Oma is for grandma

When it comes to cards I had to make one of those changes in my thinking that is often required of an expat or immigrant. Australians are very similar to the British, in my experience anyway, they love cards.

They love to write them. They love to receive them. And most of all they love to display them.

For a German person this might be really hard to believe but in Australia at Christmas time Australia Post offers a special rate for Christmas greetings. You can send Christmas cards for 10cents cheaper as long as they are ‘card only’. And you’re really not allowed to send anything else in that envelope but a Christmas card and most of the time these cards don’t contain any information about the sender of the card, nothing in terms of correspondence except “To dear M + F … Love from whoever”. In between these two handwritten lines is usually the printed stuff inside the card that’s always there already to help you save time when writing cards and you really haven’t got a clue what to write in the first place. In Germany we usually use the opportunity and write about everything that might be worth communicating and use Christmas as one of the main times for written correspondence with friends and family. But not here. Here you get punished if you’ve got any more to say that what fits next to that oversized printed text inside the card. You’ve got to pay extra.

For birthdays you get given a card along with the present, even though the person giving you the card is standing right in front of you and has ample opportunity to say everything there is to say.

Whatever the occasion, after receiving the cards they are then always liberally displayed inside the house and contribute to the festive decoration. And I’ve sometimes wondered whether they’re really there to let every visitor know how many friends you’ve got.

But I’ve got to confess, I’ve changed from my German ways and have put a long piece of string above our kitchen window, where we eagerly keen display all the cards that were sent to us (with varying amounts of actual information inside) and at Christmas time I do make use of the ‘card only’ rate (though I try and write really small and use both sides on the inside and the back).

So I had been a good little ‘Aussie’ and hung up all the cards that we received when E was born (that is 8 months ago now to the day), they had to move since then for M’s as well as my own birthday cards, but I had kept them all. Well the tradition or should I call it culture doesn’t really say what you’re supposed to do with all the cards once you’ve obediently displayed them for a while, so I was a bit unsure myself.

There was quite a stack of them as you can see in the picture and as I still hadn’t found some good use to put them too I used them to get this baby cranking and what a good firestarter they did make.

Hm … have I gone back to those ‘evil’ German ways after all??

*I’m very sorry if you’re one of those lovely people who sent us a card, we do love receiving them, honestly!! Just look at it from the economic side of things, you’ll be saving yourself $5 in future, cause I won’t expect a birthday card if you’re congratulating me in person

Am I truly bilingual myself?

Most people don’t realise that I’m not Australian when they first meet me. And that might be taken as a compliment on my English or the accent (or lack thereof) but every now and then I really give myself away and make a total fool of myself. I guess learning a second language isn’t all that easy after all.

There was the time, for example, that Michael and I were trying to organise to buy a house in Australia while we were still overseas. His parents really tried to help us out a lot and organised a lot of the nitty gritty for us. That was the word I was ment to say but out came: “It’s so good that you’re parents are going through the nipple gripple for us” (Michael had been telling me stories of his mates and him giving each other nipple gripples in college). Woopsy!

When bushwalking in Australia you’re bound to hear lots of different bird calls. Friends would say: “Can you hear the bower bird?” or “I think that was a bell bird.” Being me I didn’t realise that they were talking about two different bird calls, so the only way I could make sens of this was to call the bird bowel bird. Wonder what that one would sound like, though?

And the one time that I totally sent Michael into hysterical fits from laughing was when I said: “That’s Bonox!” But maybe vegetable stock is better than some crude swear word?!

I guess those Kookaburras in the photo would laugh pretty hard about me, and maybe I should do the same, but sometimes I just find it right out embarassing to look so dumb.

(Kookaburras are birds whose call sound like a real belly chuckle and you can hear them every day at dusk and dawn in Australia if you life anywhere near the bush. They certainly always make me laugh.)

Reading Christina’s blog has shocked me from time to time.

No, she doesn’t write anything obscene but reports about the German school system and its shortcomings and the poor ranking Germany got in the PISA study as well as Vernor Munoz’s critic of the German School system. Being a German myself I’m quite distressed to read that Germany is amongst the lowest ranking countries in the PISA study. And I really would like to make sense of all of this. Is Germany’s school system really this bad or is the PISA study not all that accurate when it comes to the results and how they’ve been interpreted?

I have always had quite a high opinion of the German education system which makes what I read even more distressing. I’m sure that my opinion is based on my own positive experiences at school. Maybe this is much more typical for a girl than a boy, but I’ve always enjoyed school. Also I have always been to good schools with a high standard. So my view is possibly totally biased but I don’t really want to believe that the entire school system in Germany is doomed.

Well here are some of my questions and uncertainties. Maybe you can help me to find an answer to some of them.

The PISA study tests 15-year olds performance but I’m wondering whether countries where students start school later are automatically disadvantaged. At 15 years Germany’s students will only be in year 9 but Australia’s in year 10.

