Different yes! But not so different inside!

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Travelling abroad was
hard for me at first.

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I mean I was in at the deep
end culturally the first year.

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I remember really struggling.

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Was I wrong to be behaving
this way as a British person.

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Was I wrong.
Were these people wrong.

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Like what, why was this clash

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there culturally on certain things.

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I used to take a book with me
everywhere I went because

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I'd make an appointment
to meet a friend

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but they would always be
at least half an hour late.

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And at the beginning,
I was like no, that's wrong.

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You shouldn't be late.
It's rude.

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But by the time I left the
Middle East I understood that

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that's not what we
did in the Middle East.

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It's actually wrong or rude to say

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to the person who's just
knocked on your door,

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I'm sorry I can't see you now.
I've got to go meet my friend.

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You deal with the person in
front of you in the hospitality

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that's there; and there's just
a different way of operating

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and it took me time

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to learn to be comfortable and
to breathe and to relax with that

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and then to say that yeah it
doesn't have to be a certain way.

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I've experienced that you know
even just the things

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like how you do the washing up.

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I lived with an American in Jordan
who washed up a certain way.

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I lived with Tunisians in Tunisia
who have washed up a certain way.

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British people wash up
a certain way.

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And all of those three ways
or four ways

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when you have
the Jordanians as well

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are different ways of doing
the washing up.

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And I started to just realize

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that you can wash all
the different ways you want.

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There was a British way
isn't the correct way.

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So from every level of life

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if you can go through those
experiences even though it's hard

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and starts then to embrace
and be comfortable with the fact

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that we're all different
in some ways.

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You start to realize as well that

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we're all kind of the same as well

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in many ways, in the way that we
respond to things, our emotions,

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our relationships.

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And it becomes less threatening

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and it actually becomes
interesting and exciting.