I am a foreigner in a foreign land

Friday, May 02, 2014

Being an immigrant is quite interesting. You don't fit neither in your adopted nor your home country. You experience cultural differences everyday and often you're viewed as a bit weird because you do things a bit differently.

I will share my own experience which is obviously very subjective, influence by my own cultural background and it might be a very different experience from that of other immigrants.

My first topic is tea.  British have a reputation of being a bit obsessed about tea. Lithuanians do like tea too, you can find so many varieties, though a lot of British people would probably insist to call  some of  them infusions rather than tea. But we Lithuanians just called all of them tea. The weirdest thing British people do is adding milk to their tea. I had tea with milk willingly just once, I thought I'd try, see what's the fuss is about.  It was awful. You can't really taste tea. It tastes what I imagine water  squeezed from dirty dish cloth would taste. That is an abomination. I had tea with milk a few times because even though people ask you how do you take it, they'd still add milk. I just try drinking and never mentioning it again. I skip drink rounds  at work because I don't want to drink it. Speaking of drink rounds, what's up with that? It would be so much easier if everyone's just got a drink for themselves or otherwise you end up doing drinks for 6 people.

What British have perfected is cream tea. I'll be honest, the first time I heard of it, I though it was  is literally tea with cream. I thought if they drink tea with milk, putting cream is just as crazy and equally plausible. I do not remember when I discovered the actual meaning of cream tea, but embarrassingly it wasn't that long ago. I do enjoy it now very much.


You Might Also Like

0 comments