The Subcultures of Surf Camp

Last weekend, myself, along with eight other UT students attended surf camp three hours south of Sydney (this experience was obviously awesome, as it has been a hot topic for this blog assignment).
Well over half of the attendees were American, while the rest comprised a mix of European, Canadian, and Latin American - and, not to mention, the Australians.

The Americans at surf camp were either from Chicago or Knoxville, and although we socialized a little bit, most of us stayed in our respective groups. The entire weekend, we did hear about our Southern slang, and the Chicagans pronounced their words with a hard "a" sound - that was about the extent of our interaction with our fellow Americans.

The Europeans of the group were from Italy, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. The Italians are their bread, butter, and smoked salmon on the bus ride there and were social with the Czechs, sharing cigarettes and laughter. Two of the employees of Australian Surf Tours were from the Netherlands, and the lone Dutch attendee socialized with the girl from British Columbia - who was into all things fashion and fitness. Those from Mexico and Brazil stuck together, conversing in Spanish and greeted everyone with a friendly "Hola!"

The Aussies lived up to the gnarly surfer dude stereotypes - long hair, wicked accents, tanned skin, and coated in ocean salt 24/7. They were the friendliest, easiest to talk to, and funniest of the bunch. The social strata of the group included ex-professional surfers, current surf instructors (who were very experienced in surfing), and young surfers who were the up-and-coming professionals. A few of them preferred body boarding, saying that they're not too good, but are capable of doing backflips on their body boards (a prime example of the famous Australian tall poppy sentiment).

Although none of us had much common ground with one another, a love for the outdoors was a unifying factor that made the entire weekend enjoyable. A love of learning and a little saltwater solved the lack of overlap between the students and the staff at Australian Surf Tours. Last weekend was not only a memorable time of learning and laughter, but also a real-life example of intercultural communication.