 Hey welcome back to my YouTube channel guys. Today we are sitting outside on my porch in the morning enjoying the birds and the sun and it's spring here in New Zealand almost summer and so I just thought I'd film outside. So today I'm going to talk about 20 things, 20 things that surprised me that were just normal things in New Zealand. Now some of these I've touched on in previous videos but in this video you're going to get the summation of the 20 things that New Zealanders do that are just normal here that it was like oh this is just normal here. It kind of surprised me so you're not going to want to miss it. You're going to want to listen to all 20 because I tell stories throughout and it's going to be a good one so stay tuned here we go. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is a great all-in-one platform to get your business online quickly. So I hope you get to hear the beautiful sounds of nature here in New Zealand as I am talking to you today because I love it. The birds are literally my favorite here in New Zealand so but let's get started. 20 things I have to talk to you about that surprised me that are just normal in New Zealand which I love. So number one can we talk about beans on toast for breakfast okay because I was at a place that I paid for breakfast and they served like baked beans like beans out of a tin or a can depending on where you're from on toast like that's an acceptable breakfast. Now I know a lot of people around the world eat beans for breakfast and eat beans for most meals but I was like are we being serious like it's like a piece of white bread with beans on toast totally normal something that you eat here didn't know that so that was an adjustment. Number two these fruit stands where you sell eggs sometimes even sell poo manure on the side of the road like you just okay so they'll have these stands and they'll have like a little thing where you can put the money in and it's just like on the trust system where you can just put the money in take some eggs and they'll put like a price on it or they'll bag up some spices or some fruit that they have. I just actually did a trip down to Blenheim area and there stands everywhere and in fact we went on some garden tours there and there some of them one of the ladies had like this fig farm and I'm like well where do you sell your figs I mean she has hundreds of trees and she literally sells them all in the stand out front her of her house like it's not like someone's standing there and taking the money like it's just you can totally trust people here I guess I am sure that there's ones that get stolen from but yeah there's literally just fruit stands where they sell eggs and fruit or whatever else they have that they want to sell just on the side of the road it's kind of everywhere here it's amazing I love that about New Zealand. Number three it's an interesting concept to me here in New Zealand where people just leave work when you know they're tight it's their time to leave work so if they're supposed to be done at four even like I've even seen it where like people are like working with a customer or in the middle of a project that really wouldn't take more than maybe 20 minutes to finish like oh it's four o'clock it's time to go and they just like get up and leave like that's an acceptable thing here and in the States it's not like it's not even acceptable probably to work within the hours you're contracted you're just expecting to get the job done and if it takes you the extra 20 minutes then you're gonna stay and do the extra 20 minutes but like it's just like little four o'clock time to go so it's actually like I guess you don't even have to be uber efficient I mean you're just you're just there doing your job the best you can and then you're just gonna go do you hear that it's so beautiful okay number four let's talk about the fact that people will walk around barefoot people just walk around barefoot so if you're flying into New Zealand and you're a visitor or you're moving here you'll just get off the plane and you'll walk down the street and people will be barefoot you can even go into stores being barefoot yep I don't really have anything more to say about that just so you could be barefoot in New Zealand number five it's interesting here that nobody ever asks you what you do for a living so in the US if you meet somebody for the first time like oh hey I'm so-and-so what do you do for a living and that's what you talk about it's always like kind of the first thing that you talk about other than like maybe the weather but in New Zealand like people don't ask each other they have like this tall poppy syndrome here where you know you can't talk about yourself being better than anybody else or you know it's just not cool which is great like I think that that's the the humble attitude is preferable to be honest but it's just so interesting it's just like it's just normal to not talk about work like I've mentioned in other videos that you know I've had friends that I've known for years and still don't know what they do for a living and then you find out you're like oh I'm quite surprised that that's what you do for a living I had no idea because it's not talked about it's not important here what you do for a living is not that important okay and then number six fish and chips on the beach can we talk about this first of all eating in general in the sand not great like why don't we want to get sand and everything but here it's like completely normal life to just get your fish and chips which is all kind of folded up in like all these big pieces of paper and you like unfold it out on the beach and you just eat it there yeah I guess that's a new concept for me that we're just going to eat on