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Is It Dangerous to Fall in Love Abroad?

This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 9: Meeting Monday. Is it dangerous to fall in love abroad?

Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you’ll finally get real native English conversation. Now here are your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer’ and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel’, coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

In this episode, we’re gonna share our top three favorite websites for making native English speaker friends, real friends at home, uh, in your country where you live.

Okay. So Gabby. Good to see you again. How’s it going?

Good to see you too Lindsay.

All right. So today we’re talking about the experience of going abroad and immersing yourself in a new culture and in what way could we – I mean like what is that like. Like what are your experiences being abroad?

Yeah. Well, I just – I mean I’ve fallen in love with the culture when I go

abroad like, I’ve been to several different countries, uh, Japan, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and I think when we’re talking about falling in love, we’re talking about really learning about the culture, living in it, finding things that you enjoy, things that become part of you, um, things that you want to go back to, again and again. So it’s kind of like a tongue-in-cheek thing to say ‘fall in love.’ Like we’re not talking about you know, romance or anything like that, but really just the appreciation of a place and a culture.

Yeah,

So, I mean, I’m trying to think – I had so many specific examples, but um, I would say, you know, like in Brazil, taking dance classes, you know, I, I just felt um, amazing, you know, learning new movements and interacting with locals through um, through the dance classes was really great because it’s not something that I had to be super fluent in Portuguese to, you know, to interact with people, um, in a dance class. It’s more movement based and there were just a lot of locals in the classes and it was a great way to get immersed going to dance classes every day.

Yeah. That sounds like a really cool thing. Yeah, that feeling of immersion is a special experience that not everyone gets a chance to have in their life and so the more that you can immerse yourself in, into the culture and meet the local people, the more of a rich experience you’re gonna (going to) have.

What was uh, one way that you, you kind of fell in love with a, a culture?

Yeah. I mean again, so many experiences and so many different things that I could talk about forever and I feel like the memories are starting to fade also which is a little bit sad, um, but I don’t know, living in Buenos Aires, I lived there for three months and I met lots of local people, got invited to a lot of like family barbeques.

Nice.

And that was great, just enjoying the meat, and the wine, and the bread

and just kind of seeing how they enjoyed their Sunday, how the stores close on Sundays completely so nobody is off during errands or working.

They’re like spending the time with family and that to me was really cool.

Very nice. I think what you said about, you know, the memories, um, keeping those memories alive, you could do that by journaling or blogging when you are living in a new place or um, or just all the time. I mean why limit it to when you go abroad, but for me journaling really helps not only to develop my foreign languages, but to remember those experiences. So you know bring a paper or an electronic journal with you.

Yeah, or also when you get back to your home country, trying to connect with people from that country that you were in.

Oh yeah.

You know, like I like to go to the, the Boston Spanish meet-up…

Yeah.

where I do meet people from Argentina or from wherever.

And, and meetup, this is literally a website, www.meetup, so M-e-e-t-u-

p.com and it’s really popular all over the US. Um, I’m not sure about other countries, but maybe it’s starting.

Yeah. That’s a good question. I feel like it’s starting to spread across the world.

Yeah.

I think it is.

Yeah, you can find um, you know, people like conversation partners, activity partners through meetup or through a lot of different websites nowadays.

Yeah. I was also thinking about couchsurfing.com

Definitely.

could be another great – the other day I met a student in New York

who’s doing a lot with couchsurfing. Like she’s going out, attending the meetups through couchsurfing.com and she’s meeting a lot of people and practicing her English a lot and I know that she’s gonna be successful.

It’s not just about finding a place to stay with Couchsurfing.

Right.

You can meet someone for coffee and uh, just get to know someone from another culture, another language, so it’s a really good resource for just meeting people who love to travel and to connect with people from other cultures.

Yeah, that’s important.

Another website and group that I enjoy is InterNations. Um, it’s really popular in the US, but I first started going in Japan when I lived over there and I know there’s chapters all over the world. They have over a million members now. Again, it’s just a place where you can meet other people who like to interact with international friends.

Wow! That’s cool. Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get to one of those here in

Boston–

Oh, yeah.

but there’s a big community here.

It’s a big group. It’s a big group. And it’s different everywhere you go. Some, uh, some chapters are free, some you have to pay for, so just check it out and uh see what it’s like in your area.

Yeah, so falling in love abroad, immersing yourself, meeting people and making memories that, you know, you’ll have forever.

Yeah, it’ll change you forever when you study abroad and you’ll wanna connect with uh, those kinds of people again.

Absolutely.

Okay. So I have a question for you guys today. Are you wondering how to

maximize your time and learn English as quickly as possible and as easily as

possible? I know everyone’s busy these days, so you might be wondering this. So here’s one way. We have a free e-book and we have your – some top – the top ten ways to learn English with a podcast. So we’d like to offer that to you as a gift, for, just for being a listener of the All Ears EnglishPodcast and you can get that by going to www.allearsenglish.com/free.

Thanks for listening to the All Ears English Podcast. We’re here to help you learn English and you can help us by leaving a five star review on iTunes. See you next time.