Vernor Munoz (as well as Christina) critizise the early start of High School and therefore the separation into different achievement levels. When I went to school (and maybe this has just changed since then) only the CDU-run states started High School in year 5 but all SPD-run states’ students didn’t start High School until year 7. Shouldn’t this criticism only be directed at the CDU-run states?

According to the ranking Australia did very well in the PISA study but I have my own doubts about the school system here and until now would have always preferred Germany’s.

Quite a large percentage of students here go to private schools with incredibly high fees. Is that a reflecion of the good results? If German parents payed a similar amount to Australian parents for their children’s education would they receive a better education for their children (or better results in PISA at least)?

And in regards to the PISA findings that children of Academics are much more likely to go to a Gymnasium in Germany what does that say about the rich and the poor in Australia? Michael has written a post about that if you’re interested to find out: the rich, the poor and public education.

I am really quite confused about this whole issue. Maybe you’ve got something worthwhile to add or enlighten me.

Yes, I’m still writing about the whole immigrant-expat issue that started with
me questioning am I or am I not?

In response to one of my posts Alice asked me this:

… I like to think that anyone who lives in Australia and wants to be Australian (or German-Australian, Thai-Australian etc) is accepted as such.

I am interested in your experiences with the locals accepting you as an ‘Australian’.

I thought it necessary to write a whole new post on this, maybe cause I’m suffering from verbal diarrhea, but I’d like to say that it’s also because I’d love to discuss this further with anybody who’s interested.

I’ve got to say that I’ve never had a problem being accepted as an ‘Australian’, it was more that I never really wanted to be ‘Australian’. I’ve always insisted on being ‘German’.

When I first arrived in Australia I was regularly asked “So, how do you like Australia?” to which I usually answered “It’s OK, I’m getting used to it.” Partly because I wanted to stir them up a bit but I also hadn’t come here (as most Australians seem to expect and want to hear) because it’s the land of my dreams, paradise on earth. At the time it was the best thing for my husband and I to do, but I did miss home incredibly and did not want to just become ‘Australian’ and forget about home.
Later people asked me “So when are you gonna become Australian?” meaning that I should take out citizenship. Well being me I couldn’t help but say “Never!”.
I think in hinsight I have become quite Australian over the years but I still feel very German too (and I hope this will never change).

So I think that Australians are keen for their migrants to become ‘Australian’ and to integrate and assimilate into the Australian culture but they find the opposite quite threatening (I’m happy to be wrong on this if someone would like to show me why): I feel that as long as you’re keen to embrace Australia and it’s culture fully and try to become Australian you’re very much accepted though in my experience this might be harder if you’re not of Caucasian appearance. Yet, if you try to keep your culture and language you can be perceived as a threat, particularly if you’re not Caucasian.

Don’t get me wrong I think Integration is essential to living in another country but Assimilation to me is a total loss of ones own culture and not a favourable outcome of immigration in my point of view.

On the other side friends of my husband’s who were either born in Australia or came her at a very young age and would most definitely think of themselfes as Australian have experienced racism or discrimination against them. They have been made to feel like immigrants and pretty much said, if not in words, “We don’t want you here, you’re not Australian!”

People might say that these are very specific stories that might only reflect isolated cases, but this is how I’ve experienced things and the only conclusion that I can come to (and I’d be very happy to hear otherwise) is: I, a person of Caucasian appearance, was invited, nearly pressured to be Australian yet friends who really are Australian were made to feel unwelcome only because they are of African or Asian appearance.

As you can see I’m still thinking about the whole expat thing and Michael and I were starting to wonder how the term ‘immigrant’ fits into the whole argument.
Well the blonde librarian put it very nicely in an email. I thought I should really put this on my blog as it adds a whole new perspective to the discussion (and I hope it might encourage us to take our thoughts a little further ’round a different bend)

According to one definition I found, as opposed to an immigrant who comes to a country to live, an expat is one who always intends to return to their home country, so that made me wonder if I should call myself an immigrant instead.

I guess all in all it doesn’t really matter what I am, but I have found that by labeling myself as an expat I have encountered lots of people going through the same types of experiences as I am and that makes for a great sense of community.

I totally agree with that and think that the label ‘immigrant’ might fit my situation a lot better but so why don’t we adopt the label ‘immigrant’? Is one more favourable than the other? Maybe going with what the blonde librarian said, going by ‘expat’ just allows us to whine and complain a little better (doesn’t it just make you feel so much better to complain a bit when things aren’t quite the way we like them, it certainly always works for me), whereas ‘immigrants’ might be more prone to loving their host country rather unconditionally, cause they have chosen to leave their country of origin (presumably cause it wasn’t as good as the new place). Hmmm ….. it is all rather confusing.

So I guess as Christina also pointed out in her comment after all they’re just labels that might make it easier to find people in similar situations (it’s certainly what it’s been for me) and I do agree with that but being German with a need for exactness I can’t help feeling that those different words do mean very distinctly different things … but that somehow brings me back to the beginning, so I might just have to contend that the label ‘expat’ is a perfectly well functioning one that seems to unite us all no matter what the specifics of our situation.