I speak Canadian
When I first arrived as an international student at the University of Minnesota, I was naive regarding the cultural differences that I would face. Being from Canada, I had visited the U.S. on many ocasions and believed it to be not unlike the country I grew up in. It looked the same, sounded the same and I would often forget that I was an international student at all. But then ocasionally, I would be reminded.
Once I arrived on campus, it did not take long for my roommates to start noticing differences in the way I spoke. As they would put it, I speak Canadian. There are many phrases and terms that I used that my roommates had never heard before. But to me, the differences were so small and subtle that I did not even notice, and it was months before it was ever brought to my attention. In one specific situation, there is a Canadian word "tuque" (pronounced like tuke, rhyming with the word duke) which is what we call a winter hat, that I was always using. Once it started getting colder outside and I started mentioning the word "tuque" more frequently one of my roommates finally confronted me about the situation. It was a weird experience, because, as I said, I seldom thought of myself as a foreigner, but after this, I never really forgot.
Once we got the whole "tuque" thing out of the way, all of a sudden the flood gates opened and my roommates made me aware of every "Canadianism" that they had notice in my language, and there were a lot. I realized how oblivious and even ignorant I had been regarding the cultural differences that existed, and it was a very eye opening experience.
There were a lot of things that I learned during this experience. Firstly that cultural differences will be everywhere, and will exist even if you can not see them. I thought that because everything looked the same, and ran on a lot of the same principles as where I am from, that it was all exactly the same. I was also surprised that it took so long for me to be notified of these differences, but my roommates never said anything for fear of being impolite.
This situation would never have reached the stage that it did if I would have been a little more open minded to what differences could exist. If I would have made more of an effort to uncover the cultural/linguistic differences, they would not have blind sided me like they did. More specifically, I should have talked to my roommates about this topic, and gotten their input early on.
Even after being here for close to four years I am still realizing cultural contrasts every day, but instead of that being distracting, I find it interesting. Most importantly, since moving here, I have learned to embrace the differences and have realized how much my Canadian culture has made me who I am.