Hey Everyone!
I’m sitting on the plane home to the US as I write this,
which will sadly be one of my last blog posts about studying abroad! :(
I can’t believe the semester is over. I honestly don’t know
where this time has gone. I feel like I was planning to go abroad for ages, and
now I can’t grasp the concept that it’s all over!
Saying goodbye to everyone at Tommy was honestly one of the
hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. I am excited to get home to see my
family and friends, but honestly, leaving Perth and my new family there has
left my heart completely broken, and I’m so sad about having to leave everyone.
But more on that later, because if I think about it too much now I’ll start
crying and I’ve done enough of that in the last week to last me a lifetime. I
also have another 11 hours to go on this flight, so I want my plane-neighbors
to still like me by the end of this trip hahaha :)
So, I’m going to save the sentimental blog post for last,
after I’ve been home for a bit so I can be sure to say everything I want. You
guys have that last sappy post to look forward to :)
In the meantime, I want to mention all the Australian
nuances I’ve picked up on over the past few months, especially because I want
to be sure not to forget them.
Observations:
1)
The Australian pronunciation of the letter “h”.
In America, ‘H’ is a relatively silent letter, it’s more of a space filler, if
you will. Well, the Aussies use the letter ‘h’ of course, but it is not silent.
No no no. The ‘H’ sound has so much oomph behind it that you wonder how strong
the Australian diaphragm must be in order to get such a strong sound out of a
silent letter. …For example, if you say the letter “H’ in America, it sounds
like “aych”. In Australia, its “HHHHHAAAAAAYCH”, with a very sharp exhale. So,
if we want to go to eat at Hungry Jacks (same thing as Burger King), which all
the Aussies call “HJ’s” for short, it sounds like “HHHAYCH jays”. Its
confusing, I know. This probably doesn’t even make sense, especially because I
know I’m deliriously rambling to you all on this plane. But nevertheless, it
makes sense in my head and I feel like I did a somewhat adequate job of
explaining? Hahahaha so that’ll just have to suffice for now…ok moving on—
2)
Types of coffee in Australia.
Ever heard of a Flat White? A Long
Black? No? Yeah me neither, until I came to Oz. These are just two of the types
of coffee that the Aussies drink on a daily basis. They still have the standard
stuff, like lattes, cappuccinos, etc. But they’re all slightly different from
what we have in the states. Since I’m somewhat of a coffee connoisseur, I took
It upon my self to try every coffee offered. Most of them are awesome—I
definitely prefer the Aussie style of coffee-making to American. Almost every
coffee includes steamed milk, which is my favorite part :) None of that drip-coffee
nonsense that everyone does in the States. There’s no such thing as a coffee
machine in an Aussie house. Instead, there’s definitely an espresso machine
thing, and something to steam milk with. Its wonderful.
Ok so back to the coffeeeeees
A flat white coffee is a shot of
espresso with steamed milk and a sliver of foam on the top (similar to our
version of the latte). A long black is disgusting—it’s a shot of espresso mixed
with boiling water, and that’s it. Grody. I learned all of this at my lovely
job at Mother’s Foods, which is down the street from Tommy. I had to take a
barista training course for my job, so the good news is I can make really good
coffees now. The bad news is all the Aussie coffees are different from ours so
I’ll need to relearn everything. Ohhh welllll.
3)
While we’re on the topic of Mother’s Foods, my
beautiful (nightmarish) place of employment, I’ll just mention that while I hated
having the job, I learned a TON there. I definitely wouldn’t have learned so much
about the outback/down under Aussie culture if it weren’t for that place,
because all of our clientele were miners who were home-grown, true blooded,
authentic, bogan aussies. So you could imagine how overwhelmed I was my first
week at work when 15 guys would come in to the restaurant on their lunch break,
covered in coal dust, and would order: “A flat white, dim sim, lasagna topper,
roll with snags, beetroot and capsicum on a roll, pepper pie, brekky with salad hold the
beans, a chiko roll, and a sausage roll.” My first few days I was on the verge
of tears constantly because I had no idea
what they were talking about. But luckily I learned and soon enough I had
that restaurant down to a T, prices memorized and everything. Go me. I even
trained my replacement…that was odd.
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| My hole-in-the-wall place of employment :) |
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| Oh, Mothers. So many memories. That I will likely soon forget. |
4)
Australians saying “throw another shrimp on the
Barbie” is a lie. No one says that. They don’t even put shrimps on a barbeque,
like, ever. They might throw a few snags (sausages) on the Barbie, but that’s
called a sausage sizzle. So yeah, no
shrimps on the Barbie ever….
5)
Australian birds are annoying and super weird.
