One of the most enduring experiences of expat life is dealing with cultural differences, especially those that are "normal" in your new country but considered quite rude in your home one.
One of the most recent I've had to deal with is the too-early phone call: I put my car up for sale in a classified ad last week, and since then, at least three people have called me at 8:30 in the morning.
Apparently, that's considered fair game here in Australia (the idea being that "most people" are headed to work for 9 am), but if you tried doing that in NYC you'd get ripped a new one. Forgetting the fact that I was asleep at the time (I'm on a tourist visa now, so of course I'm not on my way to work), it's just the idea of getting a call so damn early.
Back in New York, I was raised very specifically with the "10-to-10" rule: you don't call someone you don't know (or know well) before 10 am or after 10 pm. Of course, I haven't yelled at anyone for it, because I know they don't think they're being rude, but I can't help swearing a bit as I grope sleepily for my phone on the nightstand.
Anyone else have any stories about dealing with "rudeness" (for you, if not for them) in another culture while living abroad?
UPDATE: This morning, someone texted me at 7:49 am, and then another guy called at 7:52 am. Can you guess how furious I was?
Two years have passed, and now it looks like my time in Melbourne is coming to a close.
I haven't been able to find a good job here, and my tourist visa is up on June 20th. I've got a horrible sense of deja vu – in the past couple of months I've started to make new friends, began dating someone really great, and now I've got to pull up stakes and leave them all behind, which is pretty much what happened to me in Chicago after I'd lived there for two years there, too.
I should be excited about my current plan, to move to London to do more freelance travel writing, but instead I'm just feeling depressed about my dwindling time left in Melbourne, four-and-a-half weeks. I don't want to go, but I don't feel like I can stay, either; just as I've started coming to terms with closing up my house and selling off my stuff, suddenly I'm feeling a mild panic and wondering if it's not too late to change my plans and stay after all. But then when I think about getting a job here and committing myself to at least 12 more months, I start getting anxious at that, too. I'm so torn I keep throwing justifications back and forth to myself in a sort of tennis match of the neuroses, repeating them over and over again to friends in the hope that if I say it enough, I'll start to feel better about it. (That I'm writing it here should give you an idea of how well that's working.)
I've always wanted to live in London, and now I seem to have a chance to do so – although this plan is also fraught with difficulties as well – but instead of feeling elated, I'm quietly terrified. Besides missing Melbourne already, I've been feeling homesick for NYC, but at the same time I believe that it's homesickness for the idea of NYC, an abstract, movie-quality sort of thing, not the actual reality of living there on a daily basis. My father encouraged me to go to London, saying I can always head back to NYC if it doesn't work out, and yet I feel like if I do go back, it'll mean that I've copped out and settled, that I failed, that this "expat thing" will have just been a phase that I had to get through like a colicky toddler, instead of a valid choice I made to try to live the life I want to lead.
It always seems like an uphill battle for me, trying to find a place to go to: the torture of leaving people and places behind, of carting things from country to country, trying to get established in new places – always wondering what the hell am I doing here? But what the hell am I doing anywhere? It'd be so much easier to just give up, give in: head back to New York, never worry about visas or employment eligibility, or the exchange rate, or getting all the social conventions wrong and generally feeling like an outcast.
I don't want to stop being an expat; I just want it to stop being so hard sometimes. But of course we already know the answer to that one, don't we?
I hurry out the door and hop into the waiting taxi. "Bonsoir, monsieur, " I greet the driver breathlessly as I plunk in the center of the back seat. "I'd like to go to the American Cathedral, 23 avenue George V, s'il vous plait."
The car pulls out and I start making my usual small talk with the chauffeur de taxi. "I hope there's not too much traffic tonight. I'm running late and I have a cancer, " I say in French.
The driver dons a worried expression and stiffens in his seat. I fret that I have insulted him by saying that I'm in a hurry. I add more to my story. "Yes, and I have friends from the United States who are here to see me. They are here for the cancer. They are waiting at the church for me."
Now he's is looking bewildered and almost frightened. He thinks, perhaps, that they are preparing my funeral? A support group? And he's driving me there?
"Yes," I add, "and first we are having a rehearsal."
Mais ces Americains sont fous, he is thinking as he grips the steering wheel a bit tighter.
"And I'm worried because I have a sore throat," I babble.
That's the least of your worries at this point, lady, he is muttering to himself. Le moindre de vos soucis.
"But perhaps it will be better by the time our chorus has its next cancer next week, " I continue.
"Oh, un concert, madame!" He exhales the world's largest sigh and sinks back into his seat as we drive silently through the dark together.