- beast of blood.:
- I've been attacked by an emu before. They're pure evil and if you have food I highly recommend to NOT APPROACH THEM.
I remember when my family and I went to the zoo and we got attacked by an emu. It was probably one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced.
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I'm in a bit of a weird situation, as in I don't really identify with a particular culture, I guess. My nationality is Australian, but I was born and raised in Hong Kong. Our family moved before I could really get the Cantonese language down, plus my parents speak Chinese (my friend pointed out the other day that usually only expats say Mandarin). I used to speak with an English/Australian "accent (due to my English and Australian teachers, and also my mum's accent) and use a lot of British terminology, since the school system and the teachers were usually British, but since moving to Shanghai my accent has changed.
I go to an international school here in Shanghai. Apparently you can't attend the school unless you have a non-Chinese passport, so the majority of the students are Chinese-Americans (some Chinese-Canadians, but not as much) - people who were born in the States because their parents went to college/uni there, who moved back. Then there are the Chinese-Americans who can't speak Chinese, but are learning, usually since their parents were like, you need to learn Chinese. We also have a lot of Koreans, who tend to group together and not talk to anyone but each other, in, you guessed it, Korean. Of course, there are the exceptions in the form of Korean-Americans, but we don't have a lot of those at school.
Following the majority, we then have a lot of white Americans. Also we have some Indians and Europeans and South Americans (and fewer Japanese), but they're usually European by their parents and speak in an "American" accent. At home they speak like German or Spanish or Dutch, depending where they're from. We also have lots of what we call halfies, who are half Chinese and half something else.
It's so cool, there's this girl in my year who was born in Hong Kong, but then moved to Brazil when she was really little, so she speaks Portuguese really well, and probably Cantonese, because of her parents. Her English isn't that good, but I think she takes ESL, which is English as a Second Language. Also there's this guy in my grade whose dad is Swiss and whose mum is Japanese. I'm always fascinated by people who are in the same situation, so to speak, as the two people I mentioned before.
We don't have any "stereotypical" groups, as per what the media tends to display in books/films, but usually in each grade there's that one group of white kids and Americanised Asians. I don't know about the other grades, but in our grade both the girls and boys in this group, save for one or two, act differently when they're around their friends versus when they're in a situation when they don't have anyone in their group around them. Then there's the Koreans in the grades (this is going back to the "each grade" categorisation) who clump together. Those are the two big "cliques", I guess. The rest are just much smaller groups of friends who have something/nothing in common.
In middle and elementary school, I remember everyone knew how to swear in different language.
English obviously, since all the classes (save for the global languages one, obv) are taught in English, but also Korean, Chinese, and Canto.
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Personally, I think I've been pretty well exposed to several other cultures. I've been to 19 countries other than China, some of them more than once (USA, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong) and I've stayed there for two weeks at the least. This isn't to say that mentally, I don't stereotype, because I do, although it's mostly in a joking manner.
Also I apologise for writing so much and hope I haven't offended anyone with my wording or anything. God, I sound like I'm writing an essay or something.