Usatians seem a lot more worldly than I expected, but we attribute that to being close to Canada. And they are still a little clueless, for example, they can't tell the difference between Australian and British accents, and they think we use pounds in Australia. But I spose I can forgive them for that.
Their money is silly. Their notes are all the same colour and size and nearly identical in design, and the only way to tell them apart is by the little number in the corner. On their coins they have put effort into making the font as small as possible, so you have to study each coin in detail to figure out what value it is. Also, the smallest coin is not the one that is smallest in value.
And instead of putting "25 cents" on their 25 cent coin, they have put "one quarter of a dollar", and it doesn't say "25 cents" anywhere on it. In stores they regularly refer to their coins as "a penny", "nickel" and "dime", and I have no idea what that means.
But this can be forgiven, because we have met 3 different shop staff that have said their money is stupid, or ridiculous. The shop staff is really friendly most of the time too, which is good.
Another thing regarding money is that they don't add tax onto their prices in stores. So several times R and I have worked out what something would cost based on the prices on the tags in the store, only to get to the checkout and the price is completely different, because they add the tax on. This is particularly annoying when we have carefully counted the exact change for the items, and then have to re-count when we are surprised by a new price at the checkout. They would never get away with that in Australia, even if they tried people would just say "Nope, that's the price it says on the tag and that's what I'm paying" and if they couldn't pay that, then they would walk out of the store and refuse to buy anything there.
We have also been surprised by how environmentally conscious they all are, but R says that is just this state, because last time he was in Usa they were not doing anything to help the environment at all. And it's like they haven't gotten the hang of it yet, because they are not consistent. They encourage recycling at the hotel we are staying at, but they don't use energy efficient light bulbs. Their fridges, tv's and microwave ovens are also really old, which means they use more power than they need to.
There are a lot of priuses around, everywhere we look there is a prius (or five!) and they have recycling bins wherever there is a regular bin. There is also a LOT of organic food at the local supermarket, and mostly organic and fair trade chocolates.
The range in the supermarkets is very cool, they have everything you could ever imagine, and some things you wouldn't imagine, such as putting salt on chocolate. I have tried them, and the salt is a bit overpowering, and I was left thinking "why ruin perfectly good chocolate with salt??". I thought Australia had a nice range compared to Norway, but they have heaps more stuff here than they do in Australia. This would be because the population of the country is much higher, and so there are more companies doing the same things and more competition and they all come up with their own thing etc.
The more ugly side is that there are a lot of weirdos in this country. Every time we walk down the street we come across people shouting or behaving abnormally, and there are a lot of beggars. This is probably because the country has no proper welfare system or sufficient medical care to get the crazies the help they need.
Overall, it's pretty good, and the people are more friendly and polite than I thought they would be, but sometimes they get a little too friendly. You can't go into any shop without someone trying to sell you something, instead of leaving you alone to look at stuff. Whatever you look at, they start to describe in detail, which is kind of annoying when you only glanced at it and then wanted to move on to the next thing.
And they like to shout their conversations at each other. Even if they are only 2-3 metres apart, they have to shout everything, to make sure everyone can hear them. I don't particularly want to hear all of their conversations. Most of the time it's boring, and they overshare a bit, like discussing their therapy sessions with someone they just met. They also overtalk everything; whenever they say something they have to use as many words as possible. For example, they would say "I'm gonna go ahead and have a shower", rather than "I'm having a shower". Or they would say "I have a receipt for you right here", instead of "Here's your receipt", and "Would you like me to go ahead and put that in a bag for you?" instead of "Would you like a bag?". It's like they can't talk enough.
I like the fact that Seattle pokes fun of the fact that it rains a lot here. A lot of their souvenirs have umbrellas on them, and their postcards will have either umbrellas or rain on them, they have keyrings that say "Got Rain?" and fridge magnets that where it literally rains cats and dogs. In the city there is a giant decorative wind vane in the shape of an inside out umbrella, which I thought was really cool. Several shop assistants have asked why we would come here, with all this rain here, "Don't you get enough of it in Australia or something?" or "Did you miss the rain?".
So Usa is pretty good, and I wouldn't mind staying here temporarily while going to Uni or something like that, but I would not want to settle here permanently. The accent and mannerisms would get too annoying after a while, I think. But I like it here:)
Oh, and R and I eloped today in Seattle, so we are now married.
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Congratulations.
Thanks:)