When in Australia...

When in Australia, you must do as the Australians do...as hard as that may be for an American like me. Here are some of the differences I've discovered so far...

(this will be an ongoing post, so keep checking back)

• When you see signs for a "chemist" that actually means pharmacist.
• You don't ask to use the restroom, you ask to use the "toilet." Ew. I can't get used to that.
• Brekky = breakfast
• On almost all the resident mailboxes, there's a small sign that says "No junk mail. Thank you!" What?! You can do put that, and the mailmen will listen!? The US needs to get on that!
• Weather is in degrees Celsius. 29 degrees sounds cold, but it's actually 84*F!
• They use the metric system here. I don't like it. I thought the speed limit one day was 100mph, but it was 100km/h; which is roughly 62 mph...ha!
• When turning on the lights, down is on, and up is off
• Outlets have on/off switches too...
• There's no tax! Or rather, it's already added into the price...so what you see is what you pay.
• There's no such thing as pennies here. Nor is there $1 and $2 bills; instead they have $1 and $2 coins.
• They drive on the left side of the road, but still walk around the shopping center, and up/down the stairs, on the right side like we do. Why not change it all?!
• Instead of their road signs saying "yield," they say "give way."
• Which by the way, there's a good chance I may get run over because I keep looking the wrong way when I cross the street. You have no idea how confusing it really is... And it's not just since I've been here only three days, Taylor's been here two months and almost turned the wrong direction driving the other night! Luckily Ethan saved us.
• They call substitute teaching "relief teaching" which would've been good to know before I went walking into the schools asking if they were needing substitute teachers...
• Silverware is known as "cutlery" here. Yeah, I learned that the hard way when I ordered a salad at Subway and the lady working asked if I needed cutlery and I told her no...
• You pay for your gas by the liter, and in cents, not dollars. It's no wonder I was so confused when I saw the signs saying gas was 159.9 at the gas stations...
• Most houses are solar powered here.
• Microwaves aren't that common. And we don't have one at our house, which we ALL forget about daily...
• Iced coffee, is not iced coffee. But it's not a frappuccino either; it's weird. I think it has ice cream in it...
• Trash is called rubbish.
• It gets dark here around 5pm. So I'm not sure if the reason I'm going to bed at 8pm is because I'm jet lagged, or because it's already been dark for three hours!?

XO - Cristin