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Exchange Student Information

Traffic abroad - not like home

10/26/2010

2 Comments

 
We just received the tragic news that a Danish Exchange Student lost his life when he tried to cross a freeway just south of the center in Los Angeles in California.


In Denmark most freeways have either 2 or 3 lanes in each direction. In fact we do have one freeway just south of Copenhagen with 4 lanes in each direction.


The freeway in Los Angeles the exchange student were trying to cross on foot had 6 lanes in each direction.


It demands skills to cross such a freeway, he could have learned in Denmark. It would have been easy just to say that he should have taken some kind of public transportation instead. Public transportation may just not have been within reach for him at that point. It is a rather large city. He might have been lost and aimed for the ocean to have a fixed point where he could navigate from. We don't know.


We will pray for his family. While his prospect of a future might have been less optimitic or even non-existing now where the government is working to cancel early retirement all together, dying so early in life before he had the chance to see more of it is still a tragedy.


References:
Danish student from Redondo Beach school killed on freeway (The Daily Breeze, October 13, 2010)
2 Comments

Cultural differences can result in starvation

10/18/2010

0 Comments

 
The Danish cuisine is special and one subject where our exchange students are challenged is the food area.

For Danes the dinner time is equal reflection of the day for the entire family unit. When friends are visiting it is also the time where social ties are strengthen when they open up.

Of course this is difficult abroad when the exchange student is robbed of the tool to socialize with strangers. And a host family can never be a real family. There will be a barrier, which will be hard to overcome.

However, confronted with a story which tends to belong to the horror category, I believe that most Danish exchange students will do better.  It is a question about what country you choose to study in and of course they will also set a limit for how cultural challenge they will met.

A poor US exchange student did get poor guidance from both the exchange student agency and his parents. They did a poor job by allowing young man to live out a dream, most adults with life experience would never even plan to outlive.

Quite a number of people who have chosen not worship Christianity like most of us choose to fast. Fasting is for some a part of a native religious ritual, which you as visitor has to respect when you choose to visit their rural area. Nobody is forcing you so you can choose not to go there.

A huge responsibility is lying on both adults and the agency in such case testing very carefully whether the teenager is ready for the difficult challenge to adapt to a foreign culture. Even the slightest doubt expressed in the months before the departure must be addressed. Unfortunately some agencies are not up to take on this level of responsibility; they tend to focus on profit instead. That’s leaves the parents as the sole responsible for the safety of their child.

The question is whether the parents of future exchange students realize that they are much on their own.

References:
Exchange student says he was denied adequate food (The Boston Globe, February 28, 2008)


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    International culture exchange is a small NGO in Denmark working to protect Danish youth and preserve our unique culture.

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