Living with people from other cultures

[Puupi]

Heh, the 2 Norwegians was just randomally allocated student accomodation, was a shared flat of 4 of us, i ended up with 1 English girl and 2 Norwegian girls. The French girl i didn't live with for that long, we just met on a uni house hunting facebook page because we needed 1 more for our house and she joined, but she swapped uni after a few weeks so we found a Belgian girl as her replacement. So it was pretty much just random chance, first 2 i had no control over, and the second two was just who ever messaged me first on facebook :P

You know I need to ask you this.

Did you get laid?

[Deleted]

You know I need to ask you this.

Did you get laid?

uh no by the girls i lived with, but i did get with one of their sisters

Also so many people asked me that, in my first year of uni and telling people i live with 3 girls the first comment is always one of these:

"how hot are they"
"have you slept with them yet?"

Well one of the Norwegians was incredibly hot, but i think she was very strict christian, and seemed to only speak to Norwegian people

[Puupi]

uh no by the girls i lived with, but i did get with one of their sisters

Close enough! Good boy.

[Therdin]

I met a guy from Egypt about 12 years ago through a mutual friend via online gaming (his family is Muslim. But he is Muslim the way most Americans are christian, in name only). We stayed friends over the years moving from game to game. Last year he successfully applied for a green card to the United States. My fiance and were in a position to offer him a room for a couple of months so he could find employment and get on his feet. The Culture difference was not bad. But it was definitely something I had to address with him.

I'm not sure if it is a culture thing in Egypt or just him/his family, but body odor was an issue. He would wear an egregious amount of cologne oil to mask the smell. but it only really added the scent of drakkar noir on top of spoiled milk and baby vomit. also while he picked up after himself, he would do little in the way of helping clean the houses common areas.

Talking with him fixed these issues. the body odor was a combination of water/soap/etc was not something you did every day in egypt. He was poor so you showered once or twice a week. I explained that isn't how it works in the US, and introduced him to deodorant. he uses muchhhhhhh less cologne and my fiance was very happy about that, as she has allergies and strong smells can set her eyes into watering/swelling mode. As far as being more helpful around the common areas of the house. He was taught to pick up after himself, but the deep cleaning (dusting, vaccum, dishes etc) was always done by the females that lived with him. Since multiple generation lived in the same apartment he never needed to do that type of cleaning. Talking through this we made a schedule were he does some part of the common chores in the house.

What was supposed to be a couple of months stay while he got on his feet in a new country. Turned into him renting a room from us for the past year and half. He's a great guy, but there will always be issues when you have more than 1 person living in the same place.

I think the key to living with someone from a different culture is talking about the issues in a civil manner. Also, Understanding what you may perceive as a slight or rude behavior maybe how things are done where they are from. I made a point of being understanding with my friends culture but also made it clear that he did not live in Egypt anymore and while I understood it was a learning process, he would have to adapt to my culture if he wanted to continue living with me.

[Puupi]

Great story, @Therdin.

I have to admit I was chuggling irl when I was picturing in my head your fiance in tears because an Egyptian in your house was smelling so bad.

[ls-]

I'm Russian-born "Russian-Chinese" (it's a bit complicated), but I spent most part of my life outside Russia, I lived/worked/studied in Canada, Germany, Japan, China and currently Thailand. Although I move between BKK and Shanghai all the time, I mainly live in BKK.

I'd say it's quite cool, as long as a person who came to another country is willing to integrate, even if it's temporary for a period of stay.

It's baffling that so many people think that so-called cultural appropriation is bad. I think telling or teaching others about your culture, letting them experience some traditional stuff is one of the best things ever. It helps to spread and even preserve some of your culture's or nation's traditions, cuisine, etc.

Sometimes things may be a bit rough, but one simply shouldn't be an arsehole. For example, if you go to another country and people eat stuff people of you culture don't, you shouldn't be telling locals that they CAN'T eat their food because it's sacred or even isn't considered to be a food in your country. If you keep your mind open, it might be a good opportunity for you to experience new things, you may find them quite interesting.

Learning new languages is awesome. It's a shame that some people live in other countries and despise local language(s). When I first came to Siam I wanted to learn a bit more than basic Thai, but I ended up speaking Chinese here o_O Yeah, I was quite surprised too...

