Major struggs.
Probably the most important aspect of the study abroad experience is the way in which you grow to learn and love a new culture and country. Probably the most hilarious aspect is the constant slew of missteps and misadventures necessitated on this journey of cultural immersion.
Reflecting on my experiences and those of my friends studying abroad through BOSP, I’ve selected my favorite quotes from the amusing and humbling goof-ups we know all too well. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do – add your own in the comments!
- Telling a pregnant women she couldn’t sit down next to me on the S-Bahn because I didn’t understand what she said and I thought she was trying to sell me a book. (Mark, Berlin)
- New definition of success – crossing the street without dying (Hannah, Beijing)
- Walking onto the FKK side of the beach before realizing what FKK means…. (Maren, Berlin)
- Wearing pyjamas or work-out clothes into an Oxford dining hall for breakfast (Christina, Oxford)
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1. Acquire globe. 2. Apply to forehead. 3. Let the culture diffuse along the concentration gradient!
2 weeks after coming to China, I started hella craving Panda Express (Brian, Beijing)
- Japanese people don’t like spicy food, and I am Mexican (Christian, Kyoto)
- Asking for the trash can instead of the check at a restaurant in Paris because your French is really rusty…. (Kristi, Berlin)
- Waiting for the street vendor talking about you in Turkish to realize you also speak Turkish (Deanna, Berlin)
- “Excuse me, I have a question” and “please kiss me” sound way too similar, especially if your tones suck (Brian, Beijing)
- Ordering Soup as your “Hauptscheiße” instead of “Hauptspeise” at a restaurant in Munich (Bailey, Berlin)
- “So those sea cucumbers I ate mistaking them for fungi were plants right?… (wishful thinking)” (Hannah, Beijing)
- Getting carded in Germany… for buying BEER [you can legally buy beer in Germany at age 16] (Maren, Berlin)
- Thinking YouTube is universal… (Christina, Berlin)
- When they run out of tomato sauce for pasta, they substitute with ketchup (Brian, Beijing)
- [editor's favorite] Toilet shelves. Despair. (Ashley, Berlin)
May 30th, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Great Posting to the blog. Very funny. Love to see how us americans translate going overseas!!
Marielaina Perrone DDS
June 1st, 2012 at 6:53 am
From Kyoto:
Go to conveyor-belt sushi. Most plates are blue or yellow, depending on price, but every now and then, there’s a red plate with even more delicious food on it. Take the red plates. Wonder why more and more red plates with the same thing keep coming. Eventually realize that the characters you neglected to read on the red plates say “special order.” Further realize that the waiters are noticeably avoiding making eye contact with you.
Go to get a haircut. Get talked at in incomprehensible Japanese. Japanese Japanese Japanese Japanese — question? Answer yes. Suddenly wind up getting eyebrows stylized.
June 2nd, 2012 at 9:25 pm
Back at the Farm, when we were Indians, in the 60′s, ‘abroadproblems’ = >1 angry girlfriends…
Snodfart