Language Barrier?

I have now been in London for almost two weeks and I have seen and learned many new things. The first day that I got here I saw several things that I did not expect I would be seeing on the first day, such as Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and even the red telephone booths. After being here for this short amount of time, I have realized that many things are different than I first thought they were going to be. Coming to a country that speaks English I thought that there would be no language barrier, but I have learned different. Last week I went to a mobile phone store with a couple friends to get someone’s phone fixed. The employee helping us was put on hold while calling the phone company and he started talking to us, asking what we were in London for, so we told him that we were studying abroad for the semester at Richmond University. He then asked what year we were and when we said that we were sophomores he had no idea what that meant, we had to tell him second years for him to understand what year we were, and he said that we used different vocabulary that he has never heard. He also didn’t know what studying abroad meant, we tried to explain to him what it meant, but in the end he thought that it meant that we were here on “holiday” and instead of relaxing, we were taking courses at school, which he also said didn’t sound very fun. From this experience, I realized that even though in the United States and here in England, we both speak the same language, there are still differences in the way that we speak it and the words that we use. I have learned so much in the short amount of time that I have been here and I can’t wait to continue this incredible journey.