Cross-Cultural Experiences

In November of 2022, I attended the Singapore Pen Pal Zoom Sessions, talking to two students at St Nicholas Girls’ School in Singapore, Ong Wei Shyan and Esther Loh Xin Qi. Going into the experience, I did not know what to expect, but my goal was to learn more about the students’ cultures and perspectives, along with sharing my own if I got the chance. I learned a lot about their education, including the normality to live with parents during college in Singapore, which is not usually the case in the United States. It was extremely interesting to learn about their interests, including their music tastes and hobbies. I got to see Wei Shyan’s cat during one of the Zoom sessions! This experience has informed my global perspective because not only did I understand more about life as a teenage girl in Singapore, I learned how although we have different cultures and are extremely far away from each other, we share common interests. We talked about Tik Tok and how our parents don’t understand some trends. By the last session, we were all very comfortable with each other and it was sad to say goodbye, although I am grateful for everything I got to learn from them. 

I attended Harvard Model United Nations in late January of 2023, which I decided to do as I enjoy doing Model UN and I knew there would be many different people to meet and talk to. Going into it, my goal was to work with as many different people as possible, making sure I listened to their ideas during moderated and unmoderated sessions. I learned a lot about the people I worked with, with some of the people I worked alongside from Germany, England, Venezuela, Canada, and many other countries, along with people from different areas of the United States including Michigan and New York. Lottie and Tilda, delegates who were representing Ukraine during our sessions but were from the south of London, were sharing their education system with us, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives on how it is similar and different to education in the United States. This experience has informed my global perspective because I got to share something that I enjoy with people from all across the world who also enjoy Model UN. We got to work together to make resolutions and I learned a lot about their ideas, influenced by them personally and from the areas they are from. Due to this experience, I now follow many people I met at HMUN on social media and now I get to see what they are doing, which is really interesting and informative. 

I can honestly say that my second Singapore Pen Pal experience was one of my favorite activities I did not just in through the GCSE program, but in all of high school. A fellow global scholar and I met with Kai Xing Eyu, Phoebe Fung Pui Yan, and Gisele Tan Si Han, all from St. Nicholas Girls School in Singapore. We all connected quickly and found it very easy to talk to each other, despite being across the world from each other, talking on a screen, and thirteen hours separated. I learned a lot about the teenage social life of Kai Xing, Phoebe, and Gisele, and it was interesting comparing it to the average teenage social life here at Notre Dame. We all did similar activities in terms of sports and extracurriculars, but many of their activities are orchestrated directly from their school, whereas most social activities for me are not orchestrated by my school. Also, dances are less common for them at their school, and if there are no dances no one brings dates! I liked learning these small facts, because I believe that the small details play a larger role in understanding a person’s life.  Also, the city life of Singapore was very intriguing to learn more about. Car ownership is more expensive there and not necessary to get around Singapore, so owning a car is less common there. Since I live in such a car-heavy area, this seems so different to me and it sparked conversations between us about our country’s environmentally-friendly policies. I believe that the US could learn a lot from Singapore in terms of their efforts to reduce environmental impact. Overall, I absolutely loved my experience in my second Singapore Pen Pals, as I gained new friends across the globe. Gisele was in a group of St. Nicholas students who took a trip to the United States a couple weeks after our last Zoom session, and visited Notre Dame. I am so grateful for the Singapore hat she got me, along with a kind note from her (which included a remark about our shared love of mint chocolate chip ice cream, which we learned during our first Zoom session). She is such a positive light that I am happy to always remember and know. At times, I feel that globalization can be portrayed very negatively, which although has validity, fails to recognize the beautiful experiences globalization facilitates, like my Singapore Pen Pal experience.  I am so excited to keep in touch with Kai Xing, Phoebe, and Gisele, and would absolutely love to see them in Singapore one day.

I attended Harvard Model United Nations in Boston for a second time, and this experience was just as (or even more so) fulfilling than the last. This year I was a representative for Nigeria in the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee.  The topic was the preservation of indigenous cultures and traditions. My research allowed me to learn about the extensive and rich indigenous populations in Nigeria, and at the conference I learned more about indigenous cultures in the over a hundred countries represented in my committee. Aside from information learned, I loved meeting the other delegates, many of whom were from different parts of the planet. I worked with, and became friends with, delegates from Brazil, India, Morocco, and so many other countries. My favorite part of the conference was the last committee meeting, after passing a solution (the one Nigeria signed on!). We all played music, and it was very cool to see the favorite songs from the other delegates. They presented the lyrics to songs in Portuguese and Spanish, so we could sing along and learn. I have never been in a room with so many people from different countries, and it was incredible to watch us all bond and learn from each other, despite being strangers days earlier. I now follow dozens of the delegates on social media, so I now get to be connected with them in the future. We have a group chat too on Instagram and WhatsApp, and I am excited to learn more about them through social media in the years to come.