If you were to move from Wisconsin to Scotland, there would be plenty of differences. Some of them would be significant and some would be minor. Some might even turn into adventures and lessons learned about Scottish culture. Here are the things I missed about Wisconsin while living and studying in Aberdeen, Scotland:
Being Close to Family
This one is a no-brainer. Not being able to stop at your sister’s house or check in on your mom can be hard while being away. You can still chat over the phone but sometimes it literally feels like you’re worlds away. You’d give anything to see them in person. The hardest part of moving from Wisconsin to Scotland for me was not being able to reach them at a reasonable time because of the 6 hour time difference.
Sharing Experiences with Friends or Significant Others
This one may also be pretty basic but it’s honestly the thing I missed most. My significant other was at home in Wisconsin and I was over 3,000 miles away. He was working an 8 to 5 job. When he got home from work it was 11 pm in Scotland. It was hard to schedule times to talk on the phone. Everything I was experiencing was hard to explain or just made me feel bad that I wasn’t doing and seeing these amazing things with him. It was a tough year being so far away from each other. Thankfully, he was able to come from Wisconsin to Scotland and visited me during my spring break!
You’ll also find that your friends may get tired of hearing about your adventures after about a month of you being home. So not only did you not get to share any of the experiences but they might not want to hear about all of the experiences they missed out on. Don’t worry though, any time you meet a fellow traveler or someone who studied abroad, they will want to hear all about it and will want to share their experiences too!
Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese & Cheese Curds
You knew this one was coming! From the dairy state, you will definitely miss the classic Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese when moving from Wisconsin to Scotland. Scotland has very fresh produce and even has royal eggs. They come with cute little stamps on them but the cheese doesn’t compare. Now, there is a wide variety of cheese available in Scotland, with British aged cheddar being popular. However, the cheddar is not the same. Their cheddar is a white cheddar that is sharp even when you buy a mild white cheddar. It’s good but not the same as the creamy, salty cheddar I was used to in Wisconsin.
Oh and there are no cheese curds. BUT I did find a new cheese there that was pretty amazing. It was a grilling cheese called halloumi that actually keeps its block or cube form while being grilled. It’s delicious! Keep an eye out for it at Aldi, to try your hand at grilling cheese! They usually add it in the rotation of European cheeses once a year.
Ranch
Okay, this next one might upset a few people. RANCH. They don’t have ranch. They have garlic buttermilk mayo but no ranch. If ranch is your favorite dipping sauce, be sure to pack a monster-size container in your checked luggage when moving from Wisconsin to Scotland. It’s bad but I honestly am not a big ranch person. I didn’t notice that I didn’t see any in the stores there until after I moved home. I lived there for a year and didn’t realize I couldn’t get it there.
Honestly, it’s a good thing I didn’t realize that. Otherwise, I would have been craving it like crazy! I was too worried that there wouldn’t be any peanut butter due to an inaccurate claim on a blog. The blog claimed that in Europe, I wouldn’t be able to find peanut butter. Maybe it wasn’t inaccurate and they just didn’t consider the UK as part of Europe? I packed my big jar of peanut butter and sacrificed room in my suitcase to find the exact same jar of peanut butter on the shelf in the grocery store across the street from my flat.
Oh, they also don’t have taco bell or nearly as many Mexican food places as the US. Anyways, moving along
Uber & Lyft
Uber generally operates in bigger cities in the UK but even some of those cities don’t allow Uber. So depending on the city you’re in and what that city allows you may or may not have Uber. I was living in Aberdeen where Uber was rejected by the city in support of the local taxi drivers union.
It was an inconvenience to have to call a taxi company when we wanted to be driven to a restaurant. That’s only because no one wanted to make the phone call. The prices in the city were extremely reasonable for taxis. The bus transportation in the city was extremely easy to use and could get you anywhere you needed to be. In the capital city of Edinburgh Uber is allowed to operate. There are currently no other rideshare services that are operating in the country as their competitor, Lyft, exclusively operates in the US.
Pandora
No, I am not talking about the jewelry store. I’m talking about the music streaming service that I exclusively used prior to studying in Scotland. I was all in on Pandora because I am super indecisive and loved that every channel just picked music for you. Any time I asked someone about Pandora they thought I was talking about the jewelry store. I have since switched to Spotify. It serves me well now but for a while, I wasn’t able to remember the names of songs I liked from Pandora. I struggled to get a good playlist going on Spotify at first.
