Intercultural Negotiations

Townsville, Australia

About half of the JCU Townsville campus

I've been staying at JCU for about a month now, and it has been a very eye opening experience! The culture is quite similar to ours, varying subtly rather than having glaring differences.

First and foremost is the temperature. I arrived during the peak of summer, and it is hot hot hot! The temperature is often in the high thirties and mid forties. Coming from a harsh winter in Ohio, it was a shock. Everyone seems to expect and sometimes even enjoy the blazing heat of summer. I'm standing in the shade, trying not to move too much and sweating like a pig while Aussies are walking around as if the heat is nothing! Sometimes, I even see people wearing long pants. The temperature difference is amazing, and the way they take the edge off of the heat is fun! Around campus, people will hand out popsicles or smoothies for free. At market day, there were a lot of drinks and everyone makes sure to have lots of water. They stress how important it is to drink water.

There is a group in Australia called the Red Frogs that host fun events and present to groups of all ages on the importance of safety. They are really involved in all the schools, from young kids to college, they are there to help. On campus, they are a big organization. They host weekly pancake and doughnut nights at my college, and they have a lot of fun games. This organization is a great example of how caring the people are here. Wherever I go, if I am looking lost there is someone that is willing to help me. When I am walking around town and get lost, I am comfortable asking a passerby for directions and they are happy to give them. The phrases and places here are shortened, like McDonald's is frequently called Macca's. They just love to make everything shorter! Which is funny, because the people here are so laid back and calm. While they like to shorten things, they also like to use some colorful language. They toss around words that are insulting in America as compliments or words to call friends. This was definitely an instance where it was important to understand the culture in order to better communicate.

The Red Frog's logo!
They always have red frog shaped candies to hand out at events.

Someone told me that they call Americans "Seppies" because they think of America as a septic tank. That was a little eye opening as to what some people thought of America, but there are also a lot of people here who really like Americans. People will ask me all about America, and what are the best places to visit and where have I been there. A lot of people that I have met have taken or want to plan a trip to visit America. Overall, my general impression is that people here do like Americans.

The classes and course loads are different than what I am used to. Rather than having assignments due weekly, I only have a few major assignments due over the course of the study period. It's a bit stressful, since the assignments are worth much more of the final grade and there is less room in case something goes wrong. The schedule of classes is seemingly a bit random to me as well. Instead of having a class on MWF or TTh, I have one class that meets on Monday and Thursday for an hour, with a three hour lab on Tuesday. Where the classes meet is also random, each of the meetings for the aforementioned class happens in a different building on campus. The buildings here are numbered in the order that they were built, which led to a bit of confusion for me when I was first trying to learn my way around campus. The campus itself is also very large, much larger than Allegheny's campus.