Report: Gaining experiences abroad Introduction The aim of this report is to take a closer look at the language and cultural aspects of gaining experiences abroad. Going to another country brings a lot of benefits but it can be also challenging at the same time. At the end a few recommendations are given. Language For many people learning a foreign language is the most important point of going abroad for a longer period of time. As a new language learner it is recommended to go for at least three months. Though most people get the best language immersion when living for a year in a foreign country. Then the host language is established well enough to enable you to travel in the country independently. Cultural understanding The second most important aspect of living abroad for some time is to learn about the different culture. For a lot of people this can be also an intense time, where they review and understand their own culture better. You might discover that something that is deemed very important in your country, is not considered at all in the guest country, and life is perfectly possible without it. The same observation can be done the way around. Recommendations A lot of people reported language learning difficulties because they stayed to close to their native language when being abroad. It is definitely recommended to learn about the host culture before you travel. With this preparation will not be too surprised if people react in an totally unexpected way to your own intuition.

The limits of technology - 1.1 - Expanding my horizon Inspired by a text I read here about computing and technology advances, I want to have a go myself. I am very interested in this field and I will write a few entries about it. This first entry will be about some anecdotes of my personal experience. In the past 15 years I went on a journey from a complete computer analphabet to writing software almost every day. When I grew up I loved books. In my later youth the realization set in, that it is impossible to know everything and it is difficult to access accurate facts on the fly. This is not a great situation to be in, but everybody I knew had the same limitation. When I had a gameboy I dreamed that it could do more with it than just playing stupid games. I imagined I would use it as a library and it also could do calculations. In school I was slightly annoyed that a calculator could not provide more useful functionalities. But this was the way it was and I learned to not to dwell too much on those illogical technological limitations. I noticed that a few kids around me got those giant slow boxes with a screen, on which they played quite ugly games. It was nothing for me. In school the computer classes were boring. This was partly due to the long booting times and it took a while before the last was on the same page when we stepped through exercises. I think the biggest achievement was a box and circle drawn train going from right to left on the screen. The rest of school focused on the use of powerpoint. It was during my university time, when I noticed some of the technological potential. All my extra income that time came from work with technology. Running business training simulators across the country and developing digital learning systems. My thesis was about elearning. Technology was innocent and funny anecdotes appeared like that one of the universities servers was hijacked to host inappropriate content. The sky was the limit and I dwelt many hours a day on the pre-facebook social media sites. I heard of some fellow students making thousand of Euros per month playing online poker. My friends was playing too but he never won anything, so I put it down as a myth. My first 64 mb usb stick had a great impact on me. It had a voice reorder, mp3 player and cost EUR 50 (£33, $60). The old super game boy dream started to stir in the background.