A Picture's Worth

Dear G'day, teacher who is still convinced I'm American even after one term,

I lived in Florida for a year and worked there on break. This does not make me American.

I'm as Aussie as you are. No, you're a second generation Greek immigrant; I take that back: I can trace my family back to one of the first bloody convicts¹; I'm more Australian than you are².

I ride my kangaroo to class every day, where I turn in aerial photos of my pet koala taken by attaching my camera to a boomerang. At lunch I have Vegemite sandwiches and a pint. After class I go surfing and only barely avoid being eaten by sharks or stung by jellies, and when the sun goes down, I go and wrestle some crocodiles for fun. My sisters glow and I plunder. For dinner I toss another prawn on the barbie. At night I camp by a billabong under the shade of a coolabah tree.

My Christmas dinner was a roast ostrich. That I had Mum send me from my backyard. Because I'm that Australian.

In fact, I'm so Australian that I'm pretty sure my Digimon partner's going to evolve into a platypus one day.

Going to wear a cork hat to class tomorrow and finish every sentence with "mate", mate,

Ash

1: I'm joking. My auntie who's been doing the family tree says our ancestors were legit emigrants.
2: Also joking.

This whole post is a joke but I figured those two were the most blatantly offensive.

(OOC: I myself am actually a first/second generation immigrant (I was tiny) to New Zealand; if anyone told me in seriousness they were more of a New Zealander than me, a ditch would be smacked. :|)

Just kidding. I'm back in the capital with my best friend who's a local here, and after coming here in summer it is weird seeing it so empty by comparison, not to mention actually snowing. Sure, I've seen snow before, but usually in the mountains, and always on the ground already, not in progress. And of course the state I left is the only one in the US that doesn't have snow...

Weirder than DC in winter: Running around being a tourist while back home, Queensland is flooded. It's not even my state and it feels weird. It's gotta be worse for one of my old flatmates who's actually from Queensland; he's had family affected by it but his parents told him to keep going with his tour of the US and stay here as long as he'd planned. I've donated; I just wish I could do more.

( I hate to be a downer, so a bit more on DC. )

The new TSA restrictions are creepy. Airport security got pretty suspicious of Pukamon when he went through the scanner so they gave me an extra patdown way worse than the one I had flying back from Pittsburgh. If I had the time and money (rental cars and gas are more expensive than flying) I'd drive around the States instead (though this wouldn't have helped me get to Puerto Rico).

( Speaking of Puerto Rico! )

Oh, Hikari-san, I think you would have liked the coffee in Puerto Rico: It was everywhere, it was much cheaper than Starbucks, and it was fantastic.

New York next! Anyone up in the area for hanging out?

I know I just posted earlier, but my disappointment cannot be confined to Facebook:

I can't believe we didn't get the '22 World Cup. Only one vote?! How did this happen?!

Where the hell is Qatar? (Yes, I can work Google.) I would have been happy for Japan to host if Aus couldn't but Qatar?

I can't even look forward to '14 because if I have to hear more Brazilians chanting in 2014 it'll be too soon. :| (And as soon as I type that, Pukamon starts going "OLE, OLE OLE OLE" at me. Best partner ever.) Bring on Russia '18.

Any other football (soccer, not American) fans apart from the apparently MIA Daisuke-san? Your thoughts?

EDIT: And in the same day we lost our claim to the pavlova! Today is a sad day for Australia.

One night at work this week I had an Australian guest who wanted a DVD. As we were waiting for it to burn, we got to arguing about AFL, as you do, and eventually she tells me that my Aussie accent's worn off and I sound American. My older sister confirmed it, saying she didn't want to tell me while she was here.

My Japanese friends here say my accent on Japanese is very slightly American, but most of them have a bit of trouble differentiating between different accents in English, so I'm not too worried.

My American workmates say I'm going Canadian, and most of the Canadians agree.

Pukamon and my Aussie flatmates aren't sure; my Kiwi flatmates say I still sound like an Australian and they wish I didn't, but they're Kiwis, what did I really expect.

I may have to start greeting people with "g'day mate" and using "crikey" as my replacement swear word instead of Mickey and talk about throwing another shrimp on the barbie all the time.