7 CULTURE SHOCKS OF MOVING TO SCOTLAND!

hey guys today I want to talk about some culture shocks that we experienced when we moved here to Scotland one of the first things that we noticed since we arrived on a holiday was how seriously they take their holidays here we were a bit jet-lagged and our sleeping patterns were all messed up so the first morning after we arrived here was January 1st and we walked from our air B&B to the main street in Edinburgh which is Princess Street if the main shopping street is traffic all the time it has amazing monuments it's completely gorgeous it has restaurants and has tourist shops and all of those were closed now we arrived very early in the morning like I said our sleep habits were all messed up but still we were literally the only ones on the street not another soul to be found I personally love this culture shock I love that you aren't forced to work all the time like in the u.s. we don't really get many days off but I'm gonna be talking more about that in a video about working here in Edinburgh or the UK in general first working in the US another thing we noticed really early on was how seriously people take their cues here one of my friends who went to uni down in England warned me about this before we came over here she told us that we should never ever cut lines which we honestly never do anyway but we didn't realize how many more lines there would be in the u.s. if you're at a bus stop everybody just hangs out and then once the bus comes everybody makes their way onto the bus everybody's gonna get on eventually so there's no real point in forming a line but even at the bus stop you form a queue and you wait and even if there's people in front of you that aren't going to that particular bus you just kind of tap them on the shoulder or something hey are you taking the three and then if they say no then you just step in from them once that's arrived friendliness and customer service Joe and I met when we were both working at Verizon Wireless they our sister company and Vodafone is here in the UK and when we went in there to get our funds sorted out and to get some SIM cards we overheard an issue that another customer was having from our experience in the u.s. if that person had the same issues in the u.s. they would have gotten really angry things definitely would have escalated he and I both exchanged to look like uh-oh you know Fighting's about to happen we were shocked when instead a gentleman said that you know Vodafone screwed up or some service issue happened I I can't remember the exact issue but it was on Vodafone's end and the customer just said you know what it's fine things happen sometimes it's totally fine and who is totally relaxed and like understanding and just amazing they're so friendly here the customer service is outstanding absolutely impeccable there doesn't seem to be a sense of entitlement like there is in the u.s. especially from customers with big organizations when I worked at Verizon Wireless in the US and this one woman was asking about different prices for Bluetooth I looked at one Bluetooth and I was like you know I think that one's in your price range but I'm not entirely sure so I went and I checked so later on after she said that that was the one that she liked and it turned out to be $10 worth and then what she wanted to spend instead of being understanding that I'm a human being and I make a mistake and I did say to her that I wasn't entirely sure she actually said that she wanted to speak to my manager because she wanted to be given that Bluetooth at the price that I had stated that sort of reaction in America is much more common than we've witnessed here and another example of the friendliness that we had experienced right when we got here is also an example of another culture shock that we experienced the language that day that we walked to princess Street originally we actually stopped and studied at a bus stop for a little while and another gentleman started walking down the street saw standing at the bus stop and instead of continuing walking he just immediately stopped and said to us oh the buses don't start until half ten and we said oh my god thank you so much for letting us know you know that's so kind of you to go out of your way like that and he said bye we said bye and then Joe and I turned to each other and we were like what does half-time mean is that 9:30 or is that 10:30 we have no idea obviously in Scotland they speak English but it's such a different type of English we knew the common ones like elevator is a lift or a bathroom is a toilet you know things like that but then we started learning the new ones like band-aids or plasters and shopping carts our trolleys a stroller is a pram we speak the same language but we speak a different version of the same language here censorship on TV this was something that I experienced that eight or nine years ago when I was in London for the first time that was my first time out of the u.s. that was my first time in the UK and I remember watching TV and they said words that I can't say on this video we're all so I'm gonna have to write it like 18 or mature or whatever they curse and say words that we're not allowed to say in the US on television unless it's on specific channels where they know that it's going to have adult content they gave warnings ahead of time for those TV shows and it's usually after like 10:00 p.m. or so here I was told that it's more common after 9:00 p.m. but even still there are certain ways that we in the US have to censor or say things if you watch How I Met Your Mother that's a really good example of censorship they use it in the way of like oh he's talking to his kids so he's censoring for that but no it's more so because in the US when it comes to television shows that they want to be family-friendly they don't curse lack of religion in the u.s. even though there supposed to be a separation of church and state the United States is a very religious country specifically a Christian country Joe and myself being atheist we didn't really fit in in the US when it came to that stuff now it's more common in the younger generation to not be religious but it's not socially acceptable to really say out loud that you are atheist or that you're agnostic and for it to just be okay that's your belief that's fine most of the time when people into me for years and then found out that I was atheist they would literally take a step back like I was contagious they would question my morality like I can't be a good person unless I'm doing it because I want to get into heaven and it's very different here and for me it's such a relief because I when I first arrived here and I would tell my classmates that I was atheist I was literally shaking and that's not an exaggeration and this is just the response that I had always gotten I I would physically get so nervous to tell people that I wasn't religious I was raised to be Roman Catholic but at the age of 13 realized that I was atheist and I've been atheist ever since it didn't want to be a of who I was when I started admitting to people that I was atheist there actually are people that stopped speaking to me they wouldn't know how to respond to an atheist and I got a lot of people that tried pushing their religion on me and I studied Christianity I studied all of these other religions actually I even took the religious courses in college I've tried being other religions and the people who were trying to push their religion on me had never done any of that here however when I was so nervous to tell my friends that I was atheist they were like oh yeah you know it's like incredibly common in Europe in our area anyway it's much less common than Mediterranean parts it's very common in Eastern Europe to be atheist it's very common in the Scandinavian region to be atheist it's such a relief to me and I don't get incredibly nervous I'm still nervous and putting it on the internet but I'm an atheist but we'll see what kind of comments I'll get and I don't feel judged here I feel much more able to be myself and to be open about my atheism and not as pressured it's very very nice it's refreshing and I want to end on a very light note here the last culture shock that we experienced was drinking in the streets it is completely legal in Scotland to drink in the streets a lot of foreigners don't know this and they wish that they did you can walk around with a beer and pop it open and drink it just anywhere you can leave a bar with a drink and walk around this is not the case in Glasgow don't go to Glasgow and think that you can drink in the streets but I believe every other part of Scotland you can actually drink in the streets and it's completely legal so those are the culture shocks that we experienced here nothing crazy nothing major we're probably gonna have enormous ones when we get to Japan which I'm very excited about I want to know if you guys have moved to a different place or even just vacationed in a different place what kind of culture shocks did you experience I would love to hear all about them in the comment section below but that's all for today thank you so much for watching if you are already subscribed thank you so much I appreciate it I can't believe that I have over 200 subscribers that's crazy and I have over 200 subscribers in the same year that I hit hundred subscribers so thank you guys so so much I don't know why you like watching me but thank you for liking me if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and I'll see you next time bye [Applause]