the beach like I mean it's not like you wouldn't have a picnic or something but I just don't think that sand is generally the preferable place to eat food and so but here it's just like what you do on like a Friday night or you know what you would do on the weekend like it's a like a like it's a normal thing and like that's what we're going to eat on the beach so just another thing that surprised me okay and number seven let's talk about the crosswalks the zebra crossings what do you call them here I don't think it's called crosswalks but when you are you know you go out and do a crosswalk people just walk out into the crosswalk like I feel like not everybody looks like they just assume that cars are gonna stop and that makes me stressed out because I am happy to step but I don't always see you and you just walk out and so it stresses me out but yeah so it's just totally normal in New Zealand to just walk out and do the crosswalk and expect people to stop so if you are traveling to the US specifically like New York City don't do that they don't follow any rules like that um really any big city in the US don't do that okay and number eight let's talk about white bread it is very normal in New Zealand for things to be served on white bread specifically there's sausages so if you go to a sausage sizzle if you buy something it'll always be a sausage on white bread with tomato sauce or ketchup okay so don't be alarmed by that I just know that in the US you know you just generally don't ever serve anything on white bread and so it seems you know unusual and so just good to know it's perfectly fine it's good like that it's easy it's cheap um and then they also have like their cheese rolls I haven't actually really had one because I'm trying to wait till I go to South Island is also on white bread and so yeah so keep that in mind sausages are served on white bread that is totally normal here in New Zealand so it just was a little bit surprising okay and number nine can we talk about f posts when you get off the plane you in the airport and you need to buy something a coffee a little some gum whatever it is that you need they're gonna say is that f posts and you're like what so it means like electronic funds transfer in the USA ask you debit credit it basically is the same as a debit so it's just not it's not like um run by visa mastercard like a debit system would be it's just literally just moving money directly from your bank they're very comfortable with doing that here so yeah so f posts is what that is and so you're welcome because you're gonna get here and you're gonna be like you know people are like I I just remember he just kept I couldn't totally tell what they were saying so you already have an accent involved and then they're saying f posts which is what and so I said I'm not sure you know like a couple times and I'm like sure just pay with that and it worked and it went through and you just never know when using international cards and stuff if it's gonna work but yeah so f posts means electronic funds transfer whatever it's just the same as debit that's what you need to know when coming to New Zealand I don't know about you but I have been putting off creating my website until I found my solution with Squarespace you guys are going to love this product they have so many beautiful templates to choose from you just pick your template and then you go in and just add the details of your business and literally within one day I was able to get my website up and running another feature that I love on Squarespace is that they have this social sharing where my community can just go right out into my youtube channel my tiktok channel which is where most of my content exists and so it's really nice that it can connect directly from Squarespace other features that Squarespace offers that are really great is there the fact that you can collect donations you can do email campaigns from it it's just overall really great I personally also love the analytics I always like to know what's going 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you buy anything you literally people give you your their account and you move the money into their account and they can if it's the same bank they can see it immediately or it's it's pretty quick anyway what totally normal to do that here totally surprise me don't have to write checks don't have to like send a check so easy I love it so good number 11 okay it's totally normal to here for okay first of all coffees here come with two shots the standard coffee will get two shots you don't have to ask for two shots they're not just giving you one they're giving you two unless you go to Starbucks here they're only giving you one because that's the Starbucks way anyway two shots but it's just normal for people to have two or three coffees those strong coffees a day like just when I've worked in the city that's not everybody you know a lot of people drink tea but it is totally like yeah let's go get a coffee let's go get a morning tea afternoon tea getting another coffee totally normal to drink really strong coffees all day which I love but you know then you kind of get a little addicted and you start getting headaches if you don't have it so I don't do that I just have one one uh a day but yeah that's totally normal here in news okay number 12 okay you know what is really surprising is like when I've gone to camps or I've gone to retreat centers like it's totally normal for like places to create like their own slides their own climbing walls their own like yeah like you know like water slides like it's very Kiwi ingenuity like okay but you know there's no regulation around it there's no you know I mean they have to be safe but it's not the same in the US