American Adventures

Aussie Expats Update – America, Five Months In

Five months, human beings. We have been living in America for FIVE MONTHS.

I’ll lay it out straight for you: I’m not feeling very warm towards America right now. By that I mean, I’m feeling pretty cold. The reason? This morning, I took a friend into hospital early in the day. For reference, she’s about three or four years older than me and also for your information, I’m pretty hungry: which as anyone knows, is dangerous ground. Anyway, we get into prep and I’m just sitting off to the side, doing some work, when one of the nurses goes to me—“Oh, so are you Mumma?”

OH MY EFFING GOD: NO. 

What the hell. I mean, I’m twenty-bloody-five. TWENTY-FIVE, PEOPLE. Deep breaths. And then, to make matters worse, when I (understandably!) responded pretty vehemently in the negative, he says, “oh yeah, you’re not dressed like a Mum. I should have looked at the clothes.” Yeah, yeah, cause that is where the clues were. And as I’m sure everyone can imagine, I’m just sitting there with steam coming out my ears. [Disclaimer: I’ve now mostly recovered—I don’t tend to stay angry for very long most of the time—and am enjoying telling James that I’m a cradle-snatcher and he should appreciate me being his sugar mama (even though I earn no money: pretty poor sugar mama, really)]. So I’ll try and think of some nice things to say and not just be crabby because someone basically called me old and haggard this morning.

Five months into living in the US, and what have we learned?

  1. Sometimes when you tell a small child to ‘just take a few more’ candies on Halloween, they will riffle through the WHOLE bowl in order to pick out every single packet of skittles and sour patch babies and only leave when they’re done… Which incidentally coincided with the time that James and I, exchanging bemused looks, informed her that she should probably let the hordes of other children behind her have some candy.
  2. If you go the effort of putting out cute little styrofoam tombstones (that look super cool) for Halloween, it will definitely get really windy on the afternoon of the 31st and they’ll all get blown over. Oops.
  3. There are lots of things from back home that just… aren’t things in the US. Real sausages? Not a thing: Americans eat like bratwurst kind of stuff, but nothing like the kind we get in Aus. Lamb and rosemary sausages? Those are the best, and they don’t exist over here. Also, meat pies, sausage rolls (no, I’m not talking about a sausage in a roll, people), pavlova, fairy bread, lamingtons… The list goes on. My silly American auto-correct on my phone also corrects ‘lamingtons’ to laminations. Sheesh.
  4. You’re probably more likely to get scammed by a used car salesman, as we found out when we took the car to get serviced earlier this week and got told it needed about $2500 worth of repairs.
  5. Having your own home gym, where you can train alone with your shirt off, is pretty great. Sometimes we seem to have to more space that we could possibly know what to do with.
  6. Americans apparently get taught to do a double space after a full stop. What’s with that?
  7. The cost of living is a LOT cheaper, but you may really miss the ability to have a good local butcher and high quality meat and produce readily and easily accessible.
  8. All expats will have days where missing their homeland is a physical ache in their chest, and the yearning to walk on your native land, to be close to your family who are half a world away, is almost suffocating. For me, missing Australia, especially being in close proximity to the beach, has become de rigeur. Accept it, cherish the fact that there are things about your country that you miss, and move on.

 

So as you can tell, there’s been a lot of learning going on, and no doubt that’ll continue for the next 25 months (no, no—please don’t be crazy… I’m not counting down!). We’re looking forward to experiencing our first American Christmas this year, complete with lights, a Christmas tree, some fake presents (don’t want underneath the tree to look bare!) and some seriously tasty treats—please feel free to recommend favourite Christmas recipes!

Above all, I’m grateful that I am sharing this experience with the human being who is my best friend, as well as my strongest and most consistent bastion of support. No one makes me laugh the way he does, and no one makes me feel so positive about whatever might be going on in our life—I know I’m incredibly lucky to be an expat who isn’t doing it alone! Plus, we’ve made some amazing friends, especially among the international community at Fort Sill, and they’re a group of people who can really understand some of the challenges associated with moving to and living in the US.

