Coming into England was a country and culture shock which I really did not think would happen. Besides the environment being minutely different than New England, USA, the people here are very different. I have never been to a place so genuinely willing to invite you into their home and get to know you.
When talking to one of these friendly people we started discussing bribes and how countries react to bribery. Our professor explained that some economies run on it and as much as this was a surprise it still wasn’t as real as when my friend was telling me how he did successfully get away with bribing officials and that it more common practice then I was led to believe. When he was telling me all the times he has bribed people to get into places, or get a product accepted through customs I was shocked. I could not believe that there were so many corrupt people. Then I began to think, are they corrupt or is it their culture and therefore not ethically questionable? Overall, hearing about cultures and having differences pushed into your face has been a constant occurrence here.
When talking to one of these friendly people we started discussing bribes and how countries react to bribery. Our professor explained that some economies run on it and as much as this was a surprise it still wasn’t as real as when my friend was telling me how he did successfully get away with bribing officials and that it more common practice then I was led to believe. When he was telling me all the times he has bribed people to get into places, or get a product accepted through customs I was shocked. I could not believe that there were so many corrupt people. Then I began to think, are they corrupt or is it their culture and therefore not ethically questionable? Overall, hearing about cultures and having differences pushed into your face has been a constant occurrence here.
What is even more surprising is that you do not have to be from another country to have a different culture. I was hanging out with one of the other U.S. students that came abroad to study and he talked about his pet parrot. When I mentioned that there are wild parrots in the UK (I had seen one on one of my escapades through Richmond Park), he could not accept this fact, believing colorful parrots like the bright green ones that live here only live in the Amazon. Coincidentally, we started to hear parrot calls outside my top floor window. Then, just as I reiterated my argument that they do exist, we saw four of these birds fly past my window and sit on the tree branches outside. Even with the proof right in front of his face, he could not accept what he was seeing and hearing. He had grown up only seeing these birds when he went on vacations to more tropical countries. He was just as culture shocked about the birds as I was about the fact that he could not believe they existed naturally in the UK.
No matter what you know from reading, or being taught, or seeing in one part of the world, it does not replace personally living in that culture first hand.
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