Slaughterhouse said:
It's hard to even know where to begin as there are so many, but lets try a few:
[*]Beer can be bought pretty much anywhere in the US. Gas stations, stores, corner shops, you name it. I thought Alberta had really lax liquor laws, such as being able to buy liquor in a separate annex of a grocery store unlike a provincial run LCB outlet.
like KC said, our laws vary by state. some states you can buy beer in gas stations, grocery stores, etc...other states you have to go to liquor stores to get beer. i think Maryland is one such state, but i could be wrong (i drink captain, not beer). and in some states (south carolina) they even have Brew-Threws...it's a drive-thru liquor store, if that isn't an oxymoron. and then beyond that, each county can also carry it's own type of liquor law...such as being a dry county, where NO alcohol can be bought!
[*]Not seeing things in French. In Alberta we totally ignore the French "side" of our products but oddly enough we were conscious of it not being on your packaging.
yeah, but we get an option to hear everything in spanish. and sometimes you have to listen to the spanish option before it gives you the option for english. plus all of our atms & such have spanish options.
[*]You have a very large Latin community (Mexican?) which is really weird to see. We drove into this one town called Brewster, Washington and noticed there were no signs in English. Not one. We stopped at a gas station to grab a drink, noticed everyone was speaking Spanish in the store and were giving us odd looks, like we did not belong there. We found this absolutely fascinating as there is nothing like this back in Alberta. When we stopped in Omak, several people asked us what was going through our heads stopping in Brewster. So this was our first dose of intentional cultural segregation (with the exception of Indian reserves and Hutterite colonies, of course).
they're not all mexicans & won't take kindly to you generalizing them in such a manner. it's latino, to be politically correct. west coast & east coast are also very different. in the west they get the south americans & here on the east we get a lot of cubans. i hear a lot of el salvador, too.
as for the intentional communities...i could just be ignorant to their secret intentions, but from what i've noticed (aside from the reservations) it's moreso that immigrants come in & settle down in the lower-income areas & then more come & more come & they all shack up together & before you know it, the entire community (not town, but say one part of town) becomes primarily of that nationality. again though, the US is a big area & things are different everywhere you go, so i'm just speaking of how it's seemed to happen around here where i live.
[*]Dialects and mannerisms. Canadians defuse confrontations (ie accidentally bumping into someone or leaving a shopping cart in the way for example) so we are inclined to apologize and accommodate the situation. In the States, If I bumped into someone or vice versa, I would sincerely apologize but I was always replied to with a lazy "Mmmmhmmmm...." (Wow, even if they caused it!!). Perhaps this is part of a local dialect (like how we can tend to accentuate with "Eh" to stress a point) but we were just horrified at what seemed quite rude. You just never hear that up here used like that. This may sound odd, but that was the absolute hardest thing to adjust to; the "mmmmhmmm".
remember that everyone's different...even state to state people & dialect are different.
[*]Going into stores while the clerks are on the phones only to have them ignore you and continue talking. This was all so amazingly odd! One guy talked on the phone for almost 20 minutes while I stood in front of him. This seemed "normal" I guess?
yeah, that's not cool, nor is it "normal". it's not often that i experience times like that, but i'm not afriad to speak up when it happens & tell them to get off the phone & do their job.
[*]Adjusting to the way your currency looks was kind of hard because it all looks the same at a quick glance. I think the lady at Starbucks must have figured I got off the short bus as I was just staring at the wad of bills in my hand, lol!
i had the same reaction to your canadian currency. all the bills were soooo super big! and the f'n amount of change i would get back was really annoying. why anyone would make a dollar into a coin is beyond me!
[*]Fuel is dirt cheap! I actually filled my car with $20!!!! (compared to $45 in Canada).
like KC said, and yet we bitch.
[*]Getting ID'd for liquor was a blast, lol!
yeah, they're outta control with carding people. i get carded for buying cigarettes more often than i do for buying liquor!? i may not look 29, but i sure as hell don't look under 18!!!
[*]Food portions are HUUUUGGGE!!!! The chicken peices were so big portions had to be held with BOTH hands. That was a BIG F_CKING CHICKEN!!! I mean...they were HUGE peices!
exactly why the US has the highest obesity rating in the world. you should see the portions my parents eat! and then they tell me that i don't eat enough!!! i'm like, umm, a portion is only supposed to be about as big as your hand, not the whole damn plate!
and the chicken...chickens don't get that huge...without growth hormones. so next time, stay away from the KFC. i can show you some reeeeally nasty videos of some of their chicken farms