Hilarious Culture Shocks You’ll Experience on Your Year Abroad

I think one of the most significant cultural differences between the UK and New Zealand is that there is a widely spoken language in New Zealand other than English. Yes, of course they speak English, but I was naive enough to be unaware that most place names are in fact Maori names. My first glimpse of this was when I got off the plane to be welcomed with the words Kia ora. Maybe I should've done research, and learned a few basic Maori phrases.

My crappy Maori skills would be a recurring theme throughout my entire exchange. I remember, one time, I was trying to get to a city just north of Wellington, called Porirua. I happily got on the bus, and asked the Maori bus driver for a return to Porirua, only to completely butcher the name. I had pronounced it Por-eye-ru-ay, which (spoiler alert) is not how you pronounce that word. The bus driver just stared at me, trying not to laugh, and corrected me, which resulted in me cringing for the rest of the day.

I soon learnt that each vowel is pronounced entirely different in Maori. And there are several letter combinations that form completely different sounds than in English. For example, ng is pronounced as it sounds in the word singer and wh is pronounced like an f sound. I think every foreign person living in New Zealand has pronounced the word whakapapa wrong at some point. Luckily, New Zealanders tend to be sweet and get the gist of what you're trying to say (it's still awkward though).

My own accent made things even worse. I have quite a strong (understatement of the year) Yorkshire accent which made trying to pronounce things even worse. In Yorkshire, we don't tend to pronounce the h at the start of a word, so hat tends to become 'at, happy is 'appy, and so on. So, when I tried to catch a bus to a Wellington suburb called Hataitai, you can imagine it generated a few chuckles from the driver.

It's always confusing shopping in a foreign country, but, I had wrongly thought there wouldn’t be any issues in New Zealand. Instead, everything had a different name. Peppers were no longer peppers, they were capsicums. Courgettes were zucchinis. Heinz was called Watties…the list goes on. I'd find myself wandering around shops lost.

To make things worse, I ran out of my two massive bags of Yorkshire Tea within the first month. I ran down to Countdown (the closest supermarket to my flat) in search of England's greatest tea (definitely not biased). Did they have it? Nope. So, I ran to the next nearest supermarket, they had it but it was $12. I didn't want to pay for that so I had to buy the cheapest New Zealand brand I could find, which wasn't as good as Yorkshire Tea. Fortunately, my friends all sent over Yorkshire Tea reinforcements.

One thing Kiwis seem to always do is mumble. I'd have to continually ask people to repeat themselves, only for me to still not have a clue what they'd said. So, I'd just awkwardly smile, hoping it would make up for the fact that I didn't know what was going on.

At the start of lectures, some New Zealand lecturers would speak in Maori. You’re not a true exchange student if you haven’t experienced this and started shaking with fear, thinking you've accidentally signed up for a Maori language class.

New Zealand slang was also something I had to master. The first time somebody said, “sweet as” to me, I thought they were complimenting my body. Yes, that actually happened, and it was mortifying.

So, as you can see, culture shock can happen even somewhere as seemingly straightforward and non-threatening as New Zealand. The first few weeks in a foreign country are always the most unsettling, but remember it will pass. Culture shock may truly never leave you, but you will start to see the funny side of these moments. Not having a clue what is going on can often be the best kind of icebreaker; often locals would end up taking pity on me and looking after me.

So, don't worry, laugh at yourself, and embrace the culture shock. At least when you get home, you’ll have plenty of funny stories to tell.