a heterosexual male, and you think he looks a little bit
stupid.

But then, one of his friends asks you how many cubic meters of
extra storage you have inside your jeans, and what exactly you keep
in there. Completely shocked, now you feel stupid. You
didn’t even think your Old Navy jeans were
baggy. How’s that for fitting in? Even worse, there
is now a little voice in the back of your head telling you that
maybe, just maybe, you should buy yourself a pair of tight,
glittery bell-bottom jeans.

You get to your drawing class 15 minutes late. You are also
the first one there, and the professor doesn’t arrive for
another 15 minutes. You sit back and enjoy, thinking of how
short class is going to be, and you vow never to show up 15 minutes
late ever again! Twenty minutes will be your minimum from now
on.

The professor then tells the class to begin today’s
assignment, so you diligently begin sketching a voluptuous nude
woman. The professor circles the room and pauses to look at
your progress. She bursts out in laughter, and the room
quickly follows her lead. Entirely baffled, you ask her in
your best attempt to speak her language, “What goes you
smiling?”Â She responds that she told the class to draw a
bowl of fruit, not a nude.

Living in another country has taught you to be quick on your
toes in instances of gross miscommunication like this, so you
nervously respond, “No, ha ha. It apple
curvy!”Â This response leaves your professor even more
baffled than you. You personally congratulate yourself for
your cleverness.

Between classes you make a pit-stop at the rest room. You turn
on the light and sit down to do your business. But before
you’re quite done, the timer on the light runs out, and you
are left sitting in your stall, alone and in the dark.

You reach for the toilet paper and, of course, there is none to
be found. But no worries, you’re a seasoned
resident of a foreign country and you are prepared for challenging
situations such as this. You bust out your own supply of
toilet paper from your backpack and just use that. You were
sharp enough to steal toilet paper a few days ago when you actually
found it in a public rest room.

If you’ve avoided this debacle, you think, you can
handle anything. Any tourist would have been left in a very
uncomfortable situation.

On your way home from class, you thank yourself for making the
decision to study abroad, and you know that you will return having
learned what independence and humility really are. You’ve
also gained a newfound respect for foreigners and immigrants living
in the U.S., because you know what it’s like.

Back at your apartment, you need to eat lunch before you leave
for your weekend tour of four countries in three days, all for
$150. Your curious roommates want to know what America is
like. They ask about the American Dream, and you tell them
that there is more freedom and opportunity in America than in any
other country, and this is why people come to America.

Why then, they ask you, does your country forbid its teenagers
from going out past 10:00 in many cities? Why can you fight a war,
vote and drive, but not drink a glass of wine at dinner? Why
can’t women go topless at beaches while men can? And
what about the death penalty? The ban on smoking in public
places?

You can think of many good answers for all of their questions,
but as soon as you start justifying them, you sound petty and
arrogant. You then realize that it
is premature of anyone to pass judgment
on a country having never lived there, which is
exactly why you are studying abroad.

But you don’t have time for a drawn-out conversation about
what makes America different from the rest of the
world. You’re off to see with your very own eyes.