Culture Shock
In reference to the last post... thinking Deep Thoughts makes my brain hurt. Not because the exercise is particularly difficult, but because my brain operates much like a defunked version of google. The moment I do a search on a particular issue, too many search results come up and I have trouble putting them into a coherent format.Plus it bums me out, since I know that somehow what I said could be construed as offensive.
So a lighter topic: Culture Shock 2.0!
Half of the culture shock that I've experienced while I've been here has NOT been a result of Kiwi-life. Visiting New Zealand is much visiting a part of the United States with a funky accent. Like when I go down to visit my relatives in Mississippi: The food is different, and they have different stores, but in the end it's pretty much all the same. Except here we don't have Walmart. Instead, they have pirate treasure for money.
So I guess most of my culture shock has simply been revolving around the issue that I'm going to a large university (the University of Otago is 10X larger than my home institution), it's co-ed, and it has different weather. The first two issues were relatively easy to adjust to -- I have rapidly fallen in love with the whole idea of 'flatting' (remind me of that statement when the bill comes), and the library is gorgeous. Being around male-folk isn't particularly 'scary' or 'weird' for me, since all of my siblings are brothers...but it still took some getting used to walking into a room of over 200 people and having the testosterone smack me in the face.
The other aspect of the 'big university' life that I'm still getting used to is this entire train of thought involving 'parties'. In my group of friends back at Bryn Mawr, our version of a 'party' involves us sitting around and watching a movie together. If we're feeling particularly frisky, we -might- even go out to see the movie in theaters. This isn't to say that parties are an alien concept to me, but they also aren't a big occurance at my college. Here, there are parties every night -- mostly in the area where I live. Keggers are a natural thing instead of being 'exciting' and 'new'. It's definitely still weird to me, this focusing on drinking. But what's even more odd is that it seems the group of people I've fallen in with also don't have this focus on drinking either -- not big keggers, anyway. I wonder if it's because we're international students, or it just happened that way? The impression we've definitely gotten is that Kiwis drink like fish.
Strange.
But not as strange as waking up every morning to the sound of a seagull screaming outside your window. Or seeing people dressed constantly in surfer wear, or barefoot. Or the fact that the weather changes every five minutes -- literally, one minute it's sunny, the next it's raining, and then hailing, and then raining, and then sunny...all in the span of one hour. I'm definitely going to need to get a new windbreaker and raincoat. I wonder if some of these oddities are just because I'm not used to living near the shore, or if it's New Zealand?
posted by Hoot @ 7:27 PM
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