While some have told me they find Christchurch depressing with all its cranes, scaffolding, and rough and ready parking lots where there used to be buildings, I have to love it for all its little gems (like the epic playground we stumbled across on our way home from dinner), crisp winter air, and the fact that you don't have to go far to forget about the cranes entirely. A handful of streets up, we feel a world away from Chch's rakishly disheveled center, but we know it's there, an arm's reach away, ready to visit anytime. We're even starting to meet people, which has been the missing element since we moved. We've bonded with lots of fellow travelers and expats since arriving, but locals just seem harder to pin down. We're friendly, we go out, but we haven't really hit it off. (Granted, I'm not a natural social butterfly.)
Some of that dissonance seems to come down to small differences in humor, which is surprising because I was pretty sure in the Venn diagram of things that are funny to Kiwis and Americans there would be a ton of crossover. Kiwis grow up with lots of exposure to American comedy and while our Kiwi comedy selection is much smaller in the States, I haven't met anything I didn't like. But there are some areas where we just miss each other--at least, in my experience so far. Obviously not everyone in a single culture is going to have the same sense of humor, but we've definitely felt a few of the same snags with a lot of different people.
Like teasing. I'm fine with light teasing. The other day I showed up to a coffee mixer for people new to the city. I thought it would be a pretty casual thing, with people filtering in and out throughout the afternoon. I came an hour and a half into it to find that everyone else had arrived pretty much at the same time, making me feel really rudely late. I felt really bad about it. One of the people there kept teasing me about how rude I was, and by making light of it, he actually made me feel a lot better and more welcome. That kind of teasing, I totally get.
What I'm not so wild about is when "taking the piss" gets more personal--when it starts to feel like a mean comment masquerading as a joke. To my tastes that feel like bullying, even if it's not meant that way. They usually fall under the fine-if-I-say-it-but-not-if-you-do category. I'm short and pale, for example. These are facts nobody is going to argue. I can make jokes about this and it's totally fine, but if you did it, you'd be a dick. Sorry, but them's the breaks.
Some of that dissonance seems to come down to small differences in humor, which is surprising because I was pretty sure in the Venn diagram of things that are funny to Kiwis and Americans there would be a ton of crossover. Kiwis grow up with lots of exposure to American comedy and while our Kiwi comedy selection is much smaller in the States, I haven't met anything I didn't like. But there are some areas where we just miss each other--at least, in my experience so far. Obviously not everyone in a single culture is going to have the same sense of humor, but we've definitely felt a few of the same snags with a lot of different people.
Like teasing. I'm fine with light teasing. The other day I showed up to a coffee mixer for people new to the city. I thought it would be a pretty casual thing, with people filtering in and out throughout the afternoon. I came an hour and a half into it to find that everyone else had arrived pretty much at the same time, making me feel really rudely late. I felt really bad about it. One of the people there kept teasing me about how rude I was, and by making light of it, he actually made me feel a lot better and more welcome. That kind of teasing, I totally get.
What I'm not so wild about is when "taking the piss" gets more personal--when it starts to feel like a mean comment masquerading as a joke. To my tastes that feel like bullying, even if it's not meant that way. They usually fall under the fine-if-I-say-it-but-not-if-you-do category. I'm short and pale, for example. These are facts nobody is going to argue. I can make jokes about this and it's totally fine, but if you did it, you'd be a dick. Sorry, but them's the breaks.
To be fair, there are Americans who live by this kind of humor, and I used to be right there with them. I was pretty close with my boyfriend's family as a teenager and we would affectionately tear each other apart on a regular basis. But we all knew each other really well; we got the joke. When I took that humor to college it didn't behave the same way. Sometimes it landed mean. It took me a while to realize that, and when I did, I decided I'd rather not risk making someone feel bad about themselves for the sake of a joke. I probably still get it wrong sometimes. Nobody's perfect. But I think when I started avoiding that kind of humor I also stopped appreciating it as much. I don't think Josh has ever been that type, so together, at least in this small aspect, we're probably poorly matched for our current location.
On the other side, there's an element to our humor that so far seems to fall really flat outside of American company. It's that dry ironic cockiness 'MURICA jokes stem from. It's the kind of we-know-how-the-world-sees-us wink and nod which Josh and I love and nobody else at the table seems to get. The irony goes totally unnoticed, so instead we become the dicks. Like this joke I made at dinner the other night when we were talking about The Office and House of Cards:
On the other side, there's an element to our humor that so far seems to fall really flat outside of American company. It's that dry ironic cockiness 'MURICA jokes stem from. It's the kind of we-know-how-the-world-sees-us wink and nod which Josh and I love and nobody else at the table seems to get. The irony goes totally unnoticed, so instead we become the dicks. Like this joke I made at dinner the other night when we were talking about The Office and House of Cards:
This is not the first time one of us has put a foot in it and felt like a total jerk. And while we have had some great laughs with friends we've made here, moments like this do make us a little homesick for all those wonderful people back home who'd get the joke. Miss you guys.