My attitude to culture shock is quite blase. I remember sitting in Tom and Gemma's sitting room for the St Len's pre-departure meeting and thinking that I wouldn't really get culture shock like the guys going to Europe. Whilst that is true to a large extent, there have been several different things which I'm labelling culture shock!
Crossing the road is a crime. Seriously. It's a stupid crime! Okay, jaywalking is the crime but what's so wrong about crossing the road when a a car isn't coming? Man, my Exeter escapades around roundabouts would not go down well here! Mind you, they don't even have roundabouts...
Canadians genuinely do say 'eh' and it's so cute and also pretty hilarious that they actually endorse such an endearing stereotype.
Classes are crazy. Mental contact hours and just a slightly weird set up. I walked into my first ever foreign lecture to be greeted with total silence and some unspoken rule that you must leave a chair between you and each person. Being a lawbreaker, apparently, I ignored this rule, plomped myself down next to an unsuspecting Candian "frosher" (yeah, don't ask, to be frosh doesn't even make sense whereas fresher does) and introduced myself. Her name's Kelsey and she's adorable and probably thinks I'm crazy.
The chairs are attached to the desks and it's the most irritating thing ever! The chairs are like the ones in the Exeter Alumni Auditorium but less comfy and really really squeaky and the only way I was able to stay near to the desk in one of my classes was by hooking my feet over the step infront for three hours. I cannot be dealing with these contraptions!
If a label says one price, it is actually higher price. Whereas the rest of the world has adopted an policy of honesty when it comes to shopping, Canada has not. No, in Canada, they dupe you by telling you a product is one price, then you turn up to the till and it's a completely different price because they add the tax afterwards. Such activity may be why Canada isn't a super power, just sayin'!
University is called school and I cannot bring myself to co-operate with this terminology. I've adopted classes over lectures and profs over lecturers but I left school in 2010 and that's final!
Fire engines are the noisest things ever over here and the noise of the horn sounds like a tuneful fart.
There is a propensity for double denim over here; the same goes for short shorts and clunky sandals. I heard it said that Canada is still stuck in the 1990s and whilst this isn't overwhelmingly true, there are elements of veracity to this statement!
Ottawa is bilingual with a bias towards being francophone. As a Brit, I refuse to countenance this. I need to work on this...
University here is a bit like school (which might stop if they ceased referring to higher education as school). In all of my lectures, the profs have spent a good half an hour telling people to come to class and have even included marks for participation to ensure attendance. This is totally different from the UK where there's a certain sense of it's your fault if you bite your nose off to spite for face. I guess part of this though stems from North American profs coming from a teaching emphasis as opposed to a research emphasis like is certainly the case in Exeter. I have a favourite prof already, by name of Emma Anderson and I am taking three of her classes this year (unintentionally, but we're obviously kindred spirits that we share academic interests!) and she's going to think I'm some kind of weird, forgeign stalker. This is not good.
There are live, wriggling lobsters for sale in the grocery store. No word of a lie! In Tesco, you're lucky if you find an alive shop assistant, in Canada there are lobsters in a tank for sale. Live lobsters! How do you even get a live lobster home? I might buy one and keep it as a pet...
Canadians are friendly and by that I mean they're not afraid to just talk to strangers and ask how they're doing. Although, there are exceptions. And they're often French.
Canadians go to classes they don't have to go to - it's called auditing and it's where students with too much time on their hands/brains bigger than Manitoba go to classes where they get no credit, just to explore an interest. For example, I met someone by the name of either Jonah or Noah in Jewish Lit class who's majoring in music, minoring in pre-med and just has an interest in Jewish Canadian writers. Crazy. I mean, great for the currency of knowledge, but still, those quirky Canadians!
I love it here!
You can audit in the UK too, Hannah. We used to do it at Church Army College (not somewhere between school and university).
ReplyDeleteFor us it meant that you could attend and participate in the lectures and couldeven do the assignments but none of that would count towards your final assessment.
Every blessing,
Hugh