Gestures and Awkward Situations

I taught English in a very small town in Greece for a year. It was a different experience because their culture was a mix of Greek and Bulgarian cultures. As an American, I felt really awkward there when I used gestures while speaking because some of the gestures which are OK in my culture don’t exist in their culture, and sometimes they were considered rude.

On the very first day at school I learnt that holding your thumb up to say that something is OK was an insult to the family of the person who you’re talking to! Our OK sign, which we use almost every day, was also considered rude and insulting.

To add to the confusion, some of the gestures had completely opposite meanings. For example, in America and most Western countries, we shake our heads to mean no. However, in their culture it meant yes. Another example is how you pay attention to people. It is polite in my culture to show your full face to the person who’s talking to you, but things were different there. You had to stand in a way that your ear was facing them! That was a sign of paying 100% of your attention to them.

All of these cultural differences caused misunderstandings, and sometimes they made me sound illogical, impolite or completely wrong. I highly recommend reading about the cultures which you want to live in before you travel.