like you don't have the liability issues and the suing potential um so they just create these really fun things for kids and really anybody of any age uh to go on on these things and that's really just like normal and they just create very efficient ways to do things like when you have large groups and very sustainable things like the like one place one camp that I was at they had like this big tub and we all use the same water to wash dishes and then put it away everybody brings their own dish and washes it and like that's normal I was like oh that's cool it's very cool it's just like very cool the way that they do that bring your own cup bring your own dish bring your own uh spoon or you know you use what they have and you just wash it right there so anyway just a lot of Kiwi ingenuity I notice when we are looking at like retreat centers or uh camps that's very cool okay number 13 when you go to a cafe now let me tell you there are cafes everywhere you know how in the US there's like gas stations everywhere not here there's cafes cafes everywhere but it's just normal guys to eat out of that glass I think I think I've mentioned this in other videos that took me like two years to eat out of there because like to me like in the US that's normally like display of food that like you wouldn't normally eat that they would then make separately like they would display it maybe I don't I think I mean the only place I can think of that does that in the US is Starbucks but you know in bigger cities there's going to be more of that but like yeah so like it took me a while but they actually take it and they heat it up they put some salad on the side they sometimes give you sauce that goes with it and it's good it's great like I have no problem with that now but man at first that was weird to me it just surprised me that this is totally normal that we're just going to eat something out of the glass because it was like made that day and it's totally fine but in my mind like a lot of the stuff in the US that would be in the glass would be like not real would be like plastic I mean sometimes there's those diners where they have like the cake that kind of goes in a circle in the pies you remember those and you just kind of pull one out when you want it okay so that's fine I don't know it's just not a lot of food behind glass in the US number 14 totally normal hanging your clothes on a line everybody hangs their clothes outside so it's great it's an adjustment I've definitely looked down upon frowned upon because I have a dryer it's okay it's okay you can look down on it I've done the calculations it's not that expensive to dry your clothes in a dryer just so you know but like yeah everybody hangs everything out on the line and it's actually a very therapeutic process and it's also like I mean I'm from Wisconsin where you have a significant part of the year freezing cold and it's not even possible to do that and so I think that that's probably why it is a tradition whereas here it's you know it's nice all year except for when it's raining I just feel like people go through a lot of effort here though like in the wintertime and when it's raining to hang their stuff inside and it takes forever and it creates dampness and I'm not convinced that that's better um so yeah I you know I have four kids so it's an efficiency thing for me there's no way I'm not using a dryer but um yeah but it's okay I do I do like when it's nice out try to hang my clothes out there try to get my kids to do that um because I think it's good to to do that and I just love the the feel of the smell and it is very nice um having that so that's cool that's different and number 15 the eggs that you buy here are so beautiful like so orange so like the the yolks in the US are yellow and here are their orange and they're so beautiful and all the eggs are brown doesn't matter just saying that all the eggs are brown um I don't know why it almost feels like not natural now if I see a white egg I don't know why that is I'm I'm sure that there's like all these reasons why they're the different colors um and I didn't research that for this video because I have 20 things I'm trying to get through but uh yeah and they're not refrigerated here because they don't um like the US makes them go through this other process which then requires them to it's like a a cleaning process and they go through the US and then it like is required to be refrigerated after that so and then also like once eggs are refrigerated they need to continue to be refrigerated so it's great I mean I can't tell you so like if you're coming here and you're looking for the eggs they're not in the refrigerated section took me a while okay number 16 when you go to the toilet in New Zealand there's two buttons one is for like a stronger flush and one is for a softer flush and that's for like if you just go number one or number two I think you can figure it out but just thought it'd be helpful to mention that that these are just totally normal things and they have some of these in parts of the US uh in different parts of the world and so you may be familiar but if you're not when you're flushing the toilet there's generally two or three sometimes um buttons to push and so that's what it means it's a way of being saving water and uh just not overly flushing things when we don't need to so yeah and the water levels are much lower here than in the US and so it kind of freaks people out I guess when they travel the US I've heard a lot of Kiwis tell me like why is the water like is the water gonna come out so yeah so it's much lower they're just more conservative about the water um it's just good 17 we're on 17 also the outlet switch is the outlets have switches on them so to turn it on