My name is Gabriel Pazmino and I am an international student currently living in Newcastle for over four years. In this series of articles I want to showcase my experience as a foreigner living here in Newcastle.
Safety
This might seem odd to many people, but safety was definitely a welcome change for me. Compared to back home, living in Newcastle and travelling in the UK is about the safest I’ve felt. At the same time, I’m not also saying I feel like the UK and Newcastle are particularly safe either. It’s just much safer than back home for me and my circumstances.
Back home in Ecuador, I look like 0.00000001% of the population. I’m blonde, blue eyed and white. I have Swedish descent and that’s why. Back home it’s not normal to see blonde, blue eyed folks, so I tend to get associated with being a tourist, and tourists mean money. Ecuador has had a large increase in Drug cartel activity since the Covid pandemic and the dissolution of the FARC in Colombia. This has led the country to reach new levels of low public safety that have never been seen before. I can’t really walk in the street back home, because I stand out as a target. I look like a tourist, and I am a prime target for robbing. Locals also sometimes speak to me in English thinking I’m a tourist. It also means I can’t really wear headphones or take out my phone in public. I would also have to be mindful and alert whenever I went out, or walked about, always alert for any potential danger.
Here however, it’s completely different. With my appearance, I fit right in. No one will bat an eye when I walk down the street. I can go about my business stress free. I can pull out my phone and wear headphones. I like the feeling of not standing out. It’s refreshing and reassuring. It’s why I feel safer here.
Social interactions
During my first social interactions with others in Newcastle one of the first things that became apparent to me was that greeting people here is very different from back home. In Ecuador and in all Latin American countries, it is customary to greet women girls by giving them a kiss on the cheek.The first few days were an awkward mess of me trying to stop instinctively going for a kiss and instead either hug, wave or shake hands with people. At the same time it was also amusing to me seeing how other people reacted when I performed this sort of greeting with other South Americans. Many times I was amused to find people were shocked at me kissing the other person and immediately assumed we were either dating or were regular hookups. Overtime, I learnt not to stop myself from going for a kiss and now just either greet people by shaking hands or waving at them.
To this day one of the things I struggle the most when trying to meet British peers my own age, is how hard it seems to try and get to know them. Before coming to the UK I had a few family members warn me that British people tend to be much more closed up and distant to strangers. This was very hard for me, coming from a culture that is very warm, friendly and welcoming. Combine that with my desire to meet new people after being stranded alone in a new country and I was at my peak of extroversion. I quickly found out that many, not all of the students I interacted with, did not care much to talk about themselves or be friendly with me.
This, of course, was not out of malice, but rather I believe that’s what people are like here. They are more guarded than I’m used to. Regardless, I was frustrated in the beginning. A lot. Here I was, trying to talk to my peers, asking them questions about who they were, what they enjoy, why they choose to study here, and more often than not I would only get short yes or no replies to my questions. I felt like I was talking to a wall.
I’m used to people asking questions back when I ask them similar questions, I find it quite intriguing to get to know people’s backgrounds and circumstances, it’s a curiosity for discovering new things. I quickly found out most of my British peers were not interested that I was an international student with a different upbringing and culture. Even if I eventually did become closer to some of them, it took ages for me to get to that point. I remember I was paired with this female student in a seminar group to discuss and do some projects together. In the beginning, she barely talked to me and did not like responding to my endless barrage of questions. Eventually after two months, she started being more friendly. By that point I realised that if I wanted to become friends with any British student it would take a lot of time and effort.
Another thing I struggled with were the differences in upbringing and culture. Football is a popular sport back home, but I don’t watch it so that takes the easiest conversation starter out the window. I would find myself in many conversations with locals and be confused when people start talking about things that are common knowledge to them. British politicians and celebrities, different historical figures and moments, typical English shows, it was all unknown back then, and even now, there are many things I don’t really understand. They have grown up their whole lives surrounded by these things while I have not. It makes sense for me to struggle talking in these sorts of conversations. In a way, I certainly felt ostracised. Definitely not intentionally, but simply because I lacked the cultural knowledge to participate in a lot of conversations simply because of ignorance of British culture.
This led me to seek a different type of person to become friends with, the type of people who were in a similar situation to me. Thrust into another country by ourselves, with different cultures, us the international students, the odd ones out, naturally gravitated towards each other. I found myself meeting a lot of international people from many different backgrounds from around the world. The Middle East, West and East Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, West Europe. I also discovered that in general we international students tend to be more curious about our different backgrounds and experiences. Every person I meet has interesting anecdotes from back home, or unique aspects of their culture to share. It’s a fun and enriching experience.
At the same time, I also definitely did not close myself to trying to bridge friendships with my English peers. I eventually did meet quite a few who shared similar interests to me, or were actually curious about learning about my culture, and in return sharing their own culture and experiences.
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