Studying abroad means different things to different people. It's a chance to learn a second language, a chance to travel the world, a chance to get away from that sophomore-year roommate who wants to sign a two-year lease on an off-campus apartment with you! Whatever it may be, one thing's for sure: Studying abroad is more fun with friends.
I studied abroad in the Tufts-in-Madrid program for my entire junior year. Many things happened to me when I got there. I was the victim of: 1) acute culture shock, 2) the unfortunate sequel to the freshman 15, the "junior 20," and 3) second-hand smoke (my home-stay family consisted of two chain smokers and one recovering smoker who had cut down to a pack and a half per day). My visions of fluent Spanish, hard partying, museum-hopping and international travel every weekend were not as easy to put into effect as I had imagined.
All of the friends I made in Madrid were Americans on my program and I happily cruised through the first two months in my English-language haze, complete with weekly visits to the Hard Rock Café for my cheeseburger fix. We were encouraged to make Spanish friends, but most of us didn't. When Thanksgiving dinner rolled around, we were allowed to invite two Spanish friends to the Tufts-organized dinner. Uh oh, I didn't have any Spanish friends. My Spanish? Same as when I had arrived.
Two or three people on the program did have Spanish friends, but the rest of us just looked on with envy as they paraded them around our holiday party. I was struck by the desperation particular to a wasted opportunity at that dinner and I vowed to make Spanish friends starting the very next day. So, I worked hard at it, inviting out Spanish people that sat next to me in class, tagging along with my 35-year-old host family "brother" and his friends, striking up conversation on the subway; I'm sure my blanket approach gave many the wrong idea. Such was life when searching for friends among the masses.
Despite having two foreign parents, I was decidedly American, and making international friends at Tufts was nothing like trying to make local friends abroad. Breaking into the mix was a challenge, especially since I didn't speak the language fluently and sounded even worse when I was yelling over loud bar music. After much dedicated effort, the real "international experience" complete with a couple of Spanish friends eventually happened for me, but never to the extent that I had envisioned while filling out my application sophomore year on campus.
After graduating from Tufts, I lived abroad in Buenos Aires for two years; I went more prepared, with a long list of friends that lived there. However, I still found it hard because some of the people I was introduced to didn't really want to make new international friends. My time in Madrid, together with the experience of living in Buenos Aires for two years after graduating from Tufts, left me with a desire to make it easier for others to integrate and assimilate into a foreign country and social scene. So, I developed Mix Match Expat (www.mixmatchexpat.com), which I launched two months ago (Oct. 2009). Mix Match Expat is a Web site designed for students and recent graduates living abroad to connect socially with each other and with the locals in their city who want to meet them. Madrid is the first city that I am targeting, and so far there are about 50 users. Most of them are Spanish, and their ages range from 18 to 30 years.
I designed Mix Match Expat so that users can search for each other based on two principal criteria: what they use the Web site for and their interests or hobbies. I figured out that the best way for people to link up and create real friendships would be to make sure that they were getting together to do something other than just language exchange, which is the natural byproduct of any multi-lingual friendship. Hanging out with people the same way you would at Tufts, like going to a ballgame together or meeting up to play tennis or to check out a building downtown that you learned about in your architecture class, is much easier and more fun than sitting in a café for 30 minutes talking in English and then 30 minutes talking in Spanish with someone that you may or may not have anything in common with.
Mix Match Expat is different from most other social networking sites in that it functions more like a dating site does, but with the purpose of making friends. You get to meet people you don't know, rather than link up with long-lost camp friends and other people you already know. All of the users utilize Mix Match Expat for the same reason: to meet people from other countries.
The membership price is nominal ($20 per year). I debated whether to make access free and go with an ad-revenue model, but decided not to place any ads on the site and instead opted for a subscription-based model. I figured that it would make the site better because people would think before signing up — the registered users would really want to be there and they would actively use it.
As globalization continues to take hold and more people choose to study and work abroad, I hope that Mix Match Expat will contribute to make the experience more fun, exciting and fulfilling, both for those venturing to new places and for those welcoming them to their hometown.
--
Andrea Alban-Davies graduated from Tufts University in 1999 with a degree in history and Spanish literature. Alba-Davies is the founder of the Mix Match Expat Web site.
