Cultural Differences, or "Baz and Gaz were Listening to Acka Dacka on the way to Macker's"

G'day mates, how ya goin'? I quite like Australian vernacular, it makes me happy. Not a lot has been happening these days, I'm really enjoying my homestay family and have been going to classes in town, navigating bus systems, that sort of stuff. Much less adventurey (although public transport is still scary. Tomorrow night we are going out and will probably be out way past when the buses stop so we'll have to do cabs! I went in a cab by myself for the first time in Sydney, and it's weird! Wow I am a sheltered suburban girl, aren't I?) but nice. So because I don't have a lot of cute cuddly creatures to post pictures of or hair-raising stories about wild animal attacks and spicy stuff I thought I would talk about culture a bit.

I've been thinking about it more since I've been living with an Australian family (understandably) and especially because last night Hunter made me take some quizzes online to test my Aussie knowledge. I am True Blue Aussie (which is super high praise) and I only got three of the slang words wrong out of twenty (and he got one wrong, so that doesn't count).

I really haven't had any culture shock. Honestly, I expected it to be a lot more...different. It's really similar to home in most respects, and what isn't American is often British. That's not to say Australia isn't very much it's own country, though, it's just...familiar. There are some differences that you notice more the more you're here. For example:

1. Everyone is SO much nicer here! They're just...nice! People on the street will smile at you and ask how you are! They will just come up and start talking to you. They ask you how you are and seem to genuinely want an answer. It's so sweet! It's a little off-putting at first (paranoid American thinking "what do you want?!") but they are just nice! This was especially true of a group of Aborigines we met. We stopped at a park to fill up our water bottles and I think it was a big family hanging out in the shelter near the water tap, apparently being interviewed by someone. We said hi and they were pretty much the friendliest people I've ever met. They were all shaking our hands and asking us questions and just amazingly nice! They waved as we drove away and then again when we drove past because we had to turn around. Probably this is partially because, as our teacher told us when we got back on the bus, we did something that most white Australians wouldn't do, namely actually talking to a group of Aborigines. Nice as everyone is, there's a lot of really disgusting racism in this country, and not just towards Aborigines.

2. The slang. Aussies love their slang. I mean really, more than everyone else ever. They have different words for everything and basically everything is shortened. Besides the stuff that is British, here is the basic formula for an Australian slang word: 1) chop it in half, 2) Harden the last consonant 3) double the last consonant and add "ie" or just add an "o". This is how "mosquito" becomes "mozzie", "afternoon" becomes "arvo", etc. The title was a phrase my host brother taught me to make me sound like an Aussie. It means "Barry and Gary were listening to AC/DC on their way to MacDonald's". I like it a lot, even when it means I have no idea what people are saying.

3. Being "green" seems to be a bigger deal here. Of course there are different levels, but this really was brought home to me when I was listening to the radio in Melbourne and there was a commercial saying "We all know we need to limit our showers to four minutes..." and I thought "Really?! Almost everyone I know takes showers at least five times longer than that!" Of course, Australia is running out of water faster than basically anywhere else, something to do with being the driest inhabited continent to begin with, so that is probably why. Still, it extends to other parts of life as well. You have to pay ten cents for a plastic bag at Target, for example.

4. Everyone goes to bed SO early here! Okay, this is probably a broad generalization, but other people have noticed it at their homestays, too. I live with a teenager and a preteen. Last night everyone was in bed by 9:30. Tonight Helen complained about being "out too late" when the movie we were watching didn't finish until 10:00. How is this possible?! When I was 16 there were nights I was up past 4:00 and I didn't go to school any later than they do! Someone else's host mom said she thought it was because of the heat, it just sort of saps your energy. I've been going to bed much much earlier ever since I've been here than I ever do at home, so maybe there's something to it. It's still weird.

5. The kids are so polite! They fight and sass and everything just like at home, but they also pour drinks for other people before themselves, ask if I or their mom would like anything anytime they get something for themselves, and say "beg your pardon?" It's really impressive.

6. They freaking love ABBA. At least, the older generation does. I think everyone in the program has mentioned how their host parents play ABBA at home over and over again and my host mom insisted there should be an ABBA Rockband.

7. The humor. I don't really know how to describe it. I think it's drier than American humor. They can certainly laugh at themselves, which is wonderful. Whatever it is, I love it.

8. "Nice" means "good". This doesn't seem like much of a difference, but I definitely noticed it. Someone would hand me a piece of fruit and say "Try this, it's nice." which to me sounds kind of like half-hearted praise, or even a way of saying it's not very good in a polite way. But what they mean is "This is good." They also describe food as "beautiful" to mean delicious.

9. They know things! Things about the world! Things about geography! If you asked anyone in the US what the names of the seven Australian states were, I bet over 90% of them would look at you blankly, maybe not even having considered Australia has states (incidentally, they are Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania, and then there's the Capital Territory which is like DC).

Anytime anyone asked me where I'm from I would say "The US" figuring that would be that. Invariably they ask "Which part?" and I say "Minnesota" expecting a blank look, but every time they know where I'm talking about. Usually I get "Oh, that's in the central west, isn't it?" or "It's quite cold there, isn't it?" Once a guy even said "Oh, is that where they grow those little red berries?" "Cranberries?" I asked. "Yes! Those are the ones." "Actually, that's Wisconsin, but it's right next to Minnesota, and that's where I go to school." I replied, thinking "How in the hell do you know which crops are grown where in the US?! How would you possibly ever know that? Do they even eat cranberries here? Do you take classes on this in school?!" Why don't we know things about other countries?

10. The biggest cultural difference I've noticed is their attitude towards censorship. This is the one thing so far that has literally made my jaw drop. I knew that they censored books and movies and especially video games here, that if it isn't rated you can't get it. But I watched a show the other night that was half sketch-comedy, half political commentary called Hungry Beast (which was really good, by the way) and they talked a lot about the government's plan to censor the internet.

They're trying to create a rating system (which would be performed by a nongovernmental rating board who would judge on the same criteria they already do for other things) which would blacklist certain websites and deny the entire country access. Mostly this means pedophilia sites and stuff like that, but there's definitely the possibility for mistakes to be made (on what some people claim was a test run but the government denies, a woman's website about her canteen got blacklisted because it had the word "teen" in it) and for the government to go overboard. Especially because they plan on not releasing the list of banned websites. This is ridiculous enough to me, but the show used a polling company to find out how the country felt about it and 80% supported the government having censorship power over the internet. That is where my jaw hit the floor. If that were proposed in America people would go insane. I cannot understand that at all. I mean, yeah it would be great if a lot of websites didn't exist, but...government censorship on an extreme scale? When did Australia become China?

This issue was brought up by my host brother, too. We were talking on the first night and he mentioned how he thinks America's free speech thing goes too far. He said "We don't have the KKK here." Which is true, but that doesn't stop a lot of Australians from being extremely racist. Not being able to march around screaming it in public doesn't make people stop thinking it. If it did, they wouldn't be having attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.

It's just weird to me. Australians are so nice, laid-back, funloving...how do they have such strict censorship laws? It doesn't make sense. If you are curious, here is the Hungry Beast site which has a lot about this debate (and about the attacks on the government websites by Anonymous, which is a whole different issue not really related to Australian culture, but still pretty interesting) http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/?WT.mc_id=ABCTV_HB_TVHPmod

Sorry this got a bit long and ranty. You should let me know what you think, because I think this stuff is fascinating but maybe that is just me.