First Impressions

My teacher for my Leeds Lives class (class on the history and culture of the city of Leeds) wants us to blog about our time spent here in Leeds.  Go figure.  She asked us to make our first post about our first impressions of Leeds.  Last night I wrote down as many "first impressions" as I could in my notebook.  I've copied the list here for you to read.

1. The locals are extremely friendly.  Regardless of anything else in this list, the more important statement is this one.
2. The English language is notably different here than in America.
3. Everything, literally everything, is smaller here than in America.  From refrigerators to vehicles to supermarkets to people's body sizes--it is all significantly smaller in scale.
4. Students in the UK attend class much less and for much shorter periods of time than those in the US.  Americans attend more class per week, more weeks per semester, and it takes more years to attain a degree.
5. The US and the Great Britain have good relations.
6. Europeans know a lot more about Americans than we know about them.   This is mainly because of American media and pop culture like Hollywood movies and music.
7. Europeans know Americans are ignorant to other cultures.
8. The British like Americans, but they think some of the things we do are silly and ridiculous--like drive to the store when it is a ten minute walk.
9. Europeans think the American Republican Party hates everyone and is going to destroy the world as we know it.
10. Non-Americans in general have lots of questions about and confused perceptions of gun rights and ownership in the US.
11. The British care about what happened on September 11, 2001.
12. There aren't any fat people here.
13. The British don't care about American football.
14. The sun never shines, but when it does, people make the most of it.
15. The drinking/partying culture is much more flamboyant, offensive, inappropriate, uncensored, and in-your-face than in America.
16. Everyone here smokes.
17. The peanut butter here sucks.  If anyone feels compelled to ship me a jar of peanut butter, I won't object.
18. The bus system here is really good, but because there are so many buses, the streets are really noisy and smelly.
19. Traffic is bad.
20. The streets in Leeds are really dirty.  The ground, river, streets, and public places are overly polluted.
21. It is really hard to find a trashcan in public.
22. There are more recycling bins than in the US, but still everyone just throws their trash on the ground.
23. It is really hard to find free wireless internet.
24. The shopping in Leeds is worldclass.
25. The landscape is really green, especially to someone from New Mexico.
26. Britain snubs their nose at the rest of Europe and insists on differentiating itself from mainland Europe.  For example, it didn't adopt the Euro currency, it uses a mix of the metric system along with some Imperial measurements (like what we use in the USA).  In England, they use miles and feet, but they also use meters and kilograms and degrees Celsius.  Confused?  Me too.  
27. The Brits really do have "afternoon tea."
28. In general, things/goods are more expensive here.
29. European chocolate is out-of-this-world delicious.
30. There are some things that still seem underdeveloped here.  For example, the sinks.  I have yet to find one that is a single faucet that produces warm water.  Most public restroom sinks have two water spouts--one for hot and one for cold, so you either get scalding or freezing water.  But in my kitchen, there is one water spout with two knobs.  When you have both the hot and cold knobs on, the water stream comes out half cold and the other half hot.  Never warm.  The refrigerators/freezers seem far behind the ones we have in the USA, and so does the electrical system.  All the electrical outlets have switches so you can turn them on and off.

To be continued when I think of more...

(I feel like this post is sub-par/rubbish.  But what my extremely smart and talented writing professors at UNM taught me is that you win some and you lose some when you write.  Some days are good hair days and some are bad hair days, and that's okay.  This post is lacking in creativity and intelligence--maybe next time.  Bear with me.)