About America

Expats often talk about reverse culture shock - returning home to America and being continually surprised by random things.

Over the last 5 days I've accumulated a list of random things that caught me off guard and I wanted to share.

No offense, Germany, but people here are just NICE. I hate to start my list this way but it is the most glaring difference between the cultures that I have experienced so far. People smile at strangers and give a wide berth of personal space in shopping lines - about a meter per person. People chat with strangers more, and store employees don't just answer your question, they stop what they're doing to chat with you. The priority is making the customer happy, not stocking the shelves. I could, and did, write 2 pages about how wonderful shopping here is (esp. at Fred Meyer). Not all of America is like this, and residents of certain large (east coast) cities say we're overly polite and insincere in the PNW. My answer to that: Would you rather wonder if someone's niceness is faked, or be dead certain you are just an obstacle in their way?

Having to obey a speed limit on the freeway is inconvenient when you're in a hurry. Especially when you're on your way home from seeing Secretariat and the other cars are boxing you in and you'd like to go to the outside and fly by them all. 68 MPH is kind of like a trot.

People bring their Starbucks (or competitor) into church, even the choir director!

After church on the last Sunday before Christmas, the entire land goes shopping. I was so surprised that the Lord's day was not an enforced day of rest! I was delighted, thinking, "Hm, where would I like to go today, since I can do everything except go to the post office?"

Americans love to make statements on their car and truck bumpers. I saw this one the other day, "What part of The Terrorists Want To Kill Us don't you get, moron?" *lol* (In Germany, bumper stickers are extremely rare and if you see one, it's usually a symbol, not a statement.)

OK this isn't culture, but I cannot express how odd it is to look out the window and not see snow and snow piles. Everything is green here and the rhodies are not all crumpled from being frozen for weeks. The sun has shone every day I've been here, it's 40F and one day it was 50F so we went to the beach at Alki and watched people surfing wearing only shorts, and ladies wearing sandals and shorts walking their dogs. In contrast my husband says they have received about 10 inches (20cm) of snow every day since I've left, and he has been shovelling 3 times per day, and when he gets home from work he cannot drive the car into our driveway due to the mountain of snow. It's even in the Seattle Times, our state (NRW) in Germany is the hardest hit with snow this week, and 800 flights have been cancelled in Europe. I'm not just a little concerned.

Free stuff. My goodness, you can live on samples here. We went to Southcenter mall and my mom and sister directed me expertly to all the places you can get filled up on yummy free food. One lady stood there handing out chocolate truffles to everyone who passed, box after box! I wasn't excited about the chocolates (my mom got 5 or 6 of them to share later) but I hadn't had teriyaki chicken in forever and it was sooooo good! My man looks forward to getting here and getting into Costco. He loves that place, another place you can get a meal's worth of free food just by wandering around. I have also enjoyed the free chips and salsa at my favorite Mexican restaurant, and of course, the free glass of ice water at all restaurants. I always say "EXTRA ICE!"

Don't shoot. I was surprised to walk into a semi-fancy Thai restaurant and see a big sign, "No firearms are permitted in this restaurant." Hm, I wonder if they mean no firearms at all, or only illegal firearms. Anyway, I'd only seen "Gun Free Zone" signs on schools and in airports before that.

Recycling expands. Fast food restaurants in Seattle have customer recycling now - separate bins for different types of garbage and food waste. Detailed signs with photos are there to help people figure out the new system. In Germany, they don't let you throw anything away, you are expected to leave your tray in a rack and the McDonalds employees have to sort through all customer waste. (I was at Taco Time; McDonalds is not on my craving list!)

The economy's not good here yet, and there are still lots of houses sadly standing empty in foreclosure, but shiny new restaurants and shops are opening, and there are now *TWO* IMAX theaters for me to choose from within 30 minutes of this house.

People are fat here. I was thrilled to find an extensive large person clothes section at Fred Meyer. I bought a nice blouse, 2X, fits great!

I keep looking at our snow-covered hills and my automatic reaction is to think, "Go get the truck and trailer and horse and head up there!" *sigh* I've never seen Mt. Baker so clear, standing there behind the Space Needle as if someone painted it on the blue sky canvas. Seattle is surrounded by jagged vanilla ice cream mountains on both sides, with Mt. Rainier standing above them, dominating the skyline (14,411 feet, 4K meters). The mountains had better stay out for my man, usually when he's here they're blocked by clouds.

I look forward to more eggnog lattes, diet A&W root beer (which I drank upon exiting the store, not bothering to refrigerate it), Best Foods mayo, and of course lots more Mexican food. Most of all, I look forward to the day my man gets here because I feel like half of me is missing.

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Thank you, Google, for the nice photos of my mountain. (Although most of them were taken in Summer when it wasn't as snowy.) I'll try to post photos from my own camera sometime soon.


DANGER VOLCANO: Mount Rainier was selected as a Decade Volcano because of the hazard it poses to surrounding, highly populated areas, especially the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area. Mount Rainier has an extensive cover of snow and ice, which, if melted rapidly , could produce catastrophic floods and mudflows. The volcano has an extensive but poorly studied geological record of activity including lava flows, ash eruptions, avalanches, and mudflows. After Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier is the next most seismically active volcano in the northern Cascade Range.

Hazards from Mount Rainier not only include those of a purely volcanic origin, but also those related to glacier outburst floods, rock-fall, and edifice collapse. Edifice failures, either spontaneous or triggered by large local earthquakes, represent a significant hazard which is hard to quantify. Seismic monitoring of Mount Rainier is part of the normal monitoring job of the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network. Alarm mechanisms as part of seismic network operations can rapidly notify personnel of unusual or increasing seismicity which would likely precede renewed volcanic activity. It also can, and has, provided information about other hazardous events such as rock-fall and small debris flows. In its present configuration it is doubtful it could provide timely alarm information needed for the evacuation of nearby towns potentially impacted by a large spontaneous edifice collapse.