England

For this week's self-learning project, I decided that since I will be spending next year in England, I should learn a little bout the country and the culture. I started with finding Nottingham, where I will be attending classes, on a map and looking at its relation to London. That being accomplished, I thought that the next step would be to find out about some of the holidays that are celebrated in England. Of course they do not celebrate Thanksgiving or Independence Day in England, but one holiday they do have that differs from American holidays is Boxing Day. Boxing Day is the day after Christmas and dates back to the 800s. It was traditionally the day that the alms boxes in the churches were opened and the money given to the poor. Also, servants would get the day after Christmas off and their employers would box up their leftovers and send them with their servants.
Another area that I looked into was the lexical (vocabulary) differences between American English and British English. For example an ATM can be called a cash machine or cashpoint and what we call the first floor they call the ground floor. There were quite a few foods that they have that we do not, like bubble and squeak which is a dish of cooked cabbage fried with cooked potatoes and other vegetables. Looking at the words that they commonly use that we do not almost makes it look as though we speak to totally different languages.
Finally, I looked up some of the general cultural things like their government and the religion and social norms. Conservative dress is expected and people prefer to have a large personal space. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the English do not always look at you when speaking to you. Another thing that I found was that you should stand on the right side on escalators and avoid excessive hand gestures when talking. Through this learning project I have discovered that there are more differences than I thought and I will have to continue learning about England in the time leading up to my departure.