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Transcripts:

Hello everyone I am Jennifer Kumar from Authentic Journeys and
alaivani dot com. Hope you're having a great day!

I wanted to ask you a question.

What circumstances do you think help or hinder someone from
integrating...

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Transcripts:

Hello everyone I am Jennifer Kumar from Authentic Journeys and
alaivani dot com. Hope you're having a great day!

I wanted to ask you a question.

What circumstances do you think help or hinder someone from
integrating into another culture?

Do you think by simply moving to another country that you will
learn and appreciate and assimilate into another culture?

I used to assume, and I am still guilty of assuming that just
because people move to another country that they want to learn
another culture. **BEEP** I'm wrong! I know I'm wrong. It's not
true because people go to other countries for many different
reasons. They don't always have to be wanting to 'be like a local';
and the other is I realize that people - everybody experiences life
differently and based on their circumstances even if they wanted to
do what I did they may not have the opportunity to. I'll give you
an example.

I went to India -
- as a single person
- I lived in the hostel with locals the entire time or I lived as
a paying guest in the house of a local person
- I never lived with an American person
- I rarely hung out with American people - there were really no
Americans around
- I rarely hung out with international people
- I, in two years, had about 4 or 5 American meals
- I rarely watched TV or American movies; although I had access to
that I just did not want to do that
- I had to learn new ways of communicating; even if that be
learning a new Indian English accent or learning Tamil
- I had to learn new ways of dressing; I had to learn to wear the
sari and salvaar kamiz. Although that was the more accepted dress
code, I could wear jeans on occasion if I wanted to.

These are some of the factors- those are some of the physical
factors.

The emotional factors are these-
- I wanted to assimilate
- I, in my mind, chose to go on my own. I knew if I went with

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