Culture Shock!

Travelling to a new place is exciting. Moving to a new place is a whole different ball game.

During the long-distance portion of our relationship, Greg and I would save up enough money to visit one another every 6 months. He worked the red-eye shift at Walmart (difficult for a person who prefers a ‘normal’ sleep schedule), and I worked in a coffee shop (difficult for someone who hates coffee).  We knew we would only have a couple of weeks together, so we would make an effort to visit different attractions and see and do as much as possible within that time period. I think you generally see what you want to see when travelling. You don’t really experience the differences between two countries until you are living somewhere else, both good and bad.

I try to embrace my uniqueness, and it does come in handy for those times when you want to be noticed e.g. interviewing for a job or making friends at the local tennis club. The other day, three employees in Publix (the local supermarket) asked me where my accent was from and struck up conversation, interested to hear all about my life. American’s think Australia is some kind of exotic oasis where everything is trying to kill us. They love icons like Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee, to the point where I’ve been asked if I know them – “Oh yeah, he’s my Uncle” I once replied. Basically, it’s ‘cool’ to be an Aussie in the States.

Getting back to my point – when you live somewhere new, you need to work to earn money and do all those tasks that ‘normal’ people do. You do things 10x slower than everyone else because you’re learning a new way of doing things. You constantly experience the feeling of moving one step forward and two steps back. No matter how hard you try to ‘fit in’, there’s always someone there to let you know that you don’t. There’s two words for this:

Culture Shock! 

No one can ever prepare you enough for it. But you do grow because of it.

I thought I would share a few of America’s idiosyncrasies:

• Everything is about convenience – drive through banking; drive-through pharmacy; drive-through Krispy Kreme Doughnuts; electric garage door openers; the mailman not only delivering mail to your mailbox but also picking up any mail you need to send. (I must say I have grown to enjoy the latter two conveniences)!
• FOOD. EVERYWHERE. There are billboard advertisements for fast-food restaurants every few hundred meters along the freeway. There are so many chain restaurants that I am constantly hearing about new ones. In Australia, you can almost count them on one hand.
• Cheap beer prices. (I also appreciate this one)!
• The health care system is complicated (let’s no even go there, or this blog post will never end)!
• I am constantly learning new lingo. Here’s a few of my favourites:

1. It’s “How are you doing?” in America, not “How are you going?” like in Australia. American’s will reply to the latter with “Going? I’m going nowhere. But I’m doing well, thanks”.
2. ‘shopping cart’ for ‘shopping trolley’
3. ‘gas’ for ‘petrol’. People will ask "Have you got gas?" – makes me laugh every time.
4. ‘Quick Lube’ / ‘Jiffy Lube’ is the name of some mechanic stores. 
5. ...and last but not least, you say ‘I’ve lost my flip flop” when at the beach, not “I’ve lost my thong”. (From personal experience, you only make that mistake once)! 

On that note, have a great week! 

Maree