My name is Gabriel Pazmino and I am an international student currently living in Newcastle for over 4 years. In this series of articles, I want to showcase my experience as a foreigner living here in Newcastle. In case you missed Part 1 you can find the link to it here.
Adapting to the culture in Newcastle
The most similar aspect culturally between me as a South American and British student is definitely drinking. I don’t personally indulge in drinking as much as my Southern American counterparts, but I’m aware it’s a big part of our culture. Back home, it is normal for children to experiment drinking alcohol when they are twelve, and it’s fully normalised when kids are 14.
At shops, most cashiers will never ask for identification, or care whether someone looks underage or not, and will sell alcohol to children regardless. In some cases, even our parents will try to get us to drink with them as well, making drinking a very normal aspect in my life whether I personally drank or not.
Pubs
I was not surprised when I came here, that it was also an important aspect of the culture here. People enjoy going to pubs to grab some pints or take shots and get pissed at clubs. What did surprise me was the sheer amount of drinking itself. From my perspective, coming from a continent that drinks quite heavily, I feel like the British have outdone us in this aspect. A large part of the British people I met would love to go to pubs morning, afternoon and night. All day every day. We don’t drink that much back home.
At the same time, I feel like people here drink without restraint. People from my country tend to drink a lot, but we generally know our limits. Even if we drink every day, we won’t get drunk on every occasion. When we get drunk, we can generally gauge how drunk we can be while still being in control, or how drunk we can be without ending up on the floor sleeping and covered in vomit. We have some semblance of limits. Here, I see people drink every day and every day, non-stop. In my experience, I feel like the average British person drinks a lot, and keeps drinking and never stops, until they are on the ground.
Talking volume
Aside from drinking, there are many other cultural nuances that I observed were different from back home. When speaking in Spanish, me and other Latino people tend to be very loud. I would often find myself in the company of other Spanish speaking friends in a store or barber shop speaking loudly in Spanish and observe how everyone around us was talking more quietly or looking at us for being loud. I for once, never thought I was being loud or disrespectful, but did understand that my behaviour was definitely different from the usual.
Another aspect of culture that I found very different is my straightforwardness. I have conversed with a few other Latino friends, and we have come to agree that when it comes to asking for favours, questions or things, we are very straightforward. If we need something, we will go and ask for it, no beating around the bush. This is very different from what I have observed from British people here, they tend to be more polite when it comes to matters like this; engage in small talk first and then get around to asking what they need.
Food in Newcastle
Before coming to study abroad, I had very limited knowledge about cooking. The most complicated dish I could prepare was fried eggs for breakfast, and now I had to cook dinner and lunch for myself too. Cooking as a novice was especially frustrating for me. I was scared to try new and more complex dishes because I did not want to waste money and ingredients, and I tended to stick to the same repertoire of simple dishes I was able to improvise in my first few weeks after arrival.
As a student cooking was also time consuming, and at times, It was also draining. Many were the times where I didn’t have the energy or the time to make a good meal and would opt to have some cereal or eat some take out sandwiches from Tesco. This was something I never had to worry about back home, since I was lucky to always have cooked food readily available for every meal back home. However, over time I learned to cook by myself and slowly improved myself. I’ve gotten to the point where I know I bake every week as a hobby and make it a goal to try new recipes.
Aside from cooking there were quite a few foods related differences that I experienced compared to back home. The first one was the freshness of vegetables and fruits. For some reason, I find fruits and vegetables from back home fresher and juicer. In some cases, it definitely has to do with the fact many fruits and vegetables I find here are imported, but in other cases vegetables and fruits back home are grown more naturally, without enhanced chemical and fertilisers and pesticides that are commonly used here.
Tap Water
Another little difference is the concept of tap water. We don’t have that in Ecuador. Tap water is generally not safe to drink unless filtered, so it was weird for me to be able to just drink tap water from my kitchen.
It was also odd to me to be able to order tap water for free as a drink in restaurants. Back home since the tap water is not clean, you have to buy bottled water at restaurants, so it was a nice change to be able to enjoy water without having to pay for it when eating out here.
Local dishes from back home impossible to find or replicate
There are so many differences when it comes to food compared to back home. The obvious one is that many of the local dishes from back home are impossible to find or replicate. I really miss my local food. There are many local ingredients that are essential to making these dishes, so it becomes impossible to make them here.
An example is ‘locro’ which is a potato-based soup typical back home. It is a warm soup made up of potato, and you eat it with cheese and avocado as well. I cannot make this soup here simply because the broth of the soup is made with a specific potato called ‘papa chola’. Without this ingredient the soup cannot be made, and even using alternative potatoes for it will not work as its specific properties of this type of potato allow it to liquify smoothly.
Restaurants in Newcastle
I enjoy being able to eat out here in Newcastle and see the wide range of restaurants and places from distinct corners of the world. Ecuador did not have so many different cuisines, and I enjoy trying out food from all over the world. Another thing that surprised me about food, is that to this day I have not been able to find many typical British dishes.
Aside from the standard fish and chips, roast dinner and scones, and meat pies, there aren’t many dishes that have really stood out to me as typical British food. Thus, I’ve found British cuisine to be rather bland in general. Back home, we have a wide range of dishes, using a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, greens, meats, roots, fish and prepared in a variety of different ways. The same goes for some of the other cuisines I’ve tried. They stand out compared to the British cuisine that I’ve tried. However, the sheer range of different cuisines readily available in Newcastle more than makes up for the bland local cuisine.
