So you want to sound like an Ozzie, yeah?

Then try this lingo!

Petrol= instead of Gasoline because “Cars don’t run on Gas!”

AirCon= Air Conditioning

Bogen= for trashy, loud people aka rednecks

Singlet= Tank Top

Thongs= Flip Flops

Budgie Smuggler =Male Speedo

    • The Budgie Smuggler is way HOt

Rangers =Red Haired people- short for orangutan. Calling them this can be a joke or an insult

Spotto= When you see a red head and punch someone -like punch buggy

Ute= short for a sports utility vehicle

Hey and Eh= like the Canadians

Roo Bar= Bar on Car to prevent Kangaroos from busting through the window when they get run over

Bloke= Guys

Fair Enough=Okay, Good

True= similar to Fair Enough above

Heaps = A lot, really: i.e. my hair is heaps wet

Chips= French Fries

Derro =Short for Derelict – is those wannabe gangstas, the hobos

Gimp = Someone (Guy) with a limp

Rubbish Bin= Trash Can

Adidas= said like Add-e-das than A-did-das

Brekky=breakfast

Hungry Jack= Burger King (why they changed the name is a mystery)

H = pronounced like hach

Z = pronounce like zed. So its a Zeb-bra and not a Zee-bra.

Push bike or treadly = bicycle

Stingers= jelly fish

Mozzies= Mosquitoes

Good on you= great job!

Op shop= opportunity/secondhand shop

Full on= intense/ hardcore    i.e. “This class is going to be FULL ON!”

Footy Show= Australian Football show/ comedy show.

Grey Nomads= Older people who come over to OZ and travel around the country.

Hen/ Buck Nights= Bachelorette/ Bachelor party

Fairy Bread= for little kids  parties. White bread with butter on both sides and covered in Sprinkles.

Chemist = Pharmacy

Off their trolley= completely drunk

Sunnies= Sunglasses

“How you going?” more popular than G’day among the younger generations. Is their version of “What’s up/ How’s it going?”

Megan is pronounced like (Mee-gan not, Meg-gan) and they would never shorten that name to “Meg”

Shire Skank= A loose woman from the Shire, a Suburb of Sydney, well known throughout Australia.

 

And just in case you wanted to know some Kiwi lingo:

Say “Shape” if you want to talk about Sheep.

Sheep Shagger= someone who has sex with sheep.

Choice Bro= good idea.

Sweet As= Sweet as anything or sounds great!

Reflections on OZ part 2

5) Whenever I tell people I am from the US, more specifically from Washington D.C., whether these people be Kiwis, Aussies, Canucks etc, they always refer to as me being from Washington. However, whenever they say that I think of Washington state not D.C. So I ask them why they always say that and apparently it’s just how they know it. Well if it works for them and if they know roughly where it’s located that’s okay.

I myself never knew Canberra was the capital of OZ until a few weeks after I got here, but now that I know I can definitely put it on a map!


6) People driving on the other side of the road- When I first got to NZ and stepped out the airport and looked at how the cars were set up, the first thing I thought was “Weird”. But after 18 days in New Zealand I got pretty used to it. Still, there are times when I’m walking in a parking lot, for example, and a car is coming towards me so I instinctively move to the right because I think they will also go the right. However, they are going to the left so I just end up in their way. The same also happens when walking on a path with people coming in the opposite direction. Hopefully, I will adjust to staying on the left side soon!

It’s ironic how long it took me to get used to the left side and just when I did, I had to come back to the right. The right side of the road threw me off for a bit and seemed strange, but now it’s almost back to normal (I wrote more but it got deleted THREE times, so if you want to hear more about this, just ask me!)

7) People’s view on Americans. I met a lot of Canadians and Aussies on my NZ  tour and many of the them told me something along the lines of being “one of the good Americans” aka not the Loud and Stereotypical Americans they have met/ expected. Also on my tour was a girl from NY who had a loud voice, smacked her gum incessantly and was generally an obnoxious party girl. Clearly, I was a much more appealing American than her (except for the manwhore guys on my trip who just looooved her!)

The opinion about Americans still varies drastically depending on who you talk to. I’ve had people tell me to my face that “Everybody in the whole world doesn’t like Americans because they think you are stupid. True Fact.” and that “You are a typical American… loud, self centered, only cares about herself.”

Now I obviously don’t hold much value in these judgments given that the first was from a drunk Norwegian Uni Student who is ridiculously pompous and I hadn’t met a single person who knew him and didn’t recognize that. The second was my roommate who was angry because I didn’t want to go out with him.

