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housing: living local abroad
Your living accommodations play a big role in shaping the overall experience you have. Housing choices vary with each country, city, and program, so it’s important to investigate the options to select one that is a good fit for your personal needs and study abroad objectives.
Click here to read the entire Housing essay. |
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health: jet lag to culture shock to the common cold
If you’re going to study or work abroad, you’ve got to consider your health. From navigating a new health care system to overcoming culture shock to figuring out where to buy a cold remedy, you’ll have new things to think about. The good news is that with planning and awareness, living abroad can be a very healthy experience.
Click here to read the entire Health essay. |
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parents: pointers to prepare for the transformation
Studying abroad will almost certainly be a defining period in your son or daughter’s educational experience — a psychological journey that will transform him or her into a global thinker with international perspectives and put him or her a step ahead of the competition in the eyes of prospective employers. Here is some advice on what to expect.
Click here to read the entire Parents essay.
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safety: info on security plans, tips for yours
At home, you probably have a natural understanding of how to keep yourself safe. Abroad, you’ll be in an unfamiliar environment, far away from people you usually rely on for guidance and support when things go wrong. That throws the idea of “safety” into a whole new light. Read on to learn what programs do — and especially what you can do — to keep yourself safer.
Click here to read the entire Safety essay. |
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return: readying to re-enter, reinvented
There’s no doubt about it: you’ve changed. The new you is returning home to meet old friends and familiar surroundings. But once you get there, you might not feel as comfortable as you remember. It’s enough of a phenomenon that educators have a term for it, “re-entry”. By integrating the person you have become abroad with the person you were before, you’ll complete the transformation you began the moment you left.
Click here to read the entire Return essay. |
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risks: the good, the bad, and how to tell the difference
Studying abroad will put you in unfamiliar situations that have the power to transform you as a student, as a citizen of the world, and as a person. If you want to learn and experience as much as you can, you’ll need to put your skills and yourself on the line. You’ll have to take risks. But don’t confuse these good risks with bad ones that can endanger the health, safety, and well-being of yourself and others. With sound judgment, good common sense, and a little restraint, you can control much of your own destiny while abroad.
Click here to read the entire Risks essay. |
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women: what you need to know abroad
Get set to learn firsthand how widely standards of behavior can vary from culture to culture. So be ready to learn, analyze, and adapt. You, like the women before you, will become part of defining how people abroad perceive American women…and the wider world will become part of defining who you are.
Click here to read the entire Women essay. |
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disability: making study abroad happen for you
Whatever your disability—physical or psychiatric, hearing or vision, cognitive or learning, systemic or something else—you can fit yourself into the study abroad puzzle. If you've always wanted to study abroad, think about what you'd like to experience—and what challenges you're ready to take on—and talk to disability experts and program staff to decide which programs are best for your goals and abilities.
Click here to read the entire Disability essay. |
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food: the edible part of culture
The food of the country you plan to study in probably wasn't the first thing you thought about (or maybe it was). Like many other lifestyle choices you make almost subconsciously on a daily basis, what you eat and drink will be called into question while you're living overseas. Breakfast doesn't mean cold cereal. Dinner may happen at lunchtime, with the complicated dishes and extended mealtimes that involves. Food and beverages are different away from home, and that's because they satisfy something deeper than hunger and thirst.
Click here to read the entire Food essay. |
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identity: sexual and gender expression abroad
Studying abroad is a golden opportunity to live another culture, soak up a second language, and transform yourself as a citizen and as a human being. If you're lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexed, or an ally (LGBTQIA, for short) this could include experimenting with and expressing alternate identities, both sexual and non-sexual.
Click here to read the entire Identity essay.
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contact: communicating while abroad in a connected world
If you talk to someone who studied abroad thirty years ago, you’ll probably hear tales of the weeks he spent on a ship carrying him and his steamer trunks to a faraway locale where nothing besides the occasional letter would interrupt his isolation from the life he’d known before. Today, study abroad is as much an experience of personal transformation as ever, but it definitely involves less detachment from other people and places. First, transportation advances made distances much, much smaller. Then, communication tools such as mobile phones and the Internet built us a borderless world of instant, constant contact.
Click here to read the entire Contact essay.
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exchange: ambassadorship in an age of global conflict
What determines someone’s initial perceptions of you, your country, and your culture? At the core, it’s their attitudes toward the political, economic, social, and cultural systems of your homeland. This perspective on your home country is a big part of what you’ll gain by studying abroad. You’ll see first-hand that the world is asymmetrical, full of people and nations with divergent views—and yet that we are more interdependent than ever. Your time abroad will ready you to live in that world.
Click here to read the entire Exchange essay. |
As a leading U.S. non-governmental international education organization, CIEE develops and provides programs that allow students and educators to study and teach abroad. We believe there is no better way to increase international understanding and establish trust between nations. Whether your student chooses one of our 109 programs or another provider’s, we hope that the advice contained in the Knowledge series helps you prepare them for a successful experience abroad.
Any questions regarding the brochures, placing an order, or suggestions for future topics you would like to see addressed in the series, can be sent to knowledge@ciee.org.