Top sheets
Oh how I love top sheets. In Scotland and most places in Europe you will find that there won’t be top sheets. This is because typically, Europeans will use duvet covers that will serve as a top sheet. But also wrapped around the comforter? It’s kind of the same but not. These covers can be washed almost as easily as top sheets depending on how skilled you are at getting the comforter evenly distributed within the duvet cover. If you don’t think you could live without a top sheet, my advice is to bring one with you. That is, if you plan on moving countries any time soon.
Big Department Stores
The days of shopping at one store and getting everything you needed are not days spent in Scotland. You won’t find many department stores with a large variety of products when moving from Wisconsin to Scotland. You will find the UK version of Walmart, called Asda, but it won’t have the scale of what a Walmart in the US would have. The variety of departments and products most likely won’t be found. Asda does have a larger variety of foods, offers some clothes, and home goods. However, you won’t find the goldfish aisle, the paint aisle, or the automobile aisle. If you’re reading this and you’re from Scotland, yes Walmarts here really do have everything. The biggest stores you find will likely be grocery stores, clothing stores, or IKEAs because they do have those!
The Imperial System in Cooking & Measuring Cups
If you’re not good at cooking in the US, good luck switching over to the metric system and using convection ovens. I didn’t realize there was a difference in the way the ovens cooked until I burnt the top of the pumpkin pie I made for Thanksgiving for my flatmates. Cooking was a bit of a challenge, as most recipes there use metric measurements that require weighing most of the ingredients. I was lucky to find some measuring cups that appeared to be the sizes of US measurements but had metric measurements on them. I used them throughout the year and it didn’t seem to ruin anything I cooked. To avoid the oven, I just tried to do a lot of cooking and sautéing on the stovetop. If I move back, from Wisconsin to Scotland, you can bet the first thing in my suitcase will be measuring cups.
The Education System, Grading, and Marking
I could write a whole blog post about how the US and UK school systems differ. I might in the future! This section covers how their education system was explained to me. Here are some of the main ways the systems differ:
College vs University
When going from a US college to a UK university, you’ll find that college and university mean two different things there whereas in the US any postsecondary course taken needs to fit certain parameters and cover certain material to be accredited. Therefore courses at colleges and universities in the US are at the same academic levels as each other. In the UK colleges are used for students who didn’t make it into a university they wanted to attend so they will take courses at the college and transfer to the university later on to complete their degree. They are also for students with lower marks (or grades) whereas universities are an advanced level of education.
Homework
I was also shocked to find that in the UK, there aren’t nearly as many homework assignments as in the US. Most of the courses I took had no homework assigned. You were still responsible to learn the material but you weren’t given specific tasks to complete. The grades were decided by one exam at the end of the semester. In the US, I was used to having a few homework assignments, a quiz, a test, and an essay due within the same week.
Marking or Grading System
The grading scale was also very different. In the US a 90% or above is an A. That A is determined by whether or not you understood the material covered in the class. In the UK a 70% or above is an A. This is because only experts in the subject matter should receive anything over 90%. It’s a difference in philosophy. A’s in the UK are achieved by being able to list out things that you learned in the courses and mastering the exam format which is rarely multiple choice. In the US multiple choice is standard. I grew up on multiple-choice and there, students dreaded it.
Understanding Everyone the First Time They Speak
This one is a big one. Going from Wisconsin to Scotland, the accents are quite different. You’ll never realize how lucky you are to just understand the people around you until you live somewhere else and have to decipher a new way of speaking. I’m sure you rarely have to second guess what your neighbors say to you but when you move to Scotland(or any other country) you will probably understand about half of the people living there if they speak your language. That’s all thanks to accents!
In Scotland, the people you can understand are not from Glasgow. Glaswegians(people from Glasgow) are known for having a very thick accent and I’m here to tell you that statement is true. For the first few weeks, I really struggled to understand the people I met. I felt so bad for my flatmate Monica (who was from Spain). My response to everything she said the first few weeks was: “wait… what did you say?” After a while, I caught onto Monica’s accent and slowly started to catch on to the Scottish accent. I’m proud to say that by the end of the year, I could even understand a Glaswegian!
Looking for more?
I really hope you enjoyed this article about what I missed when I moved from Wisconsin to Scotland. I’m looking forward to writing more articles like it. In the meantime, if you’re interested in studying abroad, click here to check out my complete Study Abroad Guide.
