all eggs are brown
all cheddar cheese is white
take out food is called "take away"
there is no one cent coin, so obviously is rounded up or down to the nearest five cents. 
The coins are 5, 10, 20 ,50, 1 dollar and 2 dollars - your wallet can get really heavy!
the paper money is different colors - very cool!
movie tickets costs $15 apiece! You choose your seat or they assign you one and you have to sit in that seat. Our first time at the movies, we did not know this and sat in someone else's seat and he was not happy with us!
there is no frozen juice concentrate here; most fruit juice is a liquid called "cordial" that is concentrated.
cannot find semi-sweet chocolate chips
electricity is insanely expensive!!
cell phones are called "mobiles"
bathrooms are called toilets
it is one of the few countries in the world that eats their national symbol. We've seen Emu jerky and yes, you can buy kangaroo meat at the grocery store. I have only seen it "minced" or ground up. We have yet to try some.
all school children in private or public (state) schools are required to wear uniforms, complete with hats, and each schools' uniform is different. These cute little girls are my next door neighbors in their sports day and regular uniform, and the little boys are my friend Jen's sons - different school.
all school children in private or public (state) schools are required to wear uniforms, complete with hats, and each schools' uniform is different. These cute little girls are my next door neighbors in their sports day and regular uniform, and the little boys are my friend Jen's sons - different school.
High school female students must either wear their hair pulled back or up in a bun. Grade 11 or 12 boys are required to wear ties. Girls' uniforms are dresses or skirts & blouses.
The Mall shops close at 5pm every night except for Thursday when they stay open until 9pm. Grocery stores close between 7 -8pm. That has taken some real getting used too!
Pharmacies are called "Chemist" and Doctor offices are called "surgery".
French fries or "chips" are dipped in meat gravy rather than ketsup. (which is called 'tomato sauce' and really is just plain tomato sauce.)
Sales tax is built into the price of everything: what price you see marked is exactly what you pay. That general sales tax (GST) is 10%!
Jello is called 'jelly' and is a dessert not a salad! A favorite is to put jelly over a scoop of ice cream.
1 comment:
Hi, Debi!
Good summary of some of the Australian differences :). However, I feel compelled to make some corrections.
We do have juice concentrates. I'm not sure about frozen ones, but probably. Cordial is basically Kool-Aid (which we don't have), but it's liquid and it's sweetened.
Our cheese is yellow, not white - or at least it looks yellow to us, because orange cheese is rare here!
Our cool multicoloured money is in fact plastic, not paper. It's much harder to counterfeit that way, and it lasts longer.
We do have 'bathrooms', containing the bath and/or shower, but the toilet is often in a room by itself, which may or may not be next to the bathroom.
You can get kangaroo as steak, sausages, and stir-fry strips, too :). It's a really good meat, tasty and very lean. Emu tastes rather like bacon (and is much more expensive).
You can refer to the 'pharmacy' or the 'chemist' interchangeably. The one in Banyo we normally call a pharmacy.
We definitely do use tomato sauce on fries/chips; however, gravy is a good choice too. Tomato sauce is usually less spicy/seasoned than ketsup/ketchup/catsup.
But a resounding cheer for "jelly is a dessert not a salad"! We also tend to put only sweet items in it; pears, peaches, and pineapple are fine, but not usually carrot! I take it that you don't normally have it with ice cream? A very good combination, just like ice cream and pancakes.
Keep writing; I'm interested!
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