Category: Culture
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So, Where Are You From?
During our trip up to Vancouver, we visited the excellent Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. There most of us joined a tour run by a volunteer with a group of a dozen or so. To break the ice a little the tour guide introduced herself and then asked where people were…
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Easter 2009
While Good Friday is currently sacrosanct as a holiday in Australia and Germany — indeed in many other countries that we’ve never experienced it in — that’s not the case in the U.S. At least, not in California. I’m told some other states do have it as a holiday but, well we don’t live there.…
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Baseball with the Angels
Recently a good friend invited Joshua, Elijah and I to join him at an Anaheim Angels baseball game. Now baseball isn’t something I grew up playing with softball being the generally preferred option that is closest. In the past, I’ve tried to watch the US-based ‘World’ Series at least twice and found the games like…
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Language Update
Of course, one of the challenges of moving countries is the language barrier. The shift to Germany meant an obvious difficulty but the move to California has brought its own subtle problems. In Germany the challenge was to learn a whole new language, in California it’s retention. Retention of both our Australian dialect and our…
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Paranimf-in’
A little while ago two PhD students at work graduated from their respective Dutch universities. I had had a small hand in helping both of them with their theses — mostly editing (thanks be to Brett), English and some thoughts on layout. I attended the graduation ceremonies of both and they are somewhat different to…
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German Driver’s Licence
This post is part vent, part information. So, the time has come for me to obtain my German driver’s licence[1] and there are a number of rules governing the use of foreign licences here. For starters the most infuriating part is the sheer bureaucratic and almost arbitrary nature of which licences are easily exchangeable. Once…
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Back to School
I remember in Australia the new school year was always a time of excitement and a little anxiety about whether the children would have the right teacher and the right friends in their class. Well this feeling is greatly exaggerated when the system and the language is unfamiliar (or barely familiar). To further compound this…
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Fire Targa
Though I’m usually in favour of the separation of Church and State, if it comes at the cost of losing many of the religious public holidays we have recently enjoyed here I’m not so sure :). In reverse order, we have recently had days off for Fronleichnam[1], Pfingsten[2], Christi Himmelfahrt[3], Ostern and Karfreitag[5]. Another religious-type…
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Spring Sights
As I mentioned last year, the switch to spring seems to be very fast here. True, we have had a bit of a lingering winter but on the whole I am only slightly less amazed this time round at how quickly the new leaves appear, flowers bloom, festivities kick-in and something approaching warmer weather arrives.…
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Weihnachten (Christmas)
It snowed late on Boxing Day but on Christmas the sun was actually shining. It looked a little more like Christmas but it didn’t feel like a proper Christmas. We went sledding a couple of days later but otherwise we mostly played inside. We did have a snowball fight with one of Joshua’s friends. Bryna…