Oxford – Hilary Term 2013

There is also always plenty to do: work for school, work for online courses, work for Oxford Microfinance Initiative or other extracurricular activities and some sleep every now and then. That surely is not a very interesting read. I have decided that instead of blabbering about how I made breakfast with friends that took over three hours during which we talked about Japan, anachronisms of Oxford and about our colleges and then I nearly missed the deadline for my essay because of this, I can write about something that I find interesting: my cultural shocks in Britain.

Shock one:  stereotypes

(Just do not take this section too literally or seriously; obviously I do not mean to imply that literally everything is exactly as I say. But I found this interesting precisely because I expected that real England will be nothing like this, like you can know it from movies.)

It is often said that we should not generalize. And that in current multicultural world there is virtually not any distinct kind of national identity.  Perhaps I have not noticed this in the Czech Republic as much, but at least Oxford’s England is still the way my textbooks portrayed England. (Note: these textbooks, at least at my school, were quite humorously outdated.) The fact that a lot of people actually drink tea with milk is hardly going to surprise anybody. The fact that some people are straight out refusing to change into anything else than a suit when they go out of their room, might. Also I find the diction rather interesting: you generally won’t hear “bad” or any synonym thereof and instead will be replaced by the much more elegant phrase: “not very nice at all”, which I find cute. Also what you might sometimes encounter is that people will not ask you “How do I get to…”, but instead you will hear “How does one get to…” And of course the courtesies and do not even think about stepping on the grass.

Shock two: regulation

As a tourist, you hardly notice. There is actually no reason why to. It is actually very nice and comforting to know that on every step someone thinks about your wellbeing and what could you possibly forget. As a student, I find, for instance, British dread of fire somewhat amusing. We cannot have toasters in our rooms and so some people actually plug them in and then put the toaster out of the window where there is no fire detector. Not only does that look funny, but also the toasts sometimes fall out and the whole procedure seems rather taxing. The regulation demanding that there be no more than 6 people in a room is somewhat curious.

Shock three: bops

Over the summer I both read and watched Pride and Prejudice so that I will not be a cultural outcast in the UK. I was somewhat puzzled by the “costume parties” that were emphasized. We also have something like this, except in modern version – bops. That means that those who like to indulge in alcohol (who guesses which group I belong to will get some brownie points) can dress up according to a theme and then get “anonymously” hammered. Well, let’s face it, though, the costumes are not very sophisticated and so in reality it is mostly about dressing up interestingly and then dance on the floor.

(But I am also fun sometimes, I swear! ;)

See you at my blog soon!

Kuba