The unifying theme for the latest Absolutely Intercultural show is immersion. In the first piece a Danish scientist is asked what it is like being on a scientific expedition with a group of native English speakers.
I feel a bit guilty about the second piece featuring two young men from our 3D college who went to stay for a month in Seattle to learn more about animation techniques because they didn't choose the agenda. Perhaps they would rather not have ended up talking about urinals and American beers but I was using the very unofficial blog kept by one of their accompanying tutors as a guide as to what they had particularly noticed while in the States.
The final piece is about a scheme which on the face of it doesn't seem to have high chances of success but I witnessed for myself how well two eleven year old Belarusian boys could adapt to staying in a Scottish household with no common language to aid communication. The scheme is run by Chernobyl Children's Lifeline and is aimed at giving Belarusian children a short period of life without radioactive contamination. Incredibly, the month-long stay is believed to extend their lifespan by two years. The internet did help in this situation as the Scottish hosts used Babelfish to prepare an overview of the activities for each day.
Finally I just found a couple of really interesting surveys people can take on Stephen Pinker's page. They are not explicitly about intercultural communication but having taken both surveys myself I could see that they raised all sorts of potentially interesting questions about how people respond to awkward/morally challenging situations so I decided to recommend that our subscribers take a look.
