The Grass is Always Greener...

One of the great parts of understanding a new culture is the shocking realization that a person my age who grew up on the other side of the world would be so similar to me.    

This is not to say that coming into Australia I had no idea what I was going to be facing.  I had preconceived notions about the people and the culture, as well as the climate and structure of this beautiful city of Sydney.  What I had not anticipated, however, was the feeling a sense of belonging by having small conversations with some of the natives.  Just talking to someone in the bar or on the street or in at a market gave me more information about the culture of Australia than I thought I ever would receive.  Everyone seems to have the answers: what I should do here, where I should go, and what are the important parts of Australia.

One surprising thing about Australia was that in many aspects, it is similar to America.  I attempted to steer clear of anything American in order to enrich my experiences here, but from McDonalds to television, America is stalking me. 

The day-to-day lives of native Australians are even more similar to mine than I could imagine.  After a day of surfing and letting the water throw me around a bit, I started a normal, small-talk conversation with our female instructor, Lily, thinking that she would have an interesting story about her culture and her experiences with surfing.  As I asked her about when she began to surf, she seemed embarrassed as though her answer would disappoint me.  She told me that she began to surf at a very young age, because where she grew up further west in Sydney, there was nothing better to do than to learn to surf.

This was shocking to me.  Nothing to do in Australia?  Impossible!  I was baffled by her lack of enthusiasm for such a great place to live!  Being west in Australia is still better than living anywhere else, I thought.  As I thought about it, however, I realized that there is a cultural similarity between Australia and the US, and possibly every other country as well.  People, especially teenagers and young adults, do not know how great they have it.

In the United States, every person I meet in college says that they came to study at the University of Maryland came there because there hometown was “boring” or they needed to leave for something new.  Growing up in a small town in New Jersey, my friends and I all stated that there was nothing to do.  Even though I spent all summer in swimming pools and at camp, spent all school year at the mall and sports games, and I went to whatever concert I wanted, I thought I had nothing to do.  Taking your hometown for granted is something that as a human race we all seem to do.  It was an inaccurate assumption of mine to believe that people in Australia could not possibly feel that way.

To me, our surfing instructor lived the dream life.  She lived close to the beach.  She surfed as much as possible since the age of 8, and got great enough at it to be an instructor.  Lily followed her dreams to the beautiful Sydney and does what she loves.  This seems to me as though she had plenty to do, but being born in a country allows the observer to forget that some people do not have the same opportunities as him.

To suggest that her career path was out of boredom and not pure determination and passion for the sport is not only a different perspective than mine, but also a modest one.  As I had mentioned in my previous blog post, my perspective of Australian people is that they are incredibly friendly.  I believe that she bashfully left out any gruesome details of her hard work to make her journey not seem as great as it truly was.  She might also have found herself similar to every other child growing up around her and failed to see how extraordinary of a position she was in. 

This position, however, is extraordinary to me.  Someone in a situation different than my own might believe growing up in a small town not far outside of New York City would be one of the most interesting places to live.  One will always believe there is a better place to live, no matter where they are living, and my dream home might be mundane for another.  It was interesting for me to understand that even in a country so far from my own, and so wondrous, one might feel any sort of boredom at all.