1. Directness

2. Speaking Loud

3. Giving a lot of opinion

4. Closed up

5. Volunteering

Below the surface (norms and rules):

1. Act normal

2. We don’t take “bullshit”

3. Speaking loud and clear makes you understood.

4. Don’t let others take away our culture

5. Desire to help

Deep under water (values, basic assumptions, beliefs):

1. Freedom

2. Strength gains respect

3. Individualism

4. Nationalism
5. Humaneness

b. Where are you in line with your national culture? Reflect why you are in line.
Communication :  It would be hard for me to understand someone who says something else from what they mean.

b. on which two dimensions you have the biggest ‘gap’ to bridge?
We have the biggest Gap to bridge on the dimension; Orientation.

c. how do you deal with those differences in your group? Are your strategies effective until now?
We just make sure everybody gets to an equal say in things and always ask everyone their opinion.

I was a Richlander.

2. How did you experience to be in this role (feelings, thoughts, behavior)? 
I got frustrated a lot by the workers and I didn't quite now how to behave.

3. How were you approached by the other group members (feelings, thoughts, behavior)?
They (the workers) almost never talked to us and were very distant. I felt like they didn't like us.

4. What did you learn from this simulation game?
It's hard to know how to get to know someone from another culture, so you can work with them. This is because there are a lot of different things that play a role in understanding another culture.

5. Take a personal real life cross-cultural example, in which you were wondering, confused or frustrated about someone else’s behavior. Apply the four steps of responding appropriately to culturally different people in this situation. What does it tell you? 

When I worked at Van Dijk, They had a lot of polish people who worked there. They spoke polish all they long. So it was hard for me to have fun with them while working and i was bored. I didn't know how to communicate with them. And this frustrated me a lot.

Analyzing the situation by these four steps. It helps me to better understand their culture.
I now try to see things from their perspective. This showed me that they also have a hard time adjusting to the new situation.

 

Topics I didn’t quite enjoy were monochromic and polychromic cultures. They were quite confusing for me but I still understood them in the end. Also the DIE-method was quite hard to work with because I never do that in real life.

 

My two personal strengths in dealing with other cultures are, being open minded towards them. I always like to learn about them and I want to know what they are all about, and even though I am from a low context country, I am not really low context but I am not high context either. I am a mix of the two, so I would be able to handle both. My challenges are the communication. I don’t like it when I can't understand someone because of their accent.

 

I want to increase my knowledge about other counties for the end of next semester. I would like to do this by  saving up money starting from February every month. So I can travel to a foreign country and learn about their culture. I think I would like to go to Spain or Portugal because their cultures are very different from my own.

 

Next semester I would like to be able to handle people of other cultures better. I'm going to do this by spending more them with people of other cultures and show a little more interest in their culture.

19/ December 2016 Arnhem 

 

How many counties have you been to?

Well actually I haven’t been to a lot of countries. This is the first time I left my own county.

 

What do you think about traveling?

It is a very time and money consuming Activity. But I think it’s very interesting.

 

What is the amount of money that would be sufficient for you to travel around the world?

Between 10.000 and 20.000 euro’s otherwise it would be to expensive.

 

Where would you like to go to if you could travel?

I would like to travel to South-Korea and Japan. Because these are Asian countries which are a little bit similar to my own country, but their culture is still a lot different.

 

Why those countries?

Well actually those countries because I would love to try their food.

 

Who would you like to go with?

Prefer to my friends. I don’t like to travel with my parents. But if I have no other choice I will still go with them.

 

Where would you Never go to? 

Not quite sure, but I think middle eastern countries. 

 

Why not?

They are dangerous, because they have a lot of terrorists in them like ISIS.

 

What did yo think about The Netherlands when you first came.

At first it was very Unfamiliar. I had to speak English, because I don’t speak dutch. The Food here isnot that good. But I think this country is more wealthy than china. But not suitable for me.

 

What is your opinion about The Netherlands now.

 

This country is quite boring, but there are a few fun things to do. 

I could get used to it.

 

 

- I liked interviewing Jiajie, he told me some interesting stuff. I liked talking to jie.

- we both like the I dea of traveling around the world. So that was fun and we both wanted to go to South-Korea.

 

- I learned how to ask good follow-up questions.