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Things About America

Moving from New Zealand to America was a big change. Almost every day I notice things that I find odd and things that you don't find in New Zealand. I think I need to write them all down, lest I forget what it is like to live in New Zealand and I start thinking that all these weird things are normal.

MONEY
Most people know what American money looks like. It's ugly, and green and white. All the notes look exactly the same, and the coins are annoying. America is way behind the times when it comes to money. Take for instance the penny. The penny is worth one cent. What can you buy with one cent? Nothing. You can't use them in most vending machines, because, I can only assume, one dollar's worth of pennies takes up a lot of space. I hear stories about people who throw their pennies away. That's right, people throw them away!

New Zealand used to have one- and two-cent pieces, and do you know what they did with them? They got rid of them. That's correct, they were discontinued because they were such a huge pain in the ass. The American government should issue a recall and discontinuation of all pennies, because if you can't buy anything with a penny you shouldn't have them.

What is also silly is the name for coins. New Zealand has the five-cent piece, the ten-cent piece, the twenty-cent piece, the fifty-cent piece, the one-dollar coin and the two-dollar coin. It is very easy to figure them out, because if someone asks for ten cents, you give them a ten-cent piece. However, in America if someone asks me for a dime, I'd probably have to pull out a handful of change and get him or her to pick out the right coin. The words penny, nickel, dime, quarter make almost no sense to me. The penny I can figure out, because they are the annoying brown ones that you find in the bottom of the washing machine when you take the clothes out. The quarter is also relatively easy to figure out because I know that a quarter of 100 is 25, and the twenty-five cent piece is the biggest coin. But when you get to the nickels and dimes it gets confusing. The nickel is worth five cents, but the actual coin is bigger than the dime, which is worth ten cents. Also, the nickel is pretty similar in size and look to the quarter. Apparently the nickel is called the nickel because it used to have nickel in it. But, what does nickel look like? If the penny was called a copper, then that would make sense because it looks different to the other coins. The nickel looks just like the other coins. And who knows why they decided to call the ten-cent piece a dime. That makes no sense to me. Greek something-er-rather.

The most confusing thing about the coins is that they do not have any numbers printed on them. I understand when a coin has a big "10" on it, but not when it has a word that means nothing to me and no numbers at all. The coins just look too similar for even a smart girl like me to pick out the correct change, and so do the notes. If the notes didn't have the numbers printed in the corner, I would never figure them out. They are almost all the same size, colour and seem to have the same things printed on them. New Zealand money is simple and colourful and easy to use even if you are really thick. The more the coin or note is worth, the bigger it is (aside from the one and two dollar coins, but they are thicker than the other coins and are also gold coloured, as opposed to silver, and also have big 1's and 2's printed on them. Those numbers sure are helpful.) The notes are all different colours, and are made of plasticy paper that doesn't rip very easily. They all have different pictures on them, like native birds and famous authors and the Queen.

I miss New Zealand money, because most supermarkets don't appreciate people standing in line for 5 minutes trying to get together $8.99.

CARS AND DRIVING
Before I arrived in America, all I knew about cars and driving was that Americans drive on the right-hand side of the road, and the driver sits in the left of the car instead of the right. My logic dictates that if you move the driver to the other side of the car, the controls, pedals and gears would be a mirror image to the controls, pedals and gears of a car that has the driver sitting on the right-hand side. Not so. In fact, most things are in exactly the same position. I suppose it makes it not so difficult to change from a right-hand drive to a left-hand drive because first gear and the accelerator is always in the same place. However, my logic also dictates that if you drive on the left-hand side of the road and you give way to the right, when you drive on the right-hand side of the road you give way to the left. Again, not so! In fact, you give way to the right. This is confusing and I don't understand why this is so. Also, if most people are right-handed, and a lot of people smoke, and these people would hold their cigarette with their right hand, why would you put the driver on the left-hand side of the car forcing them to flick their cigarette ash out of the window with their left-hand? Luckily, I don't smoke anymore, but if I did, I'd have to either make myself left-handed, or start using the ashtray, and using the ashtray is just gross.

HOUSES
There are a few things about houses in America that make them very different to houses in New Zealand. Firstly, the light switches switch the opposite way. Here in Crazyland, down is off and up is on. Even after two months of flicking switches the wrong way, I still get mixed up on occasions. In New Zealand, you reach into a dark room and slide your hand down the wall to turn the light on. Here, you have to slide your hand up. Everyone knows that the force of gravity pulls everything down (well, that and age), so it makes sense to have down as on, and up as off. Common sense means nothing in America!

