In the winter of 2022, I took a study abroad trip for two weeks to Lisbon, Portugal, and Porto, Portugal. This trip was the first time I traveled outside of the United States! I was hoping to gain the opportunity to travel abroad, specifically for this course to learn how business in Portugal differs from America. At first glance, there are a lot of differences in the culture and how people in Portugal function on a daily basis. Although both of the cities we have traveled to are capital countries, meaning that a significant amount of people speak English, I do wish I learned a little Portuguese beforehand to prepare for this trip. To any fellow study abroad student I would advise learning a bit of the language beforehand because you cannot assume that everyone will speak your language and personally I feel that people in the country respect you more for trying to speak their language. My biggest mistake while traveling abroad was assuming that most things in Portugal were the same as in the United States. Things that were considered normal to the Portuguese were things I had to learn along the way such as doing your laundry with a washer and dryer is rare. Hardly any dryers are present in Portugal and it is common to hang your clothes to dry on a clothesline. I definitely had a culture shock going to the grocery store and discovering that eggs and milk that in America we would find in the cold section of the store ended up in a regular aisle not refrigerated. Another thing was that my roommate and I wanted to get a thing of cokes and I saw that a 6 pack of cokes was opened and found that you can remove a certain amount you want to pay for at an individual price and lastly at least in Portugal you have to pay for a bag to put your stuff in. While visiting different companies in Lisbon I quickly figured out how vastly different Portugal does business compared to the States. Portugal values customer relations and the quality of its products even if that means they have to wait years until it actually makes a profit. On the other hand, the United States is all about efficiency and making the most money in the shortest time frame. Traveling abroad has really put me seeing the world and doing business from a different perspective. I highly recommend to anyone to travel internationally at least once in their lifetime.
