By Fabio Barreto
When moving to another country, international students believe the biggest challenge will be travelling and adjusting itself, but the small daily culture distinctions are the real change. Growing up in another country is always unique, especially the lifestyle that differentiates one country to another.
When I first moved to America in 2022, I asked one of my teachers if he could change the AC temperature. He asked me which number to set at, I told him: “set it at 18 degrees” – everybody stared at me like I said something out of this world. Later that day, after thinking I said something wrong or went through a language barrier, my classmate explained to me that they use Fahrenheit instead of Celsius – to this day, I have not learned how to use it.
Slang and popular language are a huge challenge too. When learning English, we expect to hear simple phrases like: “Hey, how are you?”, “How are you doing?”, and things like that. As soon as somebody changes or says something different, we feel clueless and start to believe that we do not know anything. The first time I heard “What’s up?” felt like I did not know any English. I started questioning if I was doing something wrong or if my English teacher taught me the wrong stuff; this is the part where language barrier gets introduced.
The first time I went to a restaurant in America, I did not know about tipping culture, especially in cash. Back home, in Brazil, we do not carry cash around or use ATMs very often to withdraw money because we have Pix, an instant payment system that you send money straight from your phone. At first, I was wondering why I had to pay an extra 10 dollars to the waiter – it is not normal to do that back home at all. Nowadays, it is very common for me, and I got used to tipping, even though I do not eat at restaurants very often.
At first, the small day-to-day can be confusing, but after some time, you start to understand this is part of the culture and things become normal. I had to learn as the days went by the slang, tipping and the small thing like the Fahrenheit scale. Moving is not just about college; it is about the small things on the daily basis too. These moments and experiences contribute to making the experience unique and special.