Cultural differences

I was crossing the street in front of my school, when a van pulled up to the crosswalk as I was almost on the other side of the street. I looked at the driver, and he gave me the hand gesture, shown above.

I've honestly never been around enough Italians to fully understand what that hand gesture means, but I automatically assumed the driver wasn't happy, so I instinctively said "sorry", even though he couldn't hear me through the window.

He rolled his window down, and kept doing the hand motion at me. I walked over to the window, ready to apologize for apparently taking too much time to cross the street, when he said, "Excuse me, do you know where building 10 is?" He was from South Asia, and didn't seem to be mad at all. I told him that I wasn't too sure where building 10 was, but I pointed out some of the signs to him, and he went on his merry way.

I talked to my coworkers about it afterwards, and apparently the driver was using that hand gesture to say "Hey, wait up/Help me out". I did some further research, and found out that the same hand gesture definitely means "What the f*** are you doing?" in Italian. Can't say as I'll be using it anytime soon for either purpose, but it's just one more thing to keep in mind about culture out here.

Other things to keep in mind include:
- not mentioning boyfriends and girlfriends in class, as some Muslim students find the concept offensive
- not taking offense when a cashier puts change down on the counter, instead of handing it to me, as what's rude for me can be the opposite of what's rude for them
- not getting people to bring me back bags of Starburst and handing them out as prizes, as they're banned from stores here for a reason (they apparently have pig gelatin in them, I guess)
- not playing music in class during the month of Ramadan

I have a similar list in my mind for Korea. That one happens to be much longer, mostly because I lived there for a longer period of time. I suspect that my list for Dubai will far exceed my Korea list. Such things are mostly compiled through trial and error, and are never something that you can truly prepare ahead of time.