I’ve never really worked in an office before, so it’s hard to know if some of the little details that I see are really due to a different culture or just because it’s a more formal work setting than I’m used to. One big thing that I’ve noticed is that the office is very quiet and no one really talks about anything non-work related. Again, I don’t know if this is because of cultural values, or just a quirk of this particular office. People here seem to be more quiet and polite to strangers, and maybe this applies to coworkers as well. Politeness also applies to the interactive half of my internship, when I work with the kids. There aren’t huge differences between the British kids and American kids that I’ve picked up on yet, but the local kids I’ve talked to seem a little more formal with adults. They always call me “miss,” while in the U.S. the kids I’ve worked with always called me by my name and interacted more casually with me. The school system here seems a little more formal to me because almost all kids wear uniforms. I associate with a stricter type of school in the U.S., but I don’t think I can really generalise that since every school here has these rules. One funny difference that I had to adjust to was when I was helping students with their spelling. I had to remember to add “u”s to words like favorite and color, and I was proud of myself for not giving the wrong spellings to the kids! I don’t know if this counts as a cultural difference, though, it’s only just a language difference. So far I have really interacted more with kids than I have with adults, so I think I might be missing some of the cultural differences, but I’m sure I’ll see more and more each week.
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