Yeoh Lai Lin is a third-year student from Singapore

“You need to learn how to drink. British people love to drink.” This was a piece of advice given to me by my cousin, a student at the University of Bath. It made me nervous, for I wasn’t very good at drinking, nor did I particularly enjoy it. I remember flicking through his photos of freshers’ week on Facebook, every single one of them taken in a club and looking very jolly. Did I really have to party “hardcore”? Go out night after night in a row? Growing up in Singapore, there wasn’t much of a chance to drink or party until we finished school. Once or twice we would do it underage but mostly, given the interminable drudgery of long school hours and mountains of work, there was simply no time.

I suppose everyone feels a little jittery about freshers’ week, but I worried a lot about silly things like whether people would understand my accent, or whether they would want to make friends with me. I became extra conscious of my status as an ethnic minority: back home, I was used to being part of the majority Chinese Asian community. I felt uncomfortable standing out.

It is tempting to rely on befriending other students of the same nationality. But surely the point of going to a foreign country to study is to experience difference, to encounter new people and their perspectives? True, the English love their drink (they also love music festivals and football), but deep down we all love our mothers and we all bleed red. I find it strange that they have their porridge with honey and oats, while they find it strange that we have our porridge with chicken or frog’s legs. Yet we are curious about one another and we had a lot to share. I think I have done well so far: my friends have come to visit me in Singapore and I have become a better drinker.

Pernilla Ekholm is a third-year student from Finland

When I first left Finland to study at Cambridge, I thought I already knew everything about British culture. Bookshelves filled with Terry Pratchett and Harry Potter, rows of old VHS tapes featuring Blackadder and Monty Python and Saturday nights spent watching QI shaped my illusions about Britain. I could hardly contain my  excitement when I found myself in Cambridge, finally rid of the (in my opinion) introvert, grumpy and reserved Finnish culture.

When I arrived, I was surprised by the feelings of culture clash. It was remarkably difficult at first to understand what British people actually meant. In Finland, hinting is not really in our culture, whilst in Cambridge a phrase as simple as “We should go for coffee sometime” can apparently have at least three different meanings, not all of them legal.

If you ask a Finnish person how they’re doing and they feel pissed off, you can usually tell by the fact that they respond with the words “I’m pissed off.” British people will usually respond with “I’m fine”, coupled with the slight raising of one eyebrow or the miniscule pursing of lips. So confusing...

The angry looks and huffs received before realising that ending sentences with ‘please’ is the key to all doors tell their tale (there is no proper word for ‘please’ in Finnish, so it took a while to learn). However, I must say I enjoy the fact that people here tend to say sorry even if you’re the one whose toes are being stepped on, compared with the phrase “ugh” favoured by most Finns to express their feelings. It’s the diversity here that makes me happy I chose to step out of my own culture and it’s been well worth it. Apart from tuition fees. Screw you, British bourgeoisie!

Bara Golanova is a third-year student from the Czech Republic

“Can you read in English?” was one of the first questions I heard sitting at this year’s freshers’ fair stall of the Czech and Slovak Society. I reluctantly nodded, somewhat suspicious of why a man was asking a university student whether they can read in English. I was then handed a copy of The Watchtower – a monthly magazine of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I didn’t really understand all of it. But I doubt it was because of my English.

When I spoke to my Czech friends studying in the UK, they all said the same thing: don’t go there thinking you’ll make any British friends, because it’s not going to happen. They could not have been more wrong. For the first term in Cambridge I listened to the advice given to me. Whenever anybody politely asked me a question in the kitchen I panicked, convincing myself I couldn’t understand their accent, and blurted out something that usually had nothing to do with their initial enquiry.

And when I did actually make an effort to speak to British people, I made the rooky mistake of doing it on a night out or when in a big group. People act a lot more loud and rowdy when among friends, especially new ones that they want to impress. Girls especially tend to shout over each other, giving you the feeling that whatever you were saying wasn’t that important.

But I gathered up the courage to join a bunch of British people for a corridor dinner, and found they were actually interested in where I come from and that I could actually understand their accent. Being loud with them was fun and when they did laugh at my pronunciation, it was always in a friendly way. All these people come from different backgrounds, and I found out many of them felt a bit scared in the beginning like me.