When I decided to move to the UK, it didn't occur to me that I would experience culture shock or that I would feel out of place and confused. After all, I'd grown up in an Anglophone country watching British television and movies, and reading British books. I thought I knew what to expect when I finally made it through customs.
This was compounded by getting to Bath, which looked exactly like the images of England I'd grown up with. The rolling hills, the dry stone walls, the glowing architecture, the quiet and polite people… All of these were exactly as Enid Blyton and Frances Hodgson Burnett had taught me to expect. Additionally, I'd lived internationally for most of my adult life. I was used to being in new environments and working out how to do things. Turned out I was quite wrong.
On the surface, the UK is quite similar to my own country, though with a much milder and more liveable climate. We drive on the same side of the road, we whinge constantly about the weather, we drink more beer than we say we’re planning to. After a week or two, I realised that there was the shock of realising I'd been doing things wrong for the last few weeks.
I first noticed this when I was trying to buy a bus ticket, with an impatient queue forming behind me sighing and rolling their eyes as I tried to work out what ticket I wanted. Then it was trying to understand how supermarket loyalty cards work, with an impatient queue forming behind me sighing and rolling their eyes, and coming downstairs after my first bin collection to find a note from my neighbour telling me I had put the wrong rubbish in the wrong bin. These small things were bad enough, but trying to work out how to set up a TV licence or register for council tax left me feeling lost, confused and overwhelmed.
I talked to my friends about this, but they'd all been living here for a long time or were British. None of them understood why all of this was so confusing to me. “Well, how else would you do it?” was the response I kept hearing, as though no one in their right mind would think to put paper recycling in with the cardboard.
Human psychology is built on assuming that everyone knows what we know, and that everyone thinks in much the same way we do. I found myself making a conscious effort to point out to my friends that there is nothing intuitive about how a society works, about which bus ticket I need, or which recycling goes in which bin in which week. I had to make myself say “Really? I've not seen it like that before” as a gentle reminder that there are so many ways to manage all this, and there is nothing inherently right about how it is managed here.
I also had to remind myself that it was OK not to know things. That we only know things because we've had a chance for someone to tell or show us. I had to remind myself that I was new here, that even though I'd grown up watching and reading about Britain, I hadn't lived here before and all this was new. I had to step back, ask myself what I would say to a friend who was new here when they made a mistake, and give myself the space to learn.
Learning to live in a new culture takes time, effort and patience. Don't expect yourself to understand everything right from the start, and give yourself the grace of not knowing something. Ask for advice when you're not sure – most people like to feel that they are helping. Good places to start are the public library, Visit Bath, and the council website, as well as friends on campus. At the very least, you'll learn how something works. At best, you'll start to feel like you're getting a handle on living in the UK.
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