(By Garam Yun) There’s a need for authenticity within intercultural experiences. I did not always think this way. In December of last year, I returned from a transformative journey across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that lasted three and a half months. With about a thousand others consisting of both adults and undergraduate study abroad students, I lived on a ship and traveled from Spain and Africa to the shores of Southeast Asia. I shared in revealing conversations with my peers, which helped me to acquire the proper mentality to engage with new cultures.

A friend described one of his abroad experiences in Tanzania. While in Tanzania, Tony sat as part of an audience to an elaborate show featuring exaggerated national dance and song. Tony confessed that he had wide eyes and an awe-struck expression throughout the entire spectacle.

Juxtaposed to this story was another from a student named Sarah. She had visited France and recalled a vivid memory of an obnoxious American woman who shouted in English for the directions to the French metro. This woman screamed at a French man who could only speak French, exasperated by his inability to understand the English language. To Sarah, this woman clearly lacked a cultural sensitivity that would have allowed her to humbly acknowledge her own foreignness in the country and that would have helped her to find directions with some reverence for the French culture and language. [Read more...]