Choose your lifestyle

Article

Choose your lifestyle

ID # 3740

My name is Zishu Chen, sophomore, majoring in Economics. I also hope to major in information science because I love pretty websites and interesting blogs. I grew up in Ningbo, a harbor city in China and didn’t come to America until the freshman year of my college. Life started to change ever since.

Travel is my favorite activity. Because it makes me feel alive and pumped about the world. My favorite part about traveling is observing and talking to people, which is how I learn about amazingly various lifestyles all around the world. It enables me to live outside of my small world (the physical surroundings limited by my location). I enjoy the freedom to choose the lifestyle I want–Chinese, European, American, Australian, etc. Life is good.

When I was eight, my mom studied abroad in Germany for half a year. German friends have been visiting my family ever since. So from an early age I learned there are many people in the world living differently from how me, my parents, my friends and teachers live. This kind of freshness excites me. Later in my Junior year of high school I visited Australia for ten days. I stayed with a local family in Western Australia for nine days. I was amazed to find that almost every family had a swimming pool, shocked to see people wearing jackets in August, and surprised to see boys walking on street naked, holding their surfing board. Instead of busying working everyday, people there play games in beautiful natural parks with family and friends on warm sunshine afternoons. It’s my first time to learn that somewhere in the world, people are worried about competing with each other all day long.

After Australia I started college application, and had to go to HongKong to take SATs. Ironically, English works better than Mandarin Chinese in Hong Kong. Whereas many people don’t know Mandarin Chinese, asking for direction in English usually gets you out of trouble. It’s shocking to see cross-cultural communication problems exist even between Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong people. After I came to the United States, the problem because even more outstanding. For example, my oriental indirectness has got me into many misunderstandings.

In a word, my experience abroad has been learning about different ways of living and adapting to cross-cultural communications. I’m looking forward to hone the skills of learning about different cultures and communicating in diverse culture-settings in this class!