1. It's full of really interesting things.
2. You can only find said things when you're supposed to be doing something else.
While administering make-up finals, I randomly searched "American Scottland Culture Shock." One of the first links was from an expatriate American in Scotland! I browsed through some of her articles (she's a good writer) and thought, "I wonder if there are any other Americans in Scotland who wrote about their experience."
That led me to find a site dedicated to collecting the blogs of expatriates in different countries!
"It's not like Scottland is the only English speaking country out there. What about Ireland or New Zealand?"
Now I have a new way to kill time online.
We may never move overseas, but I find it interesting to read about the experience!
Some links I looked at:
The link I first found and got me interested. I googled "Scotland culture shock":
Strange foods:
A few differences
The directory of blogs. There's an index down the side to pick your country of interest. Flags tell where the blogger is originally from
Story from an blogger in Ireland that's awesome:
"Language Barrier
You wouldn't think there would be a problem with the language here since English is commonly spoken, but I still find it remarkably easy to put my foot in my mouth. For example, the last time we were in Ireland in 2005 someone finally pointed out that we had been misusing the word "ride" - here it's a naughty word that means to have sex. We had yammering on about riding our bikes (which sounds really odd in that context) and had been asking people for rides to town. When we found out it dawned on us why everyone here said cycling instead of bicycle riding, pony trekking instead of horseback riding, and why they would offer us a lift to town rather than a ride. So after all this time you would think I would have purged the word "ride" from my vocabulary, as Bill has successfully done. but here's an example of a recent conversation in which I managed to sound really perverted multiple times. We picked up an old man with a cane who was hitchhiking on the road to Ennis. Attempting to make small talk, I said "I always pick up hitchhikers if they don't look scary, because years ago I hitchhiked around the United States and sometimes we waited hours and hours for a ride." Bill, in the front passenger seat, automatically mutters "Lift" . The old man makes an indistinct reply.
I carry on. "In the prairie states it's really hard to get a ride." Bill repeats "Lift!", and there's no reply from the hitchhiker.
"One time in Canada we waited all day for a ride, and finally this guy picked us up and gave us a ride almost halfway across the country." Bill hisses "LIFT!!", and in the back seat the old man's eyebrows raise up to his hairline, then he feigns deafness and looks out the window until soon thereafter he asks to be let out of the car.
Another word to watch out for is "pants" - an innocent enough word in American English referring to outerwear worn on the legs. Here they say "trousers" instead, because pants means underpants. A word of advice if you visit - don't talk about your dirty pants, especially if you're turning down a lift. (As in "No, I really can't ride in your car with these dirty pants"
They wrote a lot or I'd link directly to the page.
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