Here’s some random thoughts about my visit to The States.

• American people are really friendly, they always come up to you and wish you a good day. They’re very talkative.
• The food comes in massive massive portions. It never happened that I could finish my plate. In some restaurants, single person portions can be compared to a meal for an entire family back in Belgium.
• There’s a lot of war veterans in the streets who are homeless. That’s too bad. They went out to fight for their country because they had to (or wanted too, let’s leave that in the middle) and they end up with a cardboard sign asking for money. That’s just not right. (Although a local guy said a lot of the homeless people sport those signs just to get some money, so I’m kind of confused here)
• I still don’t get the difference between black cabs, yellow cabs and orange cabs - apart from the difference in color of the cars.
• There are some MASSIVELY big SUVs riding around here. My small European car can easily fit two or three times in one superlarge SUV.
• Bartenders can’t make decent Mojitos. I think they actually count the leaves of mint they put in the drink, and sometimes it looks like the mint is like fish in a small aquarium. 6 to 7 little leaves, floating around.
• Strawberry-banana smoothies are awesome.
• I’ll never order maxi-sized menus in a burger place. Even the kiddie-portions are oversized for me. Despite the fact I didn’t eat that much, I still felt bloated.
• The stores are open until 8 or 10 PM, which is weird if you come from a country where everything is closed at 6 PM.
• Drug stores don’t sell real drugs. It’s a cool name, but it’s mostly an oversized grocery store.
• If you see a movie on tv, it takes 3 times as long to finish seeing it, because of all the commercial breaks. I saw the same woman lose 30 pounds 5 times before the movie ended. At the end of the movie, she was severely underfed.
• If you look at 15 commercials, you’re almost sure you have 7 diseases that were featured in it, and you need the medicins they promote to get better.
• Mexican food isn’t really Mexican if you eat it in a place where regular (white) Americans serve it.
• Sushi might seem super yummy, but I still think fish is meant to be roasted or baked. Eating raw fish feels like participating in some sort of ‘Expedition Robinson’. I think I’ll only do it when I’m deprived of ‘real’ food. I don’t know why.
• Deciding how much you’d tip the waiter is the hardest part of going out for dinner. 10%? 15? 20? Why don’t they just pay those guys a normal wage and make it a little more expensive on the menu? What’s the rule here? And how much are you supposed to tip for a cab? Do you have to tip the bus driver as well then? Or the guy who drives the train?
• If you go to a bakery that has every sign written in French, that’s just an excuse to charge more. ‘Le croissant’ tastes and looks exactly the same as ‘a croissant’, but it almost costs a dollar more for one extra letter.