I heard some nice things about us, including from a very sweet South Korean High School boy I met on my plane back from LA who told me that “I think… American girls are…. a lot prettier than Korean girls” as he looked over at me from behind his thick framed glasses. Overall, its all about who you talk to and how absorbed they are in themselves and their culture.

Reflections on OZ

I was meaning to post this while in Australia but apparently forgot about it. These are from the early days in OZ with my new thoughts in BOLD

1) The Money looks like Monopoly money. The notes are smaller than American bills and for some reason the 50 and 100 dollar bills, even though they are different colors than the 5,10, and 20 notes are longer.

Also, the coins are really strange. There’s a 50 cent coin that is huge, and is dodecahedronal (12 sided) and this is so much bigger than the 1 dollar coin and the 2 dollar coin. I really don’t understand why the 2 dollar coin is smaller than both the 50 cent coin and and 1 dollar coin, because I would assume it would be bigger because it’s worth more. Although, I suppose size doesn’t always reflect worth.

OZ coins (notes the first two coins displayed are no longer in circulation)

I have to say that after returning to America, it took me a few days to get used to the money. I believe I have mentioned this before in a post, but I couldn’t believe how small are coins are to the OZ ones. Even their 20 cent coin is bigger than our 25 cent! Now I am used to it, but wanting our money to become more colorful! Psh green. Oh and Pennies which I once claimed were awesome: no they are just a pain. I am now for abolishing pennies in favor or rounding to the closest 5 cents.

2) The toilets, both here and in NZ have a 2 button flush system. The first is a half flush, just for pee and the second button is a full flush for poop. This makes a lot of sense to change the water pressure based on what you are flushing and I wonder if America will pick it up one day. It certainly conserves water!

3) Vegemite: Half of the Aussies I’ve talked to love it, the other half hate it. I have yet to try it (hopefully will try it sometime this week) but most Aussies agree that I will hate it.

I tried Vegemite and it was a mistake! So disgusting. The thought of it now makes me gag. Whatever you do, if you ever try this nasty product, do not try it on a sailboat you will remain on for over 24 hours. You will regret this moment if you do.

4) During my first couple of days in Australia, I had two different people tell me they thought I was Irish because I have an “Irish Accent”. No idea where this is coming from, except when I was talking to these people I had a bit of a cold so my voice sounded off. But Irish? I think not.

I also towards the end started getting a lot of people thinking I was from Canada instead of US, which I encouraged because its fun to pretend you are from another country!

Home

Finally back in VA after 5 1/2 months of traveling and studying and I have to say that these experiences have been some of the best I’ve had.

I met some really awesome people, saw amazing things, did things I have never done before and overall really enjoyed everything!

Still getting used to the time zone changes but it was so nice to drive my car today, though I did NOT miss DC traffic!!

I will attempt to update some more about my trip as the time fits. So much to do here before school starts again!

Back to Cali and the US

Just flew back to the US after 3 crazy weeks in Sydney with my friend Rose.

Despite the fact it was a 14 hour flight, it wasn’t too bad. Got maybe a hour of sleep and instead watched 4 movies: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (in Swedish with English subtitles), Valentine’s Day, Leap Year and How to Train your dragon.

They were all pretty good for what they where. I also watched 30 mins of the new Clash of the Titans which was so terrible I had to watch something else.

My sister picked me up from the Airport but when she got out of the car to give me a hug, the car locked itself, still running mind you. So we had to wait over an hour to have a tow company come and open it. Total damage= $65 dollars out of my wallet because my sister didnt have any cash.

Once that incident was over, we rushed to In-n’ out burger for the necessary burger, fries and milkshake. So good!

Hung out at my sister friends Apt at the Marina for a few hours, then met up with a family friend whose known me since birth. Then my cousin eventually showed up after a play she went to see and we went back to her new apt in the Hollywood Hills!

Today was basically a sleep in sort of day to make up for barely sleeping the past day (s). We ended up going to Santa Monica with Christina’s friend for a nice lunch/dinner thing. I love how long the sun is out in CA because in Syd it got dark around 5pm and here it gets dark at 8pm. I know Syd is in the Winter right now, but still even in the summer, it seemed to get darker earlier compared to the US.

Things that are bothering me about the States:

1) Driving= now im used to driving on the left side, so when my sister keeps driving on the right it kind of freaks me out for a second. Hopefully that feeling will disappear soon and once I start driving.

