Blog 6 Trevor and Katelyn

Across this entire study tour, I have learned that my desire to travel is even stronger than what I originally thought. I have always been interested in travelling and learning about different cultures, but I never had the opportunity to or chose to put my money towards something else. After going to places such as the Canadian Embassy and the United Nations, my eyes were opened to the opportunities that exist for myself and everyone on this trip. I think it is safe to say that everyone on this trip is at least somewhat interested in travelling and some others are interested in working in an international context. Personally, I took a lot of information away from the meeting with the trade commissioner. Working at a Canadian embassy abroad has never been something that I would’ve considered before that visit. The way that Simon-Pierre described his job and the passion that he talked with really struck me. This is now something that I am going to do some more research on once I get back home to Canada. Another thing that I learned about myself on this trip is that I wasn’t as culturally aware as I previously thought I was. I believe that due to the fact that we live in Canada, where there are people from multiple cultures, that we think we have a decent understanding about how those other cultures function. Although, I think that the downfall to this is that, while all of these different cultures exist in Canada, for the most part, they are a Canadian version of the culture. This means that the culture here is much stronger because that is the norm. Whereas in Canada, we have so many cultures that there isn’t really one that is the dominating norm. What has everyone else learned about themselves on this study tour?

Below is a photo that was taken at the opera house in Vienna. It was a wonderful cultural experience for all of us. This is unlike anything that I personally have ever been