Culture Shock
When you have decided that moving abroad is what you want to do, often time half the battle is easing your family’s anxieties surrounding your decision. Here are 5 tips to show that your parents and family that just because you are out of the country doesn’t mean you are out of touch. 1.) Let [...]
Continue reading about Moving Abroad: 5 Tips To Help Prepare Your Family
Being prepared will significantly reduce the stress surrounding your move to another country. You need to make a list and carry with you in your phone or on piece of paper with your passport and keep it close during your travels. Here are some small but helpful tips to help you stay organized avoid unnecessary [...]
Continue reading about Moving Abroad: 7 Tips to help you in the first 24 hours
Background: “Beetroot” is not a familiar concept to Canadians. For one thing, we call the purple veggie “beet” full-stop. We tend not to eat our roots–probably because as a “new world country’ we have so few and instead choose to honour them with a clothing company.
The sun is shining, there are Christmas carols in the distance, and Melbourne becomes more alive than ever at this time of year! 1) Suzuki Night Markets at Queen Victoria Market starts on November 17th, 2010, every Wednesday night until March. 2) St. Kilda Night Market may not run this year due to lack of support fron the [...]
Continue reading about What to do in December in Melbourne, Australia?
It is difficult to watch the World Cup in Australia Unfortunately since the World Cup is in South Africa, and the time difference to Australia basically stinks, we get all of the games at midnight and 4am. Doesn’t make for a very good work day after having an all nighter to watch the World Cup! [...]
Teaching in Ontario (Canada) is brilliant for a number of reasons; the pension’s reputedly one of the best in the world, and the teacher salary benefits: massage, dental, optometry, even orthopedics! — are something to write home about. But of course traveling the world is kind of amazing…and a developing–or feeding, for some!–your sense of [...]
Roots Clothing. We all love it. But in Australia, we don’t wear it. Here’s why: “roots” is actually a verb in Australia..and it has less to do with a tree sucking up water than it does a ‘pig’ sticking his ‘snout’ into something ‘dirty’. Uh..yeah. Yuck. But here we have a new term for having [...]
Continue reading about ROOTS Clothing? Don’t Pack it for Australia!
After teaching here for 3 years, I can’t think of an Australian school where the students do not wear a uniform. We seem to gauge teacher-dress by student dress, no matter what society you are from. So I’ll explain explain what you need to pack when you’re moving from Canada and coming to teach in [...]
Continue reading about Teachers’ Dress Code in Australia – What you need to pack
On my first day of a Canadian teacher’s college in 2005, we were told that 95% of teachers quit teaching within their first five years. I haven’t had the same experience living and teaching in Australia. I really believe this is because in Canada, there is so little time to “recover” from long days and [...]
Continue reading about Teaching In Australia—it’s different. Here’s how…
The puke piles in the streets on Monday mornings are very telling. There is a whole troop of zamboni-cleaners who are given fulltime work in an effort to keep up with the consecutive every-20-metre splatters, yet weekend after weekend, their jobs still exist. The newspapers distress about teenage binge drinking, parents wage war with letter [...]
I previously wrote about the unique pronunciation of Australians. Today I’m going to take a look at words or phrases that will confuse the hell out of you. 1. fairdinkum. I’m not kidding, this is a word. It means ‘authentic’. For example, “was $3.49 really the price of that mango?” “Fairdinkum!” 2. far out. This is not [...]
Continue reading about Australian Slang: 25 Essential Words and Phrases
North Americans will find it abrasive coming to Australia given that Australians tend to “take the piss out” (mock) of everything. There is a history of humour between Australians and Australia’s Aboriginal Peoples (not that I purport to be an expert on history) that goes something like this: “Hey, let’s have a festival.” “Yeah, we’ll [...]
The Aussie accent (fondly referred to by Aussies as ” ‘Strine” –from the “LLLL – less”, “RRRRR-less,” fast way they pronounce the last half of “Australian” is a combination of Irish, Italian, Greek, Scottish, English mish-mash. Like the English pronunciation, often the emphasis/stress of a word is on the first syllable. Of course this isn’t [...]
Continue reading about Decoding the Australian Accent (or Clues to Speaking ‘Strine)
In Australia, I spent my first job curriculum curving and tuning my ear into their accent. Fights broke out regularly in our playground, and I was lucky if it didn’t happen in my classroom. My class was a sort of bike-crashed, cut-up and scabbed lot with teeth, and uniform going everywhere, suggesting that they were [...]
Continue reading about Classroom ‘Culture Shock’ in Australia! And tips on Aussie-Speak
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