My apologies for the late blog---enjoy this picture of me kayaking through Hobart!
I have officially been at Uni for four weeks and thought it would be a great time to share the six biggest differences for me between the USA and Australia!!
Lack of University sports
At University of Tasmania (UTAS), most athletics are club sports and few are played between the residence halls. There are three residence halls at UTAS and I was fortunate enough to get a room at John Fisher. As a Fisher, we get to play various sports against the other two halls. This includes softball, cricket, rugby, table tennis, soccer. In the States, University sports are a big deal and I would always find myself at an Iowa State games like football, basketball, and volleyball. This is the biggest change for me because I enjoyed supporting my college by cheering on their teams.
Outlets
In Australia, they take pride in conserving energy. All outlets are energy efficient because you can turn off and on the outlet when needed. I did not know this when first arriving and couldn't figure out why my phone wasn't charging! Took me a few minutes until I realized you have to turn the outlet on!!
Lack of water fountains
This is just my personal observation, but finding a water fountain on campus is a challenge! Most buildings do not have one and I find that odd because at ISU there are water fountains in every building.
Currency
I am in love with Australia's currency. Their bills are made out of plastic and are each a different color. Also, there are no pennies so they round to the nearest five cents. I have a jar of spare change in my room here and although it looks like there may only be a few dollars, it's actually over A$30 because the A$2 coins are tiny but add up fast!
The price tag is its actual price
In the USA, going out to eat can be difficult when calculating your final cost until you have the bill. The price of the entree, tax, and tip all go into the final price and although it said $15 on the menu, you end up paying closer to $20. In Australia, if a menu item says $10, you pay $10. The same goes for shopping and spending any money. It creates less hassle in the end because tipping isn't apart of their culture and taxes are already included in the price.
Different spellings
In my management class, we were talking about organizations and it was defined up on the board but it didn't look right because it had an s instead of a z (organisations). Australia follows British English so this is the reason they use different spellings.