This past week marked halfway through our semester abroad in London. This experience has sadly been going by very fast so I have learned to appreciate it every day in all activities. I haven’t experienced major cultural confrontation so far because I try to remember that every country and culture is different including beliefs and behaviors. I enjoy learning from different experiences and behaviors that I encounter in London. For instance, my roommates all go to universities in the north back in the US and are used to cold weather so they have taught me to wear multiple layers when going out because I grew up in Florida and I’m not used to the cold and windy weather of the UK.
However, one experience of cultural confrontation that I did experience when I first arrived this semester was how all British people travel or walk on the left sides of hallways and sidewalks. It may not seem like a huge cultural difference or adjustment but I didn’t notice how accustomed I was to walking on the right side since that’s what I have been doing my whole life. In the past, I usually just walked around without noticing what side I was on but here in London, especially while using the tube, I noticed that it was really easy to bump into people or create traffic by walking on the wrong side. I concluded that walking on the left was normal here because they also drive on the left. Yet I decided to do more research and found online that it allowed people to draw their swords with their right hands to engage with a thief or robber back in the day. I soon learned to walk on the left side by just walking with the flow of traffic and reading the signs but I did accidentally walk on the wrong side a few times. I learned from those mistakes because getting bumped into while walking is not very pleasant and the tube can get very crowded.