and off and to apparently save on electricity I don't know how much it really saves but it's an actual process like that is just something that I haven't gotten used to I haven't gotten used to like actually turning it off all the time I've gotten better but like people will literally come to my house and start turning them off like it's just normal to have them off I don't even notice it number one because I'm not used to having a switch on my outlets it is a kind of a fun cool job for children to kind of go around and turn them on or off depending like if you're gonna be gone for like a month you would probably just go around and turn them all off but yeah so there are switches on outlets to save on electricity and number 18 can we talk about Mufti Day this is a total so story time when my when we first moved here and they the principal said oh tomorrow's Mufti Day I was like sure yeah pretend like I know what that means how in the world would I know what that means I don't Mufti I just thought it was like an activity that they were gonna do so of course we show up full uniforms nobody else's in uniforms and my kids are traumatized because they would really like to wear their own clothes and they're young and so it's a big deal in primary school and so there was tears and I was like okay I didn't know what Mufti means and the fact that you have to pay to wear your own clothes now I understand that it's for fundraising activities but mentally it's interesting to me I'm going to pay you so that my kids can wear their own clothes so I think like fundraising around like something else would make sense but that one always weird to me and Mufti like where does that name come from I feel like I've put this on my tiktok before and they've told me but it's not coming to me as to what Mufti means and I think it's actually is associated with fundraising but like you just don't know that inherently in the name and so yeah so if you're coming here and they say Mufti Day they're referring to dress down day number 19 story time again my kids went to school I was helping out as much as I could I was one of those helpful parents I'm not as much anymore you know you kind of get to that point when you have four kids like I've done my time okay you know but now I should help out anyway um it was like a craft fair I think it was like there was just like stalls of things that we were selling and I said that I would do the one for our school and I volunteered time so I showed up and we were selling worm we I wish you could have seen my face when they were like we are selling worm we first of all what worm we like worm pee it's not worm pee it's something from anyway it's a fertilizer for your garden it's a liquid fertilizer and they call it worm we it's like uh it's just from like the worm farm it's like the excess I don't think it's actually we but that's what they call it yeah totally normal in New Zealand to sell worm we at a craft fair okay and number 20 as a kickoff to the Christmas season they don't sell eggnog at the supermarkets no they don't they don't sell eggnog and if you are in New Zealand and they sell eggnog at your supermarket tell me where I bet you I could get them to ship it tell me where you have to make your own eggnog here this is very disappointing I love eggnog and I've made it every Christmas because that's the only way I'm going to get it but yeah it's totally normal not to sell eggnog at Christmas here in New Zealand they sell other things they have okay at Christmas here maybe we highlighted a couple Christmas things that are different um crackers is that what they're called Christmas crackers that's what they're called there's these little things and they pop and they make a pop and like things pop out and sometimes they'll have like a little crown that you can wear or a special treat inside and so like before you eat Christmas dinner people do the the Christmas crackers honestly you guys I was here for three years before I've ever even realized that that was a thing so there's Christmas crackers that's different I've never seen that before and Christmas mince pies very popular does that sound like something you want to eat no it doesn't here's the clue the mince in New Zealand is ground beef and so when I hear Christmas mince pies I think it's meat but it's actually minced fruit and nuts it's like minced fruit and nuts so it's actually really good if you get it homemade some of my friends make it it's like oh so good so it's just basically minced fruit in a pie crust so good so that's different for Christmas um so yeah those are I'm trying to think oh and then like fruit cakes is an acceptable thing to bring to a party not like on Christmas vacation um where they bring fruit cake and it's like huh nobody actually eats fruit cake in the US I know that you can buy it like I remember seeing it at Aldi once but yeah fruit cake not a thing that you eat but a thing that you eat in New Zealand so that's also different well I could probably go on and on about Christmas but anyway this has been long enough talking about the 20 things that surprise that may surprise you coming to New Zealand that are just totally normal here well I hope you enjoyed the video this week and all the lovely bird sounds and thank you for Squarespace for sponsoring this video and don't forget to click on the link below to get 10 off your website or domain guys I just would love to know what it is that you would want me to talk about as I start planning for next year for this channel so please come below with uh any topics you'd like me to cover thoughts on things you'd like me to share I hope you enjoyed uh this week's episode on the 20 things that surprised me about New Zealand and I will see you next week