Well I've traveled quite a bit in my life so far and I have many international friends. I like to think I'm fairly well cultured for my young age. I also make great efforts to be accepting and understanding of cultural differences, but you can't anticipate every thing.
Here are some of the things I'm experiencing as culture shock this go-'round... there seems to be zero sense of one's surroundings. People walk down the street and just stop or turn around without acknowledging you're walking behind them, or they'll see you coming the opposite direction and will not make an effort to move over so you can also walk on the sidewalk. Now, I reckon this happens regularly in the US also but my senses are heightened here and I am usually pretty perceptive to my surroundings anyway.
Then there is personal space. It's always said that Europeans have smaller personal spaces than Americans. I think there are countries that are more extreme with this than the UK. However, I was standing in line at a cafe today waiting for the sandwich I had ordered and four people legitimately surrounded me looking at their options to the point that when I received my order and tried to move out of the way I ran into almost every one of them.
Nottingham has two universities in the city, therefore it has a very large student population. The University of Nottingham has a considerable amount of international students, undergraduate and postgraduate, so the majority of the people I've met so far are not UK nationals. This just adds to the confusion, excitement, and learning experience because you never know what to expect!
Today I had a Coffee and Cake event for my division. I walked into the room and clearly looked a bit awkward. Many people were already at tables in small groups talking. The only person who invited me to join his group was a man from Bahrain who is working on his PhD. He was with two other Middle Eastern students, a man from Iraq and a woman from Lebanon. The Lebanese woman is actually in my program! Anyway, they were speaking Arabic but changed to English when I joined them. The man from Iraq had never met an American before so he had lots of questions about where I'm from, what it is like, the difference between the District of Columbia and a state, how I greet people, if we talk about the weather, etcetera. He said I was much more friendly than the British. I told him it's an American stereotype that we will talk to any one whereas the British are much more reserved, or so I've heard. But then things happen in conversation that you can't expect and don't really know how to react to... Such as I was explaining some of us were out at a bar last night, a girl came over to introduce herself because she had heard I am in the MPH program, but the music was so loud I couldn't hear anything. The man from Bahrain stopped me and said, "you couldn't understand anything, not you couldn't hear anything." Well yes, sir, you are correct in catching that grammatical error... Conversational English is obviously different than proper English, and my dialect is going to be different from here, or British English in general, and especially different from people who are not native English speakers.
The last night I have somewhat struggled with is grocery shopping. It hasn't been a terrible struggle, but they call things different names than we do. So it'll be the same product but named something that confuses me. The main example is I wanted to buy sugar in the grocery store and there were like ten kinds. Obviously I knew I didn't need brown sugar or confectioners sugar, but there were two possibilities for what could be normal sugar... In the paper bag, right next to each other. So I had to ask the man and of course he proceeded to explain to me all the different types. I mean, I know what sugar is I just want you to tell me the correct name for every day, put-in-your-tea sugar. Anyway, now I can't even recall the name of it!
I'm sure there will be more shocking cultural encounters over the next year, but so far those have stood out to me most.
PS. I'm dying for a McDonalds sweet tea. I couldn't even tell you the last time I had one in the States though.... funny how when you're around it you don't give a second thought to it, but once removed you miss it.
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