Integration

I was having a girls night in today and I jokingly said to my friend Rhiannon when she mentioned tortilla chips, "Don't you mean tortilla crisps?" when my American friend Juliana looked at me aghast and told me I wasn't going to survive in America for very long.

When I get to America I'm going to supress my (not so inner) English pedant and call things by their American name in order to better fit in with the natives. Chips and trousers will be suppressed in my vocabulary in favour of fries and pants, unless of course the occasion arises in which I feel it would be favourable to exagerate my Englishness and I suddenly develop a very posh southern English accent and start usng words such as "loo" and "petrol", or go entirely the other way and start talking in slang just to watch their confused faces as I talk about being "arse over tit" and going on a "bender". I must admit that when I think of English slang that will confuddle Americans the first things I think of aren't particularly polite...

On a slightly more serious note I do look at my time there as anthropological research into the American student culture, I fully intend to do my best to integrate, becoming as American as I can be, whilst not losing my personality. It strikes me that a lot of the international students at my University group together, that they experience minimal cultural exchange. I may well be wrong, but that it was I notice and will strive to avoid. There is another girl from my University going to Santa Barbara and I know her from a seminar group, I hope that she will not try and cling to me at first due to our previous acquaintence. It is a big change moving to another country and the integration will certainly be cushioned by surrounding oneself with people from a similar culture in a similar circumstance, and it is very tempting to hang around people in the same situation, but if I wanted to hang around with English people then I would be staying in England. I want to be pushed out of my comfort zone and if that means espousing contact with fellow Britains then so be it.

The exchange programme organises a few days of integration workshops for international students in an attempt to make the settling in process easier, but this has the side effect of forcing the international students together before they have had much chance to form bounds with American students. Although early friendships often do not last the common experience may create strong bonds. I was talking to an Australian student about this the other day and she concurred that this is what happens, in fact it happened to her and she made a really good friend out of it, but I need to remember that that is not what I am going to America for.

The first few weeks will be particularly hard, full of forming friendships and acclimatising to American life. I am going to really miss my friends, I have made some really good friends at University (you know who you are) and I will bitterly miss our cups of tea and chats. The more I think about this time the more scared I become.