I honestly don’t feel like writing right now. I’m still incredibly jet lagged. I was told yesterday that this could last at least four days. It’s been two and I don’t know if I can take much more. I go to bed around 7:00, wake up around 1:00, go back to sleep around 4:00, wake up again around 2:00. It’s a vicious cycle.
Anyway, yesterday was orientation. It was much like any typical university orientation. I got a big packet of papers that I’ll probably lose, along with presentations about getting involved and making friends. I’ve already made one friend, I think. Her name is Zara (shout out, Zara!) and she’s from the UK. We spend most of our time discussing (and laughing at) the differences between our ways of life. I think her favorite thing so far has been that there’s an eagle on my passport. She even took a picture of it and sent it to her sister. We concluded that it’s there because Americans are a proud people.
We also have a mutual admiration for each others' accents. I admitted that nobody has ever said they like my accent, and then subsequently also admitted that I've never been around anyone with an accent different from mine.
There are things that are different here that I would never have thought would be different. For example, traffic lights. In America, when stopping, it goes from green to yellow to red. Well that part is the same here in Europe. However, when going, the lights in the US go straight from red to green. Over here, they ease back down from red to yellow to green. Another thing is printer paper. It’s slightly larger here (I only figured this out after a few minutes of frustration trying to stuff my European paper into my little American folder and wondering why it wouldn’t go all the way down). These things shouldn’t really matter, and yet they’re different.
Who sat around the round table and said, “I think we need bigger printer paper?”
(I joked to Zara that it’s a subtle commentary that Americans are less intelligent so we don’t have to write as much for essays on our tiny paper.)
Among other things, I’ve discovered that it’s weird to have a state flower or bird or dog, and even weirder to know what it is without having to look it up. Also the button to flush the toilet isn’t on the side. It’s on the top, and it’s round.
( <--My diagram for Zara explaining American toilets and outlets.)
Possibly my favorite part about being here so far is collecting all the odd things that you wouldn’t think would be different. The things that are the same don’t fascinate me as much, but are comforting.
McDonald’s is the same, just smaller.