2) the coins seem so small compared to the OZ ones. Not like this is a problem because I don’t really like their money, but still it seems strange.

3) Tax isn’t included in the prices of things! Seriously if it’s going to cost me $6.70 including tax, I rather know that straight away rather than figure that out at the end.

Days in Sydney

I’ve been in Sydney for about a week now; it’s crazy how time flies by!

There’s so much to see and do here and it’s awesome I’ve been surrounded by friends. It’s kind of sad though that everyone is leaving. So hard to leave Marieke and my other friends in Towns, then Inga left this afternoon and my friend Kristen is leaving tonight!

Watching them leave I guess makes me ready to leave too, because it wouldn’t be as much fun in Australia without this people.

Can’t believe I only have 12 days left in Oz!

No man’s land.

I hate the feeling you have when you are ready to do something but you can’t do it until a certain time.

For example I have a presentation to give at 11am, make up for the one I missed because of my accident, and I am so ready to give it now! I just want to get it over with because until I give it, I can’t start studying for my final tomorrow.

But now I have nothing really to do for 50 minutes and it is so boring! I’m in no-man’s land just waiting and wasting time that could be better spent.

Only 2 1/2 days left in Townsville! Too bad my exam tomorrow is at 5pm, because that means I have to spend all day studying because if I decide to do something else and I do poorly on my exam (60% of my grade, eeek!) then I will definitely regret it!

Bright news is I got an D+ (Distinction Plus!) on my Cinema paper! Woo hoo! It’s strange to have it be one of the few times in my life I will ever be happy for that grade!

Townsville actually has some culture!

Marieke and I went to the Riverside pool today to do some studying and there was actually a Filipino festival going on with filipino food and music! This is the first time I’ve experienced some type of culture in Townsville and was very exciting. I had my camera but left my memory card in my computer, so no pictures 🙁

We didn’t stay long there because we went to study, which was kind of hard to do on a Sunday afternoon lounging at the pool and where it was too hot to sit in the sun and too cold to sit in the shade.

We did get some reading done, then went to a car wash and washed Marieke’s car which hadn’t been washed in over 2 months and after 2 loong roadtrips was filthy. Even now it could still use another rinse!

Then later I went over to hang out with my Norwegian friend and watch Disney’s Hercules. Can’t believe I’m leaving Towns in 5 days!!

So going to miss my people here! :/

A day better than expected

Today I had my first exam at 8.15am and I woke up at 5.30am–after going to bed around 1am– because I was feeling paranoid I would oversleep.

The test went pretty okay and I even got to write an essay on a question I was hoping would be on the exam! Afterwards I met up in the computer lab with Marieke who was working on her final draft of her bachelor thesis. Once she finished that, we decided we wanted to get some lunch then go to the beach. We ran into my friend Cecelia who also wanted to join and we even managed to get my other two roommates (though flatmate might be a better term seeing as I do NOT share a room with anyone) Karolina and Vinod to come.

The sky was a clear blue and it warm but not too hot. (Reminded me of California actually!) The stingers have all migrated, so the stinger nets were taken down and we could enjoy just swimming in the ocean wherever we wanted. The tide was really low compared to the past months and the water was colder as well so I didn’t spend that much time swimming. It was really nice just to lie on the beach and watch skydivers floating in the air before they came to a landing on the beach right next to us (I would love to skydive over the ocean and land on the beach!!)

Then we got delicious gelato from Juliette’s cafe on the strand (Ferrero Rocher ice cream is beyond amazing!) and then we drove up Castle Hill to get a view of the entire town and surrounding area. It was very pretty to go see again (I had done a hike up when my friend Kristen visited me) and because today was Saturday there were two brides having wedding pictures taken. It was funny because one of the couples we had seen on the strand earlier when they had their marriage ceremony!

Then we came home and I made a stirfry (vegan!) with rice for Karolina and me because she ALWAYS is cooking or baking for me and it was time for me to do it! Then Karolina, Marieke and I watched “Moulin Rouge” which was directed/ written by Baz Lurhman (australian) who also did the same for the movie “Australia” and “Romeo & Juliet” with Claire Danes and Leonardo Di Caprio. Moulin Rouge was even filmed in Sydney which is pretty cool and must have been nice for Nicole Kidman to be close to family and friends. (Good random movie choice seeing as I havent really seen any Oz films since I’ve been here!)

So overall, a much better day than I thought it would be!