The First Things Back in America that I Noticed

6 comments

I am now in Atlanta for a few weeks (I do not know where I will be or what I will be doing starting in November). Here are some notes from my first few hours back in the USA.

• I sneezed, and someone nearby said "Bless you." That felt nice.
• When I made eye contact with someone, and I gave a half-raised smile in reply, the woman immediately returned the half-smile gesture. That also felt nice. (By contrast, whenever I would look back at people staring at me in India, hardly any strangers smiled back.)
• Our arrival terminal at JFK Airport was not very clean. The carpet was old, two escalators were either broken or turned off, and I saw cracks in some of the walls. Really not a whole lot nicer than the international terminal in Mumbai.
• Father and son wearing matching Dallas Cowboy's football jerseys at the grocery store. Very cute.
• Diet soda being the same price as regular soda = awesome.
• $4 for a gallon of generic skim milk. WTF happened?! It was only $3.29 two months ago.
• American beggars = Boy Scouts outside the grocery store trying to sell me popcorn.
• Automatic checkout machines!! I forgot about these.
• The suburbs seem dead. I can drive through my entire neighborhood and not see anybody.
• Fast internet!
• No joke, but temperatures in the 70's seem very cold to me. I got comfortable and lazy in the Bombay swelter. I actually miss that heat a lot right now.
• Within an hour of reaching home, I already had two different invitations to eat beef for dinner. I am sticking with chicken for now... easy does it.