[Ravenblade]

With Chinese, but Chinese coming from heavily Communist culture still. Which means a single Chinese in your room meant actually an inofficial number of 15-20 of them since they loved together and do literally everything with as much they could cramp into 25 square meters of a room. So they handed out free invitations or invited themselves, I was just the human door-opener.

I am not going to add much more but it involved a lot of cursing but patient teaching that tarring the floor through never cleaning shoes while using excessive amounts of oil while cooking in a non-ventilated kitchen and without cleaning afterwards, and creating new and additional cultures to live side-by-side with inside the fridge, chopping vegetables together with 15 other people so that the club below sent up a guy complaining about a noise so loud that they barely could hear their music on stage, that trash isn't supposed to be ejected to the floor, that bicycles have real owners and that showers are not for rent and that water running down unisolated cable channels isn't healthy especially since we replaced the fuses with hard wires and nails (since the actual fuse types were of a type not attainable any longer) are not quite acceptable even by lousy student standards.

In short it was a time that taught you hardcore how to live together with people who literally managed to "surprise" you every day. I wished I had to bellow a lot less back then but I wasn't the only stressed at that time, nowadays there are mentors and special courses so it is no longer a problem but in the early 90s it was!

[Deleted]

As long as everybody sticks to the house rules, who gives a crap?

[ParanoiD84]

Not living with but i am working with kurds and some syrians though the syrians left to studdy swedish (sfi), also had arab/albanian/asian friends etc.

[MrKnubbles]

Why didn't you learn some Spanish? I don't even know why I bother.

Uh, because I was just staying there temporarily while I got back on my feet. I know a little bit of Spanish but not enough to properly communicate. I had no interest in making friends with them anyways, it was just a place to stay for a little bit. It was a small ass room, I wasn't allowed to use their kitchen or washer/dryer and it was $500 a month. It sucked.

[ItachiZaku]

I'm half native and Identify as such, so living with all these white devils my whole life... bruh... so fucking disrespectful. The gay white one was probably the most chill, weird but chill. Entitled cocksuckers, just about every one.

[PhantasmagoriaX]

I used to live in a area of miami that was very cuban populated and as a white girl with red hair , I stood out like a sore thumb lol People would look down on you if you didnt speak spanish and guess what, I didnt speak spanish so my time in miami was short and I never wanna go back. Not to mention it smelled down there and was extremely ghetto.

[Rotted]

So I'm working on my bachelor's degree currently and I've had classmates and lab partners from other cultures and most have been pretty positive. However I've never lived with someone from another culture. Have any of you done So? We're there any cultural barriers that made it difficult? Did you enjoy living with them?

UK here, lived with 6 random mature students in my first year, for third year two of us decided to move in together. He's American and literally impossible to live with, I lasted 3 months into my tenancy before moving out to my partners for the last 9 months. My advice? Pay the extra, move in on your own no matter how close you are to someone frienship wise. He went from being probably my best friends to the bane of my year.

[Deleted]

For 2 years at Uni, lived with an Italian, a pakistani muslim, spanish guy and and a lad from Jamaica. Our next door neighbours were 5 irish girls, it was fucking madness, never had more fun anywhere I lived. We left the backdoor to the house open, people would wonder in at all hours, always someone in the living room. Next door would have a party/gathering every friday, all thier nurse and teacher mates. Proper abuse from them if you pulled and turfed some bird out the next day. Good craic.

Italian guy was called Alessio, he was studying architecture, social hand grenade but a hell of an opener. Always made fuck loads of food and was like 'I've made too much help yourself'. He introduced me to the frosty jacks drinking game. It was never a good harvest.
Pakistani lad was mohassin, studying engineering of some description, started the year as winger, ended a prop. The kid put the booze away like a champion, massively racist, incredibly funny. I remember it being ramadan and meeting him at the pub, I questioned him about fasting and he said 'I fasted for like half of ramadan, brothers know thats enough'.
Jamacian fella was called ebenezer, didnt drink as much as the rest of us, was a powerlifter. Knew literally everyone about town kid was a social network, we called him eb the celeb. Good on a night out, fearlessly confident and just a tank of a human being.
Spanish guy was Gonzalo, he was pretty laid back, incredibly suprised how easy the birds were in England. I feel he good a good cultural exchange from the lot of us.

Its up there in the best places I've lived, it was fucking mint.