By Julia Andborn

This is my second to last blog post and I just wanted to share a bit more about the actual activities that we had access to and participated in during the Asia Travel Study. The company Worldstrides provided activities and executive sessions like I mentioned previously and they were great! There was a wide variety of cooking classes, an escape room to bond with the class, a virtual tour, a tea ceremony, and a taekwondo lesson. It felt like we got a taste of each country through these interactive sessions and got a glimpse of each country’s culture. I especially found the cooking classes to be super interesting, because I love food! 

To be honest, I wasn’t very knowledgeable in regards to these Asian countries prior to this Travel Study. However, this made the Travel Study even more interesting and important for me. I really learned a lot about the different cuisines of some Asian countries and I was also exposed to some of their historic cultures. 

It was also very interesting to always have the main theme be related to business and to learn how business culture works in each country and then also compare it to the US. I feel like my global mindset has definitely expanded through this knowledge and awareness. My global social capital has also expanded since I have made new friends and contacts both with fellow students, our professor, and business leaders.   

If any one of you who reads these blog posts are thinking about doing a Travel Study at UCLA, I would highly recommend it! It is so much fun to learn about different cultures, while at the same time meeting people with different backgrounds that have similar interests as you. UCLA provides a lot of Travel Study programs and if I were you, I would go check them out and plan to take one in the future. I promise, you will not regret it! 

I hope you have an awesome day and that these blog posts may have intrigued some of you to enroll in the upcoming Travel Studies provided by UCLA. 

Julia Andborn participated in our virtual study abroad in Asia in Summer 2021. https://ieo.ucla.edu/travelstudy