Behind the scenes of my fist day of school.

If traveling abroad to study in the summer time, you most likely will stay in one room during the day and different professors will come and go. This post will give you a behind the scenes perspective of what to expect on your first day of classes when traveling abroad  to Europe. I remember my first day at the University of West England. The University of the West of England (UWE)   That day our director spoke first in class.  He focused his discussion on survival tips while in Bristol, England.  I recommend you look up some basic survival tips for the city/ Europe as a whole if you do not get taught them. Some of the basic, yet important things I recommend you learn is for example: they call beer is lager and that is a lot stronger there. I recommend you learn the different kinds of taxis in your specific town. Another important thing to know and learn is what are the recommended tipping percents for the bars/pubs, restaurants and taxis.  I think it is a good idea to start learning the culture in the particular country you are in; that is what we learned the first day with a group exercise on culture; which was an Arabic number exercise, where we had to figure out which symbols mean which numbers in Arabic. We tried a dried prune and marmolite. Both foods were not so good but local people love them. Hey, can’t hate it till you try it, I always say! I feel as if they are an acquired taste anyways. Other differences are they call it first, second and third year here instead of freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. In that rist day of class, I remember us learning about Intercultural Communication and the definition of culture. Also, we talked about how culture can be explained into three categories: products, behaviors, and ideas. Tonight when my roommate and I arrived back to our host families home, we had a really different kind of chilly with rice for dinner. The one thing I liked about it was it was completely different than my mom’s back home. At dinner, we discussed the differences in laws. I learned that it is legal to have an open drink walking through town; which is also completely the opposite of what the law is in the United States. When going out at night, I recommend you carry a local map or have a phone with maps on it because that night my roommate and I got lost walking home from a really cool bar named Sloans.