Where Did We Move To?

Hi, folks!

The previous post about packing up our first home finished on the ultimate cliff-hanger ...

Where did we move to?

Many people asked for Part Two of the series, so without further ado, let's "spill the beans". We have moved across the other side of the world again, this time to ...

The Land Down Under!

G'Day from Queensland, Australia
Photo taken by Gregory Richardson (drone photography).

Although Australia is my home country, it will take some time to adjust. After living in America for 6 years, the first few weeks back in Australia felt like a foreign country.

Initial musings about moving back to my homeland:

- Everyone has an accent, and it sounds really bogan! During our first week back, we were in a restaurant in Brisbane and I made a quiet comment about the two blokes sitting at the table next to us: “Hey, I think they’re from Australia ...”, forgetting that we were no longer in America. 

- My accent is a hybrid. It sounds really confused! For those new to the blog, I work as a Speech Language Pathologist, and part of my job is to help children articulate their speech sounds correctly. Thus, while living in America, I had been consciously trying to make my “R’s” strong and my vowels long. Now I have to retrain my own articulation skills to sound Aussie again!

- Jacaranda trees are stunning! I’ve never truly appreciated them until now. For my international friends, Jacaranda’s are large trees that bloom gorgeous, purple flowers in October/November; Springtime in the Southern Hemisphere.

Jacaranda Trees
Photo taken by Gregory Richardson.

- Upon starting a new job in Australia, I’m steadily learning about the changes in the healthcare system over the past few years, including the nationwide roll out of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Understanding healthcare systems in two countries can be overwhelming.

- You know how foreigners suppose that Australian animals are out to kill ya? Now I understand their point of view - our spiders are huge! A couple of weeks ago, we visited the local Botanic Gardens and were greeted with a nightmarish mass of entangled webs and spiders the size of an outstretched hand. There are memes made of this stuff!

- Never had I ever been stung by a blue bottle until, you guessed it ... now. Last weekend the little blighter wrapped its tentacle around my ankle and hung on for all it was worth. Ouch!

- Cricket is a strange sport. With field positions like "Silly Mid Off" and "Short Leg", and test matches that last up to 5 days, no wonder why Robin Williams said: "Cricket is basically Baseball on Valium". I took Greg to his first ever live cricket match and he enjoyed tolerated it for 3 hours. We agreed this was a pretty good innings for his first experience. 

Greg's First Cricket Match
Photo taken by random crowd member.

- Aussie sangas (sausages) are amazing! So are plain mince pies with tomato sauce (ketchup). 

- I have complained about Australia’s high income tax rates. Goodbye, pay check!

- It’s easy to find vacant beaches all to yourself with sand that stretches as far as the eye can see.

To our friends and family:  if you’re up Queensland way or fancy taking that bucket list trip to The Land Down Under, feel free to drop in! As Paul Hogan once said, we might even "slip an extra shrimp on the barbie" for ya.

Cheers!


Maree

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