During my time here in Sydney, a particular experience I had related to a cultural difference involved a miscommunication. In Australia, the way you go about ordering and paying at a restaurant is slightly different from the United States. Particularly, at some restaurants you order and pay at the counter before sitting down, or you have to go up to pay at the counter after you have finished your meal instead of a waiter bringing you the check. However, in some instances they may still bring over a check… it can be a little bit confusing! As each restaurant is different, throughout my time here I have had a tricky time deciphering between the right way to go about paying my tab, and ensuring I am respecting the employees. In one instance, I had finished my meal and was waiting at the table for my check for what seemed like a very long time. After waiting for quite a while, I started to notice my waiter looking at me strangely. I decided to ask them for the check, in which they prompted me to go up to the counter. In another instance, I finished my meal and assumed I would go up to the counter to pay. I stood at the counter for a while until someone came over to me to ask me what I needed. After asking to pay, the employee seemed to get upset and told me I was supposed to pay at the table, but rang me up at the counter because they had since turned over the table. In each instance, I was left feeling frustrated, stupid, and feeling bad that I had been an offensive or difficult customer. After having both of these experiences (which seemed to contradict each other), I felt defeated in the fact that I never knew the right way to behave in restaurants. It was never my intention to come across as impatient, but I most likely presented myself in this way to the employees when I had to either ask them for the bill or hovered over the counter. In light of both experiences, I think these are very benign miscommunications and I don’t think the employees took any serious offense to my lack of understanding. However, by not fully understanding the restaurant culture here I was holding up the service to other customers at the restaurants, which I can only assume was very frustrating for the employees (especially if they were busy). Though minor, I think this experience has helped me to better understand how different countries can be. This, along with experiencing other cultural differences, has helped prepare me to navigate successfully in a multicultural and globalized world in many ways. Foremost, I am now much more conscious about different cultural practices and norms. Especially because I am preparing to travel to South Asia after my semester ends here in Sydney, learning about cultural customs in each country I plan to visit is extremely important to me. It has been motivating to research the norms in different countries before visiting so I have a better idea of what to expect and minimize my chances of acting in ways that might come across as rude or disrespectful. American culture can be drastically different than other countries, and though there is no right or wrong way of life, it is important to have a sense of awareness of these differences in order to best interact in and navigate through a multicultural and globalized world.