GPS requirement for school: SLO 8: “Demonstrate the ability to collaborate effectively across cultures.”

On one of the last few days in Paris, I had the amazing opportunity to work the Henrik Vibskov fashion show, which required me to work with people from multiple different cultures.  This made the experience of working a fashion show in Paris during men's fashion week even more amazing.  I will admit trying to communicate effectively with people who don't speak english that well became difficult at times, but we worked through it and made it work!  One way that we made this work is by using a lot of hand gestures and trying to explain things in depth on both sides, which was extremely helpful.  I found that using visuals and talking with your hands is one of the most helpful things when being in a foreign country where you are constantly trying to communicate with people in different languages.  Also, one of my classmates was from Romania, so I got to learn a lot about her culture and also got to help her with her english and learning about our culture.  When we first started, she wasn't that great at speaking english, so working on class projects with her was a little difficult at first, but she got a lot better and towards the end it was so much easier to communicate with her for school work and just everyday conversations.  It was a cool feeling knowing that I helped her in little ways with learning how to effectively communicate in english and it was also interesting to ask her about her culture.  When we would ask her certain things about her culture and we found them very different from ours we would try to understand and do things the way she would so that she would not always feel like she had to adjust to our language and culture, but that we were also trying to learn and adjust to hers.  An example of this is eating habits....she said she puts ketchup on basically everything, so I tried some odd combinations of food with ketchup that she found totally normal.  Like I previously said, it is definitely challenging to work with individuals from other cultures, but if you try your hardest, you can make it something wonderful.