Things I miss about Canada

After a while of travelling in Australia and seeing/hearing the difference between the Canadian and Australian every day life I have gathered a few things that I truly miss about Canada.

#1 - Looking left

At the beginning of my travels I spent the first few days standing on the edge of sidewalks with my head on a swivel making sure I wasn't going to get hit by a car when I attempted to cross the road. For those of you who don't know, Aussies drive on the "wrong" side of the road. I'm beginning to adopt their ways so when I have to cross the street there is always a mini battle going on in my head. It starts with me looking right (which is the direction you are supposed to look). I then begin to cross the road because I feel like I've done the right thing, but then something happens in my mind and I am forced to look left because I subconsciously think that I am going to get steamrolled by a monster truck. This causes a chain reaction of me thinking that I'm right, then I'm wrong, then I'm right again which in turn makes me look like a fool as I turn my head from side to side while crossing the street.

#2 - Ketchup

They call it tomato sauce and you have to pay extra for it 80% of the time. 'Nuff said.

#3 - Taking the bus and still having enough money left over for lunch

I made the mistake the other day to take the bus to the shopping center so I could kill some time before I could check into my next hostel. What I didn't realize was that it would literally cost me my lunch. If you search around it's pretty easy to find a place that has $10 lunches which is pretty cheap for Australia. Like everything else here something that you think should be cheap (like a bag of chips) is crazy expensive. To take the bus to the mall (which was a 10 minute ride) it cost me $5.60 just to go one way. It has been a long time since I had to pay for a bus because of the bus passes I used to get from school so this experience was quite awful for me. I refused to pay the $5.60 back so I walked the 45 minutes instead in the blazing heat.

#4 - Swimming in the ocean

I know that the ocean back home is just at the temperature where you can hop in and hop out with only a slight chance of hypothermia. In Australia the majority of places with water are "no swim zones" because of all the deadly things that live in the water. There are sharks (of course) but those aren't very bothersome. The worst are the jellyfish. There are so many types of jellyfish that can kill you and the worst part is that they don't even try! They're just floatin around in their little jelly way and then WHOOPS touched something! and BAM you're dead. There's also some jellyfish that are the size of your thumbnail and transparent so you don't even know what's going on but when they sting you it feels like you're going to die for 3 days but then you eventually recover. That one isn't as bad. Oh, and you can't forget about the crocodiles...they just eat people sometimes.

#5 - The love of my life

#6 - Drawers

I've been living out of a backpack and it's impossible to not make a mess! I tried so hard but it doesn't matter because no matter how organized you try to be everything will eventually explode when you have to dig out that one specific top you need to wear because everything else smells.

#7 - Football

I have watched 10 minutes of one football game since I've been over here and for any of you who are in the same football pool as me you can see that I am seriously struggling because of that.

#8 - Friends that make fools of themselves with me (sorry guys)

 

#9 - McChicken burgers

They're just not the same. It's more like a giant chicken mcnugget on a bun here. Nuggets are good, but not on a burger. Clearly the McChickens are having identity issues here in Australia.

#10 - Eh?

There are many different ways to use the word eh but sometimes this simple word confuses Australians and they think you're asking them a question when really you're just pointing something out and seeing if they agree because you're a polite Canadian.



Just to be clear, Australia is great and maybe later I'll write a post that gloats about all of the amazing things that are here, but for now you Canadians get to read what I'm missing and you get to enjoy. So go for that polar bear swim and think to yourself "man, good thing I'm not gonna die from an invisible jellyfish".