Channel: Sonnie Travels

Views: 975,290

Rating: 4.4483247 out of 5

Keywords: culture, shock, culture shock, moving to scotland, shocks, scotland, uk, united kingdom, great, britain, living, moving, abroad, sonnie, english, american, versus, verse, usa, vacation, america, international, vlog, vlogs, vlogging, vlogger, tips and tricks, daily vlog, culture shocks, living in scotland, american living in scotland, lack of religion, atheist, living abroad, scottish culture, scottish, british culture, british, american abroad, american living abroad, moving to the uk, moving abroad

Id: WX0ff1LqzGI

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Saltire_Blue]

Amazing she didn't mention the word cunt once.

These videos do make me laugh, Americans always seemed so shocked the rest of the world isn't like America.

[u/EmpedoclesOnEtna]

lol these are all British cultural norms minus the friendliness.

Scots are noticeably more friendly. The rest are true all over the UK

[u/BesottedScot]

The last point is clearly pretty wrong. Edinburgh is the only place I know of where it's legal to drink in the street (though it's legal on St Andrews beaches). Every local authority has the ability to ban it and most have AFAIK... At least in Fife they have.

[u/SpacecraftX]

The major one that sticks out is the surprise that we don't get hard ons for having righteous anger at service people. And the level of fear about admitting they were atheist is disturbing.