It made Nate proud to think his state shared something in common with a place like Sydney. America was great, since the TV said it was the country in charge of the world and everything, but to Nate everywhere else was exotic and wondrous. Even other states were like diamonds just out of his reach, because he'd never been out of his own. He was sure that after the experiment was over he'd be forced to go back to Reno and keep meeting with his parole officer, unable to cross the borders just like before. It sucked.
But then Audrey said she'd been born in Sydney and still lived there, so he felt a bit better. Maybe she'd traveled to other cool places, but she'd had the choice to leave her home city but she hadn't - not for good. That had to mean something. "Yeah, I'll visit with all the money I'm gonna win here." When he was able to do so legally, anyway.
For some reason, hearing that there were kangaroo sausages was a huge shock, and it showed. When he'd pictured kangaroo meat, he'd pictured people buying kangaroo parts (like a leg, a tail, et cetera), not going to the grocery store to buy a processes product, all civilized. Hearing that pets ate it was even more eye-opening. "I didn't know there was so many kangaroos...." There had to be a surplus of kangaroos if cats were eating them, or so Nate thought.
If he weren't in a competition where he wanted to look the least bit tough, Nate might have continued on asking more awkward questions about eating kangaroos (and possibly moving on to other animals, such as koalas), but he realized he was acting way too dumb in front of Audrey - and whoever else might be spying on them with the cameras. No one ever really admitted to watching the other ExBers, but Nate knew they did. He did. "I ate catfish one time," he said, thinking that might level the field a bit. It was a weird food, right? "It didn't taste like fish."