USA! Yay?

Kia Ora,

Its been 2 weeks since I’ve returned home to the States. And what a couple of weeks it has been. Adjusting back to American time and culture was both really difficult and really easy at the same time. So let’s discuss the pros and cons of being back in the U S of A.

Good Things:

  • Getting to see my mom at the gate.
  • Real coffee. With cream. And Splenda.
  • Pizza. Real, delicious, 16 inches for $12, NY, thin crust Pizza.
  • Bagels.
  • Discovering Edam Cheese exists here.
  • Getting to see Kiersten after her first semester in college and baking xmas cookies to celebrate. Also, realising we ate 1/4 of the dough and made the cookies twice as big as they were supposed to be.
  • Christmas decorations with snow instead of shorts.
  • Visiting Delaware and hugging about 20 people I’ve missed way too much.
  • Continuing to hear “i hate you, you’re tan” and “did you lose weight?”
  • Rediscovering the amazingness of the people that I live with at UD.
  • Learning to play the saxophone. Again.
  • The speed of the internet. And it’s relatively low cost.
  • My dog still remembers me.
  • Diners.
  • Mom made a repeat Thanksgiving dinner. With Oma’s stuffing. It seriously doesn’t get better than that.

Bad Things:

  • My stomach CONTINUING to get mad at me whenever I eat. or drink. anything.
  • Realising that after being completely settled in with 3 people in a house, I have to start all over. With people who have been together since Sept. Luckily, I love them already 🙂
  • The obnoxious snail paced American legislative system.
  • Having to read the daily synopsis of Shortland Street rather than watching it.
  • Cold weather. (and yes, I know I said snow was good)
  • Everyone has the same accent as me. And now I chuckle when I hear it. For this, I personally blame Elizabeth Zucco, Lauren Baier and Maggie Ray. Maggie also gets blamed for pointing out the speed at which I talk. I am totally conscience of it now.
  • Newburgh < Wellington
  • No positive exchange rate. When I have a dollar, its just a dollar.
  • Speaking of money, a pocketful of coins is not worth as much as I have become accustomed to. Also, the money all being the same colour is really boring.
  • The fact that everyone I spent the last five months with is a minimum of a four hour drive away. And a maximum of a 22 hour flight.

I’ll update this if more things come to my mind.

Merry Christmas,

Liam

Sunrise, Oriental Bay, Wellington, North Island, New Zealand