What I Miss from the States

Ok so this blog post is going to be a little different. Recently, Jack asked me what I miss from the states besides the obvious family and friends and mom and dad’s cooking, so I thought I’d start an ongoing list of everything I miss.

1. Unlimited Internet – Internet in Australia is awful. The signal cuts out all the time and you’re limited to how much you can use per month, even on the campus computers!

2. Orange Juice – OJ here is disgusting, it’s worse than concentrate oj

3. Juice in general – They’re not big fans of juice here so their selection is very limited. It took me 2 weeks to find just cranberry juice, everything has mango or apple juice in it.

4. Sweet n’ low – They are firm believers in either equal or regular sugar here, and I love snl in my coffee in the morning

5. Options – This is just general when it comes to food shopping here, there is absolutely no selection on brands. Popcorn for instance, they have 2 types you can get. Cheese, unless you get fresh expensive cheese, it’s mozzarella or tasty cheese, which by the way, tasty cheese is not a brand, here it’s the equivalence of saying mozzarella, and it tastes very similar to cheddar

6. American cheese and coffee yogurt – Neither of those is even available to buy here, let alone being able to eat them together so I’ve had to find new lunch foods

7. Vodka sauce – At school last year I would live off of penne a la vodka, but they don’t have vodka sauce here

8. Buffalo chicken – I have yet to be able to find buffalo sauce here. I miss the buffalo chicken salads, sandwiches, pizzas, everything.

9. Driving – Both having a car at my disposal and driving in general because I’m weird and actually like to drive

10. Baked goods – Earlier when I said they don’t really have options for stuff that especially includes baked goods. At one of the grocery stores, it took me probably at least 15 minutes to even find the miniscule baking section they had (I’d say baking aisle but they don’t have a section large enough to fill an aisle or even an 1/8 of one).

11. Mac n’ cheese – I could probably find ingredients to be able to make this here, but I prefer to make it with velveeta cheese like mom taught me, and they don’t have that here. They also don’t really have cheddar, so we’ll see if that ever happens

12. Italian food – Obviously due to the location of Australia, Italian food is not the most popular food, nor is it the best tasting here, rather Asian and Thai food are

13. Pizza – I haven’t had it here yet, but everyone told me it’s awful so I’m not really tempted to try it either.

14. Late night food – Places are not open late here to order food. We tried to order a pizza at 12:30 one night and everywhere was closed, even Dominos, and yes they have Dominos here, but apparently it’s much worse than ours.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll add more as I think of it.