Cross Culture Pop Culture
This hugely popular American sitcom starring Steve Carrell, John Krasinski, and Jenna Fischer was adapted from a British show with the same name.
The Office
In 1963 this Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author known for such works as East of Eden and the Grapes of Wrath was a U.S. Fulbright Specialist to Europe.
John Steinbeck
This beverage, brewed my mixing boiling water with different kinds of herbs and leaves, is essential to welcome ceremonies all over the world.
Tea
These two-piece swimsuits caused a bit of a scandal when they debuted in Paris in July, 1946.
Bikini
This German idiom Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund encourages people to get up early by saying that the morning hour has this valuable element in its mouth.
Gold
Almost every culture in the world has a connection to this type of art, which is the practice of elegantly writing with a brush or a special pen.
Calligraphy
Alexander de Croo, the Prime Minister of this country, was a Fulbright Student in the early 2000s.
Belgium
The Maori people, who are indigenous to New Zealand, have a welcome ceremony known as the hongi, where participants press this part of their bodies together.
Noses
This film festival held internationally in the French city it is named after, first took place the same year the Fulbright program was created.
Cannes
If you were trying to fool a Russian person, you might say you were trying to Вешать лапшу на уши (veshat’ lapshu na ushi) which literally means to hang these delicious carbohydrate-filled foods from their ears.
Noodles
This bilingual Korean and English film was nominated for six Oscars this year, and won in the category of Best Supporting Actress with cast member Youn Yuh-jung.
Minari
This Fulbright alum won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for his efforts to end the decades long civil war in Colombia.
Juan Manuel Santos Rivera
You’ll often see Americans do this while taking selfies, but in Tibet one way to greet someone is by sticking out this part of the body.
Tongue
This man, who was the lead singer of Queen, shared a birth year with the Fulbright Program.
Freddie Mercury
In Italy, you might describe an unwanted visitor as un cane in chiesa. In English, that sentence would translate to this animal in church.
Dog
In this recently released sequel, the two main characters portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova were supposedly speaking Kazakh to each other, but in reality they were speaking Hebrew and Bulgarian respectively.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Yaaas King! You may know this man as the current King of Spain, but before that he was a Fulbright Student at Georgetown University in the early 1990s.
King Felipe VI
This welcome ceremony found in many Slavic cultures has also been observed in space! Russian cosmonauts welcomed the first American astronaut to the space station Mir by offering him bread and this seasoning.
Salt
This U.S. country music star was born in Tennessee the same year as the Fulbright Program. She recently made headlines for donating more than $1 million to the research efforts that eventually produced the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Dolly Parton
A sad French person might say that they avoir le cafard. Literally, this means that they have this hard-to-kill insect.
Cockroach
This iconic Cuban-American singer is a native speaker of English and Spanish, but is fluent in several other languages as well. In her 2013 album The Standards she sings in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.
Gloria Estefan
One of the U.S.’s most famous and controversial diplomats, this man served as both National Security Advisor and later as Secretary of State. Before he was a major foreign policy practitioner and scholar, he was a U.S. Fulbright Specialist to India in 1963.
Henry Kissinger
In some Eurasian cultures, hosts welcome guests to their home by gifting them a khata, which is a piece of this.
Cotton or silk cloth
This type of plastic containers used to store leftovers first went on sale in 1946. Yet despite 75 years of innovation, inventors still haven’t found a way to keep them from getting stained by brightly colored foods ☹
Tupperware
In Sweden if you're caught unprepared for something, locals might say you were Skägget i brevlådan, or caught with your beard in this item, which is used to hold letters.
Mailbox