Add in that I really beat the bureaucracy earlier this week, and we’re doing ok (despite the car debacle). As part of my Writing major, there is a requirement to complete an ‘Academic Writing’ subject where they basically teach you how to write an essay… Which, in all honesty, I wasn’t sure I was going to survive without going on a homicidal rampage. So, after my initial application for an exemption was rejected, I wrote a long email with seven different attachments to evidence my writing ability—and now I don’t have to do it! So I had a really big win for the week, which was kind of nice, since I now have to don my armour and figure out how best to do battle over the travesty of our car.

I’m hoping to have good news about my novel next week sometime, so have an awesome weekend everyone and keep writing!

–Ana.

2 Comments

  • NK

    As someone who has hosted foreigners, let me try and respond… and let you know that I feel your pain! For me it’s not moving across the world, though, it’s being a New Yorker by birth and then moving away from New York… where life is different.

    – There are lots of things from back home that just… aren’t things in the US. Real sausages? Not a thing: Americans eat like bratwurst kind of stuff, but nothing like the kind we get in Aus. Lamb and rosemary sausages? Those are the best, and they don’t exist over here. Also, meat pies, sausage rolls (no, I’m not talking about a sausage in a roll, people), pavlova, fairy bread, lamingtons… The list goes on. My silly American auto-correct on my phone also corrects ‘lamingtons’ to laminations. Sheesh. –

    *This might just be a thing in your region. I’m from NYC and we have real sausages. The first time I saw/heard of bratwurst was when I moved to the midwest and I was traumatized. It reminds me of Kielbasa. And I hate kielbasa. See if you have an Italian specialty grocer near you and you just might get lucky. If I can figure out a way to mail you some from NYC I will DM you on Twitter for your address. What is a sausage roll? pavlova? I’ve heard of these things in Lianne Moriarty books. Yes, yes, I’m obsessed with them.

    – Americans apparently get taught to do a double space after a full stop. What’s with that? –

    *This is a HUGE debate in the American writing community. It has something to do with typewriters. When I was a kid (I was born in ’77) and through college (graduated in ’99) it was required. At some point in the last 15-20 years people have started demanding that it’s a single space after a period. We need to survey other people around the world of different ages to see what they were taught because, at least in America, this is a time-based change. I have to go through all of my documents and do find: quotation marks period space space quotation marks/replace: quotation mark period space quotation marks before sending anything off because it’s just a really impossible to stop motor memory thing at this point in my life.

    – The cost of living is a LOT cheaper, but you may really miss the ability to have a good local butcher and high quality meat and produce readily and easily accessible. –

    *A-freaking-men, Ana! Americans are all about disposable conveniences and it’s really sad. This is more readily available in more urban areas… we have one good local butcher and two farmers’ markets here where I live. But what I wouldn’t give to have it be more like new york where there’s one on every block.

    One of my fav parts of hosting exchange students was their reactions to stuff like this — your post is making me both smile and get nostalgic for those conversations. What about the cereal aisle at the grocery store? That is always the first thing the kids point out. Lack of roundabouts on the road? People who greet you in the store when you walk in? (The Dutchies find that really bizarre) Big cars?

    • anapascoe001@gmail.com

      Haha yeah, honestly you’re totally right Nancy: we are just really in a bit of a backwater down here! That being said, there’s literally nowhere you could go in Australia that wouldn’t have sausages, which is part of my beef (haha) with the whole thing. Rural Aus is a lot more likely to have a small, local butcher for meat too, which we can’t find at all down here (seriously, we’re in the Boonies 😛 ). Sausage rolls and pavlova will definitely be on the menu if you ever visit Oklahoma and drop in! Keep us on your list :p
      Yeah, I’ve heard that reasoning about the double space, but it just absolutely blew my mind (and James’!) when we first saw it.
      YES! There aren’t any roundabouts! And the trucks are HUGE. Back home, we have utes (short for ‘utility vehicle’), but they’re nothing like the trucks over here and now I understand why they’re called trucks… They have some towing power! Also, your power points! Back home, we have an on-off switch, which doesn’t exist in the USA. And mattresses: they’re so deep over here! None of the linen I brought from home fits on our mattress 😛

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