Virtually Home

I've been living in Australia for a few months now, and the main thing that experience has taught me is that my accent is dumb. American vowels are flat and lazy and nasal. I pronounce too many R's on average. It's really quite unseemly. The culture here feels like a weird blend of UK and US culture, partly because goods and media are often imported from both places. I've enjoyed learning some of the features of Australian English and hearing a wide variety of Australian accents. There are tons of immigrants from the UK and elsewhere in my department, so I'm encountering a lot of those accents too. Some Aussie words and phrases I've been interested or bemused by so far: "How are you going?" is used instead of "How is it going?" or "How are you doing?" Tasty cheese = cheddar Barbie = grill, but grills tend to be fireless electric cooktops in this wildfire-prone region Bushfire = wildfire Lollies = candy "Hey" is...

My friend Bethan is leaving town in a few hours. We met for coffee today at a shockingly American coffee shop called, inappropriately (and in English) "the French coffee shop". They had all kinds of fancy, sugar-filled coffee drinks in addition to the espresso that is normally available. We started talking about the things we miss about home, and what we'll miss about France. I think the thing that drives me crazy about being here is the utter lack of pressure or stress that exists. There is no emphasis placed on efficiency or customer service, as far as I've seen in my several months here. All of the concentration of those people I've directly observed goes to aesthetics. Leisure. Personal relationships. Which is great for the worker or the citizen, and pretty terrible for the consumer (or, maybe, my type of consumer). Maybe my problems stem from my deep hatred for shopping and desire for blitzkrieg execution of all plans that involve buying things or services....

Last night there was a "tempête", which the internet translates as "gale" or "storm" or "uproar". I'm guessing that first is the most appropriate, because there was a lot of wind. However, it wasn't enough wind to shut down anything except maybe the C-152s at training schools, had it happened in Oklahoma. They shut down the trams on account of the storm hours early, and I was expecting more. The sky was clear and the moon was full and we ended up at a house party with some friends. The remarkable thing about a house in Bordeaux is that it's more like a multi-story, multi-bedroom apartment, since all of the buildings in Bordeaux are connected to each other. This particular house was among the most spacious places I've seen in France. The bathroom was, as Nico said, big enough to play soccer in, and there was a small garden in the back yard, complete with a magnolia tree. When the gale was starting, it was oddly warm and felt a lo...

This post is going to be kind of schizophrenic, as I have a lot of very short things to say. Every day I am increasingly embarrassed by the American reputation abroad inspired by the Bush era and the Iraq war -- and also about our culture's relative disregard for other cultures. Every exchange student I meet speaks at least three languages -- one of their native country and two others. Some of them speak more. A lot of the exchange students who are studying here will go on to spend another year or another semester in another country to practice their third language. By contrast, our two "mandatory" years of language in high school seem to pale, and a lot majors don't even require college-level language courses if the high school requirement has been completed (Engineers, mainly). It's silly. When I was in the exchange students meeting today, the auditorium was empty of Americans -- mostly because they're all in French as a second language classes already. ...