Vlerick Business School

Indian universities and especially the University of Delhi, has all courses in English and moreover, I, for one cannot differentiate between English and Hindi. I am equally at ease with both of them. The language back home, therefore, was no issue. While in Belgium, Dutch was absolutely un-understandable. I still remember the day when one of my classmates, in the very beginning of the year taught me basic phrases, such as "Do you have vegetarian food?", "Do you speak English?" etc. It was never a problem in Gent because English is understood by a fair majority of the population. At school, since the programme is in English, it was explicitely stated by the Programme Director, in the very beginning, that people should speak English while at school. I laughed at the aspirations that very day. It is simply not possible for the Dutch speakers to speak English amongst themselves but I am very grateful to all of my Belgian classmates who almost all the time, switched over to English, as soon as there was an international student in their vicinity. There were a couple of problems, with a couple of people, at a certain time, as they just did not care to switch, even when it was an academic discussion in a group, but then again, no complaints. I will not stop short of calling the other 99% in the class as very co-operative, just because 1% did not care.

I was the Public Relations Praeses (representative) for the PUB group and was responsible for all communication to the external community as well as within the group. Sponsorship meetings mostly took place in Dutch, with myself replying in Afrikaans - no problems - except for them laughing every now and then at the double negation :)

was ok