Last week's reading was on the idea of intercultural encounter. This idea branches off to cultural shock and language problem. How people who travel or study abroad are the ones who usually experience this. It speaks about the experiences that people go through as they study abroad. The feeling of loneliness because they don't understand what and how everything is acting, the culture is different, there certain rules-- the "ins and outs" of certain behavior or just regular daily life actions.

When I studied abroad in China, I didn't know what it meant to be polite. I wanted to make a first impression by being a nice person. But, I realized that I didn't know the norms of how to be polite in China. I was lost. I wanted to make new friends but I was afraid of how I was going to be perceived. But, most importantly, there was a language barrier. Most of the time, I only knew how to say hello, goodbye, and saying no to people. It was a different experience, I felt really weird and left out for the first time.

Although, I was afraid the first few days, I was fully excited and embraced culture shock. I really think that what we need to do in order to fully get the whole experience of studying abroad is to embrace culture shock and go in with an open mind.