FAQs of a Brit Abroad

During the first few months of my year abroad I’ve met loads of new people from all around the world and with meeting new people comes lots of questions. After the usual “What’s your name? What do you study? Where are you from?” the same questions come up time and time again when I tell people I’m from the UK, so I’ve had lots of practice with the answers. Here’s a few of the most common ones.

1. Brexit

Questions about Brexit have been very common, especially in my first few weeks in New Zealand as I arrived about 10 days after the referendum. Almost everyone I spoke to asked me about it, so I had a well-rehearsed answer about my opinion of the situation.

2. How Long my Flight was

Another question I got asked a lot after I’d just arrived was variations of “I bet that was a long flight wasn’t it?” I can confirm that yes, the flight from the UK to New Zealand takes a very long time!

3. It being Winter in Summer

As I arrived in New Zealand in July it was the middle of winter in here but the middle of summer back in the UK, I was asked quite a few times whether it was weird. This is usually followed by some comment about British summer not being very summery anyway, which is very true given that some of the winter days here had better weather than summer in the UK. I also had a few people telling me that’ll I find it strange having Christmas in summer, which I guess I’ll find out in a couple of months.

4. Where in the UK are you from?

A lot of people seem keen to know whereabouts in the UK I’m from, even though most of the time they don’t have a great knowledge of British geography (understandable seeing as they live over 10000 miles away). I’m yet to find anyone over here who’s heard of the town in the North East where I grew up.

5. Leicester winning the Premier League

When I tell people I study in Leicester I often get asked about Leicester City winning the Premier League as it’s the only reason most people on this side of the world have heard of Leicester. Unfortunately, I have to disappoint them by revealing that I don’t really have any interest in football so I wasn’t overly bothered when they won. Having said that, I did still go to the victory parade in May as it was a good excuse for a break from revision.