Healthy, wealthy and wise?

You know that you're in an area that isn't home anymore when you realise that you want to take a photo of nearly everything you see, even though you see it nearly everyday. More so, you know that you are in a place that you don't fit in very well when you get that sudden embarrassed urge to take a photo of your neighbours' car, the car that drives passed you every day when you walk your dog, the Ferrari that some dude just casually parks outside Starbucks for most of the day and even more scary, when you imagine yourself driving around and asking for a photo opp whenever you see your host mom's car.

I think the part about this that fascinates me the most, is that the Ferrari dudes car attracted no attention at all. Back home there would be hordes of people grabbing their camera phones and just taking photos of the mags and gasping at it's interior and trying not to leave greasy hand and breath marks all over the car. People simply walked passed it and if they did happen to look in the car's direction they would hardly take a glance at it, as if it were just another Toyota Carola!

Generally I think this place shocks me just because of it's wealthy towns folk, not so much the culture shock. It's only when you look through the car's darkened window and see the person sitting behind the steering wheel, when you realise that that person is exactly the same as you, except that person has a lot more money and that's where the culture shock comes from. M_O_N_E_Y. You wouldn't believe how much of an effect it has on a person.

But how does all this money really make a neighbourhood and its people so very different from every other neighbourhood in the world. I mean this aside from the materialistic things like the cars and houses. How can money make a society so different that it can send someone else into "Culture Shock". I think I have the answer.

People who can afford all sorts of wonderful luxuries like self service cashier points at shops, people that load the car for you, (I mean do all your shopping go fetch the car and they load it up for you and nothing gets stolen!) drive through Starbucks, Drive through ATMs, everything that's makes things "faster" and "more efficient". These are all things that result in a less productive more lazy society. You may think they're efficient simply because you may be halving your time or avoiding lines and lines of people, but really all your doing is giving yourself less reason to just get your butt out of the car and doing something for yourself.

These few things, as small and "not that big of a deal" as they seem actually make this whole set up that much more difficult to adjust to. The culture shock comes from people that think their own asses don't stink and therefore they seem to think that someone whose ass does, has to automatically do everything for them!

I think that's why they love South African Au pairs, they know we come from a back ground where we have to WORK to get what we want so we aren't afraid to work hard and try new things!