Culture Shock

Ok so the culture isn't that different but it's different enough. I have met some wonderful people though and love getting to know the Aussies as well as the many people from the UK and other transplants. But its surprising the feeling I get when I meet other Americans here. It feels so comfortable, like I don't have to try as hard. We talk the same and have similar thoughts on a variety of differences between home and here. There are few Americans in my area. I met the first yesterday and she lives one town over. And she invited me to an American expat book club. I think I will check it out next week. Most Americans here live in a suburb called Mosman and that's where the book club is. Not sure why so many end up there. Randomly another American just contacted me through Facebook too who lives in my suburb and has a baby a month older than Avery.

Now I am going to share an example of a culture difference. Since before we moved here, we were concerned that our daughter had a somewhat flat head. Once we got here, we saw a doctor as well as a nurse at the government run health center, and I asked each about it. Both said it would round out and not to worry about it. Really it's not that bad so it was easy to believe them. As time has gone on, I have had a concern but then I look around and see so many babies with flat heads that I think that it must round out. But we saw the doctor (a different one) for a 6 month checkup the other day. I asked him and was surprised when he told me he never even mentions anything about the flat head to parents unless they mention it first. How strange? It seemed to be because it would be offensive to the parent. No wonder babies have flat heads here. Parents go into denial and other doctors tell them it will be fine so they have nothing to worry about. Anyway, the doctor told me it would not change at this point and recommended we try putting a head band on her. The kind "that tennis players wear" is how he described it. Needless to say, I set out to find a specialist and that was next to impossible! There are so few doctors that even do it but I guess there's not much demand given all the babies NOT wearing helmets that need them.