The toilets here are very low to the ground. When I go pee, I feel as though I am on a kiddy toilet and my knees are up by my ears. I can't think of any logical reason to make toilets like holes in the ground, but apparently the Americans did. (Also, the water in the toilet does drain out the opposite direction to the Southern Hemisphere, but you won't notice it much if you visit New Zealand, because when you flush the water doesn't calmly swirl out of the bowl taking your doings with it, it actually dumps a tonne of water on top of your doings which somehow forces them to flee.)

Plugs in New Zealand are usually little rubber things that are often attached to the basin or bathtub with a little metal chain. In America, every basin and tub I've ever seen has the plug as part of the actual basin or tub. You pull a little stick and the plug goes down. You push it down and the plug comes up and the water goes out. This is in a perfect world, however, because, in our house at least, if you get hair or beard shavings clogged in the sink the top of the plug does not screw off, and the only way I can think to fix it is to pour toxic chemicals into the sink. I don't know why you can't screw it off, and once again, this does not make any sense.

Lastly, in New Zealand all houses have guttering. When it rains, the water collects in the gutter and then it flows in an orderly fashion down the drainpipe and into the drain. In this city (it could be different in other cities), you are lucky to have gutters. I would say that maybe one house out of every twenty has some form of guttering around their roof. Even if you have guttering, you may not have drainpipes. And if you lucky enough to own drainpipes, you almost definitely won't own drains. If it rains in Austin, the water on your roof just runs off into the yard, which is probably why no one has gardens, because they would be washed away every time it rained. In Austin you have to pay for both your incoming water and your outgoing water, so it makes sense to not have rainwater go into a drain. However, I can't tell you how odd a house looks with no guttering. The only words I can find are "play house".

FOOD
America packages food in the largest bags you could ever imagine. I was absolutely amazed the first time I saw a large bag of chips, because they really are quite large. You can't really buy donuts in New Zealand (aside from in bakeries), so finding out that there are entire takeaway stores devoted to them is odd, to say the least. Trying to buy food for baking is sometimes hard too because a lot of stuff is named differently. For instance, cornflour is cornstarch, and icing sugar is confectioners or powdered sugar. Tricky little Americans.

Cafe food in Austin is very different to cafe food in Wellington. Wellington has a very lively and classy cafe scene going on, whereas Austin does not. There are many coffeehouses in Austin, and it seems hard to find good cafes with great coffee and delicious food. Coffee in Austin is pretty much horrible. I don't know if baristas here enjoy burning the coffee beans, or if they just use low-quality beans, or if they just don't know how to prepare a good espresso. Some places have pretty good food, but you can't walk into a cafe and get a panini to take away right then and there. Most cafes prepare all their food fresh, which is a good thing, but if you want something to go and to go fast, you'll have better luck at McDonalds.

Sushi is a rather big thing in Wellington. New Zealand has a large and thriving Asian population, and therefore you can get Asian food with ease - especially sushi. Most sushi places in Wellington are takeaway, sometimes it's pre-prepared, sometimes it's not. But whether you order if off the board or get something already made, it is almost always cheap. In Austin, sushi is one of the most expensive foods I can think of. I haven't seen any takeaway sushi bars, and being a sushi addict, I am suffering withdrawal. I am going to have to learn how to make sushi myself.

EARTHQUAKES
Wellington, New Zealand sits right on a huge fault line, and there are earthquakes all the time. There are usually around six earthquakes a day, but most of these are so small you can hardly feel them. However, there are usually a couple of relatively large earthquakes a year in Wellington, and Wellingtonians are always waiting for the "big one". I too, was always waiting for the big one to hit, and since I was a small child, the smallest tremor would send me straight to the doorframe. In Austin, there are not very many earthquakes. I don't think there are even any fault lines in this state (or at least, Ben tells me so), but I can't get out of my "it's an earthquake!" mindset. We have rather wobbly floorboards in our house, and every time someone walks past my computer desk and my chair bounces around a little, I have a little scream in my head.

"It's an earthquake! Get under your desk!"

But then I remember that I don't live in Wellington anymore, and I smile to myself and feel a little silly. I think it will take some time before someone can stomp around the house and for me to not be scared the roof is going to fall down upon my cute, little head.

America is an odd country, especially compared to back home. Things are a lot different, and there certainly is a bit of culture shock going on. However, if your knowledge of America stems solely from television, I tell you right now - it's all true.