To preface this article I’ll need to provide a little bit of information about myself. My name is Lachlan Broad, and I’m currently a sophomore in Jesuit’s Class of 2025. Prior to Jesuit unlike many of my peers, I did not attend a feeder school within the metroplex, or any school within Texas or the United States for that matter. I previously lived in the southeastern coast of Australia, in the state of New South Wales, specifically Sydney. Having lived on the Northern Beaches for 14 years, moving to Dallas last year and starting at Jesuit was a huge culture shock, of which I’ve compiled a list of some of the things that surprised me the most.
#1 – Food
Far from the land of Vegemite toast for brekkie, and a Bunnings snag for the arvo, American cuisine and food culture is vastly different. Particularly in terms of fast food and quick service, there are a few major changes, the most surprising and prominent of which are portion and serving sizes. While first acclimating to the US, I found it almost impossible to finish any ordinarily sized meal, whether it be from a restaurant or fast food. Another thing that astonished me was the concept of free refills, an almost exclusive to America. On top of refills, your average Macca’s cup (Australian name for McDonalds), is significantly smaller than the drink sizes of its American counterpart, to a degree of an American large being almost 61% larger. Although luckily there are some similarities in terms of food, cuisine in both America and Australia has strong immigrant influences and encompasses a very global appetite.
#2 – Weather
One might think coming from such a stereotypically arid and dry country that I would be prepared and accustomed to Texan weather, but I was not. Unfortunately for me, I grew up on the coast, protected from the expanse of the barren desert and its heat by the Great Dividing Range and the cool breeze of the ocean. The average summer temperature in Sydney would be around 18.6 – 25.8°C, or for all you Americans, 65.5 – 78.4°F. Whereas in Texas the climate is far less temperate or mild, it gets hot, really hot. One of my first experiences in Dallas was coming off the plane from winter in Sydney to summer in Dallas, and the change was so significant and it was so hot that I fainted multiple times. To put it in perspective the average July temperature in Dallas is 33.2°C (91.8°F).
#3 – Public Transport
One of the key moments of adolescence is independence, and that’s what public transport gave me and my friends in Sydney. Public transport is also often far more convenient and ecologically friendly than traveling in your own vehicle, and more entertaining. New South Wales and the rest of Australia all have intricate public transport systems, with bus routes covering every street and suburb, trains and light rails connecting the Central Business District to Circular Quay and the wharves, as well as to the outermost suburbs. However, this would be a fever dream to anyone from Dallas, where public transport is almost nonexistent and very few areas are walkable and necessitate a car.
In general, life in Dallas is significantly different from that of Sydney, especially in terms of culture, everyday life, and school. There are many more differences than one might expect from two Western first-world nations. However, there are still a fair amount of similarities. Although these were some of the differences that surprised and shocked me the most, I had been to the United States a few times before emigrating but never to Dallas.
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