Sneak peak to the panel discussion <3

Rennes Thabor Park, France

Hello everyone, it’s Joshua! Thank you for visiting Belonging Beyond Borders! If you weren’t there on the 19th of October, we did our third discussion panel via Zoom, where everyone was invited to join our open community. So, during this panel, there were 20 people from over 10 different nationalities. We discussed about multiple topics like: “As an international student, what are your greatest struggles regarding adaption to new places when you move?” and also “How do you stay connected to your global and local community?”.

It was very interesting because we could see that there were a lot of various answers depending on the experiences of each other (you can see all of the answers on our Instagram, Please follow!!!).

I found it interesting that many struggled with adapting to the small things in daily life. For example, every country has various topics to talk about with their friends. This could make it difficult to understand the casual jokes or their "trend". One participant shared her experience of not getting the sense of humor and feeling awkward as she simply didn't understand why everyone was laughing.

Additionally, it makes it even more challenging to find “real” friends who you can build strong trust and bond. When you finally find or join friend groups, it is really difficult to keep in touch with them if you move around constantly. During the panel discussion, each of us shared our personal strategies to keep connections around the world.

I hope we see you in our next panel, you can ask to join via dms or comments on this blog :)

Joshua Rousseau Namihisa, blog team member