Cultural Perspective

So.... I know I'm not in school anymore, but I kind of want to attempt to write about cultural differences between New Zealand and the U.S.

The girl I'm traveling with has to write a paper for university about the subject and that got me thinking about our own cultural differences.

I know I've commented before on how friendly everyone is. (I think New Zealand was recently rated by Forbes as the top friendliest country in the world!)  I've talked to some Kiwi's about this and one said that the people of New Zealand have to be nice since they rely so heavily on tourism. If they don't have tourists they have no livelihood. I don't really like that answer. I understand where he's coming from, but I'd rather say it was because Kiwi's are just all around nice people.... not because they're forced into it. (Everyone seems so genuine too)

It's amazing though how the country can get every on board with one idea... literally, that's their culture. There's friendly and then there's going above and beyond to help someone out. Most of them fall into the latter category.

New Zealand is also very clean. VERY clean. Very big on recycling and picking up after themselves. I remember walking in Abel Tasman National Park and there were NO garbage cans ANYWHERE. People packed food and drinks to take with them (since most hikes last all day to 2 or 3 days)... and I was so surprised that people actually carried their garbage around with them! No littering! The park has no garbage cans because they don't want to attract all the nasty bugs and critters...  Again, how do you get everyone on board with something like that?!

Something else that has really struck me involves the concept of "holiday" (vacation)...  "Holidays" are big everywhere but the U.S. (at least that's my take on it)  Some people don't even have a definitve return date to their home country. They take off on holiday and have no real plan about anything.

People in the U.S. seem to always have a plan... usually it's a week.... 2 weeks max. That's the American way of doing things. Pick a destination, sign up for a tour (maybe), and don't stray from the plan. At least, that's what I'm used to.

I keep thinking back to the day we did the kayak tour and we walked up the hill (45 minute walk)... As we're going up we see a bus full of tourists going down. The Kiwi's I was with called it the American tour because that's the American way of doing things. I guess it makes sense because Americans like to cram everything in to a short period of time since they don't take off for long periods of time.

When I came to New Zealand last time we had a week to do north and south island. A week in Australia and a week in New Zealand. Now THAT'S the classic American tour... which is why I came back to New Zealand in the first place. I wanted to spend more time!

And I think this goes without saying, but everyone knows about American everything. Even our stupid news stories make radio talk shows over here. (i.e. some girl who went to court over attacking her boyfriend with a furby)

Yeah... lovely.

And here are some classic kiwi words that I'm hoping to use when I get home:

Sweet As (instead of cool or awesome)   **This is my favorite, by far. :)
Heaps
Eh
Good on ya mate
No worries
Jandal

So that's my entry for today...  OH! And we went to the beach yesterday- one of the top 20 beaches of the world. We practically had it to ourselves.  :)