The weekend turned out to be a pretty good one; I went swimming with a group of AUS students I've been hanging out with, at Riverway in Thuringowa. Riverway is basically a free outdoor rec. area on a river with a huge outdoor pool and picnic tables where you can barbeque. After not being out in the sun in a bathing suit since August, it felt fantastic.
I've been keeping a record of differences I've noticed between AUS and America:
- We went to the supermarket before going to Riverway, and there is so much fresh food! Also, they refer to ketchup as tomato sauce or just sauce and the favorites for topping hot dogs are ketchup and BBQ sauce.... not mustard which is what I usually eat.... but the BBQ was good.
- Hot dogs are referred to as sausages.
- They have whole-meal bread which I believe is our equivalent of whole wheat?
- Passionfruit juice is very popular
- Soda is referred to as soft drink
- Driving has really thrown me off as they drive on the left side here, therefore, the driver's side is on the right.
- Parking spots are referred to as car parks
- Everything is in Celsius and Kilometers so there is a learning gap when I talk to the AUS students because neither one of us can convert; I was talking to one student and he stated that the coldest it had ever gotten in his hometown of Cairns was 10 degrees.... I thought about it.... then I said "You mean 10 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit?" He laughed and said "Celsius" and I told him he was going to have to do the conversion for me so I could know just how cold 10 degrees really was; he did the conversion and replied " 50 degrees Fahrenheit". I just laughed.
- Trash is referred to as rubbish and the trash can is called a bin.
- They love to say "oh, righto"
- Vegemite is a popular food spread
- I spent some time talking to one bloke this morning mainly about college life here: There's no such thing as in-state or out-of-state tuition. Cost differentiates based on what you're studying; med students pay more because their classes require them to use alot of equipment, expensive equipment at that and their professors usually are highly educated so they need to be payed more. It is not at all difficult to get into some majors like nursing or law. They don't have things on campus like sororities and fraternities or students clubs; you do everything with your dorm, and things are just very laid back.
Yea, thats it so far, it's just really interesting to discover that even though we may both be English speaking countries, and very Westernized, there are many differences.
1 comment:
How interesting!!! Much more interesting than my Western Civ homework that I should be doing! ha!
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