Culture Shock

Culture Shock: a condition of disorientation, depression or anxiety affecting someone who is suddenly exposed to an unfamiliar culture or way of life or set of attitudes

I miss Sydney.
I miss Sydney every single day of my life.
Every single day I wake up and look out my window; I see cows and horses, "Aussie" flags on Utes and Bogans in ugg boots, and all I can think is:

"How the hell did I end up here?"

I still don’t have an answer to that one.

I am a city girl.
I always have been and probably always will.
I thrive on the hustle and bustle and energy and noise.
I love the culture, the people and how they don't pretend to be what their not.

And then there’s Branxton, it is at best, a village. It has two-thousand people and a CI [cultural intelligence] of zero. It thrives on conformity and ignorance.

When I first moved here in October 2003; I was torn out of everything had never known.
I was the new girl who spoke differently, who liked different music and television, whose parents didn't work in the mines or as hairdressers, who thought it was wrong to say “that’s so gay!”, who had actually left New South Wales and above all, who didn’t fit in.

Before they even spoke to me they called me a snob. So that's what I became [and to be perfectly honest I still can be] I felt I was better than them [and I believed it wholeheartedly]. When they did try and talk to me, it wasn’t what you’d call easy:

“Hey you’re that chicks whose parents bought the Branxton inn eh?”
“Unfortunately yes”
“Oh cool! So do you like horses?”
“Not really”
“What about motorbikes?”
“No”
“What about that new Kasey Chambers song, pretty awesome eh?”
“Are you joking?”
“Oh…umm…okay… What about footy? What’s your team?”
“It’s stupid and encourages pointless violence”

I have never been so lonely.

I was lost; I couldn’t see how these people didn’t die of boredom [I still can’t]. I drifted between friendship groups, trying to find anywhere I could feel even a hint of what I had in Sydney or Canberra.

I failed miserably.

Then my little brother started playing for the local soccer team. The ever-so-originally called Greta-Branxton Wildcats, and that’s how I met Steffie Yee. Her brother played on the same team. We were in the same year at the same school, liked the same music and both loved Sydney to death.
It wasn’t much to begin with, but I was saved.