They’re massive things that squawk and swoop at your head and attack you. I’m
not even kidding, I saw more kids at uni get attacked by swooping birds than I
could count. All the birds are super tropical/different looking and they are
very very very loud. The only singing bird I ever noticed is the kookaburra,
which I didn’t know was a real bird until I saw it! You know the song? “Kookaburra
sitting in the old gum tree…” haha :)
6)
Aussies say “keen” and “reckon” constantly.
CONSTANTLY. For example, “Ay mate, are ya keen for pies at supper?” which is
“Hey dude would you like to go get pies at dinner?”. Reckon is another popular
one. Aussies ask “What do you reckon?”, which sounds more like
“Whadayareckon?”—it’s pretty much said as one word—but anyways it’s the same as
saying ‘what do you think?’ :)
7)
FLIES ARE EVERYWHERE. If you go outside and have
food in your hands, you can count on a minimum of 15 flies swarming around you
within seconds of the food’s appearance. Those flies will also stay there until
the food is alllll gone. It doesn’t matter how much you swat at them, they are
unfazed, and they are soooo annoying. Even if you’re outside, sans-food, flies
will buzz around your face and it’s disgusting. They just don’t quit!
Apparently they get even worse in the summer too, so I only had to deal with
the beginnings of the upcoming summer fly infestation. The flies are the only
thing that I won’t miss from Australia haha
8)
Lots of people don’t wear shoes, at all.
Australia is plenty warm, and being in the outback, looking nice for
appearance’s sake isn’t really a priority for some. Its also super trendy to be a hippie/hipster/indie person and not wear shoes, because its 'making a statement'. So loads of people just
don’t ever wear shoes. I first noticed this at uni when I saw two girls walking
around barefoot. I automatically and naively assumed that maybe they lost their
shoes, maybe they couldn’t afford shoes, maybe their shoes were stolen, etc.
But over the next few days I started noticing a rising trend in
no-shoe-wearers. It’s the hip, bohemian thing to do. Just go without. In
reality, I would love to be able to go barefoot everywhere. I hate wearing
shoes all the time! That’s why I live in my flip flops…but the germophobe in me
wouldn’t be able to walk all over Perth without shoes hahaha :)
9)
The phrase “legging it” is just a way to
emphasize how fast you had to move to get somewhere…i.e. “I was late so I
legged it to class”
10)
“Hi-Lo”
Milk = Skim Milk
11)
Ending
sentences with “as” and “but”-- Aussies often will be talking, and will end
their sentence with “as”, leaving the statement completely open-ended. But
that’s the idea…for example, someone will say “The person driving in front of
me was going slow as.” So I guess you could say they don’t complete the thought
because that puts a limit on the emphasis? Like that person was going sooo slow
that there’s no word to describe how slow and painful it was that would do the
situation justice. The same goes for ending sentences with “but”.
12)
Ending
sentences in “hey”. It’s just added for emphasis: “The bar last night was so
fun hey.”
13)
“Ta” = “thank
you”. That was a weird one, no idea where it came from...
14) "Que" = a line that you wait in, not a spanish word that means 'who'....
14) "Que" = a line that you wait in, not a spanish word that means 'who'....
Those are all the observations that come to my mind at the
moment… I know I’m going to think of a million more once I post this haha but
I’ll try to add on later :) In the meantime, I should probably try to sleep a bit maybe? My sense of time
is just going to be completely out of whack when I get home.. Erica and I left
Sydney (we spent a few days there after leaving Perth and before coming home)
on Wednesday the 28th at 3:40pm, and we will be landing in Dallas on
Wednesday the 28th at 1:40….SO WE’RE TIME TRAVELLING! Haha we’ll be
landing in Dallas 2 hours before we ever left Sydney. WEIRD.
By the way, here are some photos of UWA and Tommy... I realized I never showed you all where I went to school and lived, so now you can check it out :)
Here are some of my favorite spots at UWA
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| the ULTIMATE climbing tree |
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| The walkway to my favorite cafe that I got my coffee from every morning :) |
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| Winthrop Hall |
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| Panorama of the front of campus. So beautiful! |
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| Front Wing walkway |
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| The Chapel |
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| Middle Wing and the chess board that we never used :) |
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| Middle Wing |
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| Front Entrance! My room is the window next to the streetlamp on the left of the picture! |
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| Its tradition that the resident of each room writes their name and school on the closet door at the end of every year :) Here's mine! |
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| my bathroom, Not too shabby! |
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| Back Wing |
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| Dining Hall on the left :) |
Anywho, I’ll be writing one last blog post
over the next few weeks or so about my entire experience. It’ll be a sobfest
when I write it, so you have lots of sappy life lessons and confessions to look
forward to! :)
I love you all! Now that I’ve left Perth and the hardest of
the goodbyes are over, I’m ready to just get home!
See you all soon
Cheers,
Becca
