Eight Million Miles Away

I do not have mad Google skills.  I have other skills but when I am asked to Google something, it seems that everyone else can find the answer while I am still sorting through the results.  I tell you this because I wanted to see how many miles it is between, Muncie, Indiana (where I was born) and Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand, where I live, but I can't.  I Googled it at one point and got the answer 8 million + which sometimes seems about right.  If your Google skills are amazing, please leave the number of miles in the comments so I can quote you  for the entire time I live here; "According to so and so, I'm from a place X amount of miles from here," or "Back home, X amount of miles away, we blah, blah, blah..." I know, I'm great at conversation, even the fake ones.

Whatevs, the point that I am making is that some things are different here.  Some things are called by different names.  Some things are totally and completely the same.

Recently on Facebook I posted a list of words that we hear in Auckland that we haven't ever used before (whether we have heard them or not).  Here are a few:

1.  Pram.  JJ had never heard of a pram before, funny man.  Now he loves to park in the "Parents with Prams" parking.

2.  Car bonnet, I always have to think about which end this is because I expect it to mean the roof of a car.

3.  Car boot.  Due to the fact that I think this should refer to the tires, I can remember that this is the trunk and then I know what the bonnet is too.

4.  Car park - I had a woman here tell me she had never heard of a driveway.

5.  Flying fox - not sure that this should even exist, its the crazy fun looking zip line my three year old went on  at the playground.

6.  Baby cot - first of all they have drop side cots here.  For Reals!  JJ thinks I am a safety nut when it comes to the kids but I am not placing my child in a death trap to sleep (no offense to the Kiwi but this freaks me out, I am pretty sure that my aggressive nature freaks out at least four Kiwi a day so we'll call it even).

7.  Flat white, long black, filter coffee etc, etc, etc...

8.  People mover - we can't find an Oldsmobile here that will fit three car seats across in the backseat and four grown men in the trunk so we have to become the proud owners of a mini van (ANY DAY NOW)!

9.  Cheers and no worries.  I have yet to hear anyone here say one of the "polite" words that are drilled into my Midwestern phyche.  Thank you, you're welcome, please, etc, etc, etc.  They are polite and helpful but with a different vocabulary.

10.  Muesli, porridge, custard, the food list could go on and on and on.  I grocery shop online and it takes about ten years each week - I like that though.

You can image my shock yesterday when, after a few short weeks here I was able to, with 100% confidence, walk up to the coffee counter and ask for two flat whites and a long black and hand them my eftpos card without reading the menu twenty five times.  When the clerk dropped my card on the hand-back, I looked at her, smiled and said, "No worries.".

Cheers!