Ooooo Minnesota is really cold in winter. They do have funny accents that are fairly distinctive. You won t find it anywhere else in the US but it s not like you won t understand what they re saying or anything. There are a couple movies that you can watch to see kind of what it s like. Fargo is one a lot of people like but I never cared for it. It really shows the winter weather and the accents tho. Grumpy Old Men is great and it shows the weather but not the accents so much. New in Town is a more recent movie with Renee Zellwiger that isn t bad and it really shows the weather and the accents. Siobhan Fallon plays a character named Blanche that does a perfect Minnesota accent. They are gonna love your accent. We Americans are crazy for Australian accents!!
Answer #1 is sure a good one! You will need warm clothes for winter but since you are arriving for the school year, don t you arrive in August or September? In that case you can arrive with your normal clothes and get some cold weather clothes after you arrive. If you are arriving in January, that s another story. I assume your host family will be picking you up from the airport. If you arrive in the dead of winter your family can meet you at the airport with borrowed cold weather clothes. They can be expensive so since you are not staying maybe your host family can either help you borrow stuff or take you to a thrift shop to find a parka or warm coat and some boots. Then get new hat, scarf, and mittens and you ll have a good outfit. It doesn t get that cold until november or december though so if you arrive at the beginning of the first semester in the Fall, you have time to get your cold weather gear. Minnesotans love Australian accents. You will understand them just fine.
My mom is a native Minnesotan, so I am familiar with the ways of the northerners. You Betcha, those Minnesotans have strange accents, dontcha know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHvm9AfXP��As for what they will think of you probably will depend on where you ate going to be. If you are going to Minneapolis/St. Paul (Twin Cities or just the Cities), there is a good amount of cultural diversity, so you won t be thought of as too foreign. The rest of the state is rural, so expect to have questions about kangaroos as pets, Vegemite, Paul Hogan and shrimp on the barbie. They will think you talk with a strange accent. Take the warmest clothes you have for the winter. You will probably have to buy more when you get there. Temps reach below -10F (-23C) with wind chills -50 to-100F (-60 to -73C) There are frequent snows and winds making blizzard and white out conditions possible. If you are interested in snowboarding or skiing there are a number of places to go. Summer temps are fairly close to where you are with greater humidity and giant mosquitoes. Good thing for air conditioning and many lakes.