Traveling – Finding Eden

Phrases To Learn Wherever You Go

I have had way too many experiences with Americans going abroad and getting ANGRY that someone doesn’t speak English. Can you imagine???

I understand that learning a language is hard, and learning the language for every country you visit is not feasible at all, but I think at the bare minimum you should learn a few phrases before you go somewhere where they speak a different language.

These are my survival phrases in any language:

Yes & No
- They’re usually really easy words because they’re used so often!
Hello (and goodbye)
- It’s polite in most western countries, but it’s actually considered pretty rude not to greet people in some countries.
- It’s usually the first word to learn for any language and it’s really cool to have a collection of them.
I’m sorry/ Excuse me
- Sometimes it’s the same word!
I can’t speak… (Chinese, Russian, Czech, Spanish, Polish, etc.)
- My number one absolute MOST used phrase in any language. lol
Please & Thank you (and you’re welcome)
- Being extra polite will really make up for the fact that talking to you and helping you is a huge hassle when you can’t speak the same language.
I would like… (this or that)
- My go to for ordering. “I would like this please” and point.
- It’s usually a more complicated conjugation (since it’s in the conditional) but if you aren’t learning the whole language, it’s a lot easier to learn the whole phrase.
This is good.
- Surprisingly useful phrase. You can use it in a restaurant to compliment the food, or tell a taxi driver that this is a good place to stop and they don’t have to go further into a crowded parking lot.

There are lots of other phrases that would be helpful to learn, but I think these are the ones that will help you the most!

And make sure to do your research on the best translations of these phrases. Like normally I would say “I would like this please” but it’s not a normal thing to say in Russian. Instead, they say “mozhnuh” which is like may I. And in Chinese there are two ways to say I’m sorry: “dway boo chee” or “boo how yeesuh” and they’re used differently in different circumstances. And in many languages you can say versions of hello, but the informal versions are rude to say to someone older than you. Languages are tricky, but they’re so fun!

What Kind of Study Abroad Program Should I Do?

In the United States there are 2 types to choose from:

An exchange, where you pay a small program fee (a few hundred dollars) and your normal tuition. You pay rent and feed yourself on your budget, just like you would at home.
A program like CIEE, IES, or USAC. Usually running anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 a semester.

The choice is pretty clear, right? But people still choose those expensive programs! So they must be offering something amazing, right? Something that makes all that money worth it.

Those programs offer complete support. I have a group to meet you at the airport, they take care of the apartment hunting for you (read you have no choice where or who you live with), they take care of your meals. It’s a smaller group of foreign students together so you get more one on one attention, and they plan outings for you to other cities.

That might appeal to you, but it doesn’t appeal to me. The point of studying abroad is to learn, grow, and become more independent. With those programs, you pay more to lose the freedom of choice. On an exchange you get to do everything yourself, and it gives you so much freedom, and that freedom helps you to build lifelong skills.

On travel: You make fast friends with a huge group of foreign kids who all have the same interests to go to museums, travel, and see history. It’s easy to find a group of people and learn to book your own tickets when and where you want to go.

On housing: You get to find your own apartment, you set your own budget and choose where and who you want to live with! Most of the times you’ll be saving money renting in a foreign country than you would paying for on campus housing at any American university anyways!

On food: You get to grocery shop like a local, and find your own favorite restaurants rather than eating at the dining hall because you already paid for it.

I truly think if I had done a program in Italy rather than an exchange, I never would have built the confidence to go on and live in China and Russia.

The only major benefit I DO see from programs like those is they tend to cater more to other majors besides business and economics, majors like English, drama, or history. I ended up taking masters level design courses, mixed with Italian, Italian history, and Italian markets, and I loved all of them, even as an English Major. I loved getting to choose my own classes out of everything the university offered, just like I would have at my home university. I think when you study abroad, you should be learning about the country you’re in too! So if you do want to try to do an exchange, the only thing I would recommend is saving as many of your electives as you can for it!

And there is one other crazy option too. I know a guy who didn’t find any programs he liked, so he switched to all online classes at his university, found an apartment to share with a bunch of exchange students and just moved to Spain for the semester. I think you miss out on a lot of the camaraderie that way, but you do have more time to travel than anyone else because you aren’t stuck in physical classes! College really is the age to live abroad. Once life gets started and you have commitments and responsibilities, it gets so much harder to leave.