Preparing Americans for Australia

Today I gave my Australia talk again to a new batch of American student teachers. I told them about Australian schools, wildlife, culture, cuisine and that if they were staying with host families, they should try to learn to use their knives and forks correctly.

None of the questions were particularly stupid this time. Taking me for Emily Post, one girl asked me whether she would have to eat whatever her host family served; I said she should just talk about her likes and dislikes at the start. One mother asked a good question about what sort of meat we eat. I told her to imagine the American diet but replace 1/3 of the beef with lamb. That elicited some mutters from Americans not used to the taste of lamb!

I recommended that they watch Kenny and Summer Heights High to get to understand the Australian sense of humour. I warned that these might be a little harder for Americans as they don't have laugh tracks etc. but that this was good practice for when they'd be subtly mocked by their hosts. It turns out that the organiser who asked me for suggestions actually labelled Kenny as "highly recommended by an Australian national". It's available at Blockbuster Video and one girl said that she watched it for class but thought that it was some sort of low-brow stupidity. Obviously she was taking it the wrong way so I told her to watch it again when she gets back from Australia.

I showed them a promo for Summer Heights High that maybe I shouldn't have. I immediately remembered that there's almost no swearing on American TV and some of the shocking parts reminded me of the "don't ask, don't tell" style of political correctness you often get here. One of the students said that she had asked specifically for an outback school so over lunch I told her to find out a little about teaching aboriginal students and explained some of the things that my grandfather had discovered teaching his aboriginal student teachers.