New Zealand is an interesting place to visit. In some ways, it's very similar to home. The airport looks the same. There are Subways, McDonald's, Burger Kings, bottles of Coke, Nissans and Fords, ducks, grocery stores, speed limit signs. (Right now I'm sitting in a Subway and the only way I can tell it's not in the U.S. is because of the sign that says "$8.20 footlong subs." Well, and the accents of the other people here.)
However, there are some differences and I thought it would be fun to talk about some of those:
-There are no squirrels. I went to the Canterbury Botanic Gardens yesterday and I think it took me about an hour to figure out why it felt off. There were birds, ducks, bugs, etc but no squirrels anywhere. I had an actual New Zealander showing me around so I asked him about it and he confirmed that they do not have squirrels here. They do have rabbits, possums, and rats.
The local flora and fauna. Which means no squirrels.
-The power outlets and light switches. They just look different than ours do. The outlets can also be disabled and enabled. So, every outlet has its own switch.
The outlet in my hotel room. These are standard everywhere in NZ that I've been so far.
-The toilets. Ok, confession time: In the first hotel I stayed in, I couldn't figure out how to flush the toilet. I know it's possible cause I heard my roommate do it but, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what to do. So, I just went to public restrooms. Luckily, my current hotel toilet is a lot easier. It's got two buttons (instead of a door knob, like the last one), one for low-powered flushes and one for high-powered flushes. The bars on top show what each button is for.
An easy-to-use push-button toilet. Thanks goodness it's not another door knob toilet.
-Driving/walking. People drive on the opposite side of the street here. It's taken me a while to start looking in the correct direction when I cross the street. The US Antarctic Program welcome committee at the airport warned me when I got here that it'd be difficult to adjust to looking the opposite direction and it really has been. It's not intuitive for me at all since I've had 30 years of practice doing it the other way. Also - I keep walking towards the right side of the sidewalk when people are coming towards me but the custom here, like driving, is to go to the left.
-Units. They use the metric system here so distance is measured in kilometers instead of miles and volumes of liquids are in liters instead of quarts. (Fun fact: one liter is about 1 quart. Very useful to know when you're traveling through different countries where, in one, you're allowed a 1 qt bag of liquids and gels and in the other country, you're allowed a 1 L bag.)