I’ve been so busy since I got back from America that I still haven’t managed to compile a blog post about the trip as a whole, only managing so far a style diary post and a shopping haul post, if you’re interested in either of those. The full low down post is coming, on my to do list for this month, finally, but in the meantime I thought I’d do something different and write a list post of all the things, funny, interesting or surprising, that I learned about America while I was there. Many of them are very specific to the fact that I stayed in Dallas, Texas for a large portion of my trip, but overall I think they’re just silly little things that your average Brit with not much experience in America might notice about our stateside friends and their country. There’s some comedic swearing and a touch of hyperbole, so go forth in good spirits and maybe leave your cuss-averse mother behind for this one.

• The typical packaged sliced bread you buy in the supermarket to make your sandwiches is slightly sweet in America. Because apparently America is a hell hole and thinks your tuna sandwich needs a slightly sugary kick. Mmm, sweet and fishy. My fave.
• Wasps exist there that are red and they are huge. Like, over an inch long. Why!!
• Even British cosmetics are cheaper in Walmart than in the UK.
• The only things more expensive in America than in England are the food stuffs imported from England.
• Don’t expect small portions anywhere ever, ever.
• All roads are basically the size of a motorway.
• And there are strip malls by practically every road.
• And within those strip malls they advertise practices like dentists and lawyers with the same capitalised and/or lit-up signage as the nail salons and donut shops they sit beside. It definitely, definitely makes you take them seriously as professionals.
• There’s so much space. Seriously, everything is so far apart. England is such a tiny speck in comparison.
• They ‘ma’am’ the fuck out of you. #couldyounot #imveryyoungandcute
• The houses all vary wildly in style and design, even right beside one another.
• There are restaurants where the floors are littered with crushed peanut casings and that’s apparently not a health and safety or hygiene code violation?
• Everything is fried or covered in butter, including any vegetables a restaurant might deign to serve.
• Even every vegetable is fried or in a sauce, as far as I can tell.
• The salad also comes drenched in dressing unless you ask otherwise, because MURIKA.
• Biscuits are just fluffier, buttery plain scones.
• If they can put syrup on it, they will.
• And butter. In the south, they love butter almost more than they love guns.
• In fact, they love it so much they have begun flavouring it and finding new ways to serve it.
• Apple butter also exists, and isn’t actually butter. Which is probably why it’s good.
• But admittedly the cinnamon butter is also pretty good on a biscuit, so 1 point to you about the butter thing, America.
• Southern (white) gravy exists and is great. Especially on breakfast foods, which sounds weird, but just trust me on this. It’s a slightly peppery, white sauce kind of gravy, and I approve.
• Their Poptarts and Oreo selections are great but their chocolate and candy are terrible. I mean TERRIBLE. Any sweets that are any good at all have already been imported into British stores (see: Skittles, Starbursts, etc) so you’re not missing out on anything.
• They don’t really do duvets inside the duvet covers, they just have the duvets sandwiched between sheets and blankets. It’s a bit unnecessary and really faffy, making it super easy to lose half of your bedding to the floor during the night. Or possibly get entangled and begin dreaming the monster under your bed has finally got you and your life is over if you don’t win this one much-anticipated, terrifying struggle.
• Not that that happened to me or anything.
• Walmart is fucking massive.
• Like seriously. I know I’m almost 30 but I could easily have got lost in there like a small child. If I were an American parent I would for sure leash my child.
• They’re not as good at queueing at the British are. #reigningchampions
• They really fucking love guns. They don’t understand how British police are unarmed.
• They also don’t understand the correlation between their gun laws and their mass killings though. Shocker.
• But the ones who aren’t gun-toting mass murders are very polite.
• It’s acceptable for your waiter to say ‘God bless your food’ at IHOP after serving you. ?!?!?!
• (Do you think they might have charged us extra for that unwanted serving of religion with my pancakes?)
• I will never find it not weird that you drive on the other side of the road. It makes me uncomfortable even as a passenger.
• Don’t walk on the grass in Texas barefoot ever, or at night. Just avoid nature. #allthekillerthings
• They have really good cows though. I would have liked to take a longhorn or three home.
• Speaking of:
• 
• Okay, carrying on.
• Many southern accents like to give words extra syllables by taking so long to pronounce them. You may thing ‘oil’ is a very short single syllable word, but apparently you are wrong. Oyyyyuuuul.
• Bad fries are still good fries but bad corndogs are not worth it.
• Their breakfast pancake stacks are deceptively filling and near impossible to finish.
• Texans will claim it’s too cold for the nasty critters but they’ll warn you about them possibly getting you as soon as you get there so you shouldn’t believe them and practise CONSTANT VIGILANCE.
• Everything native to Texas can kill you. #snakepit #whydoyouevenlivehereTexans
• The zoos are cheaper than UK zoos. $12 for an adult entry?! EVERYONE WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE ZOO.
• Nowhere is as cheap as Primark. Not even H&M and Forever 21.
• No one seems to eat dessert because they just ate a huge hunk of grease-meat with a side of carbs.
• Taco Bell is the food equivalent of the person you bootycall at 1am but refuse to bring home to your Mumma. It feels good at the time but you know it’s bad for you and you don’t want anyone to see you with it.
• There’s 1-10 fast food restaurants every quarter mile along every single road.
• They hate spelling things properly if it will take them an extra 2 seconds to include all the letters. Hey Donuts @ The Drive Thru!
• They either get very excited about your Britishness or they don’t notice it at all.
• You can order something in the mail that takes as long to arrive domestically as it does to arrive in England from America ordered from the same company.
• Mosquitos are motherfuckers.
• They really hate clear signage. They prefer you guess where things are. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about an airport, a museum, shopping mall, or a freeway, if you look around reasonably expecting to find a sign to point you towards the toilets, exit, food court, etc, it will be much harder to find than you expect.
• Hope you like Starbucks because they’re everywhere.
• They’re really different from the Brits but also not really.
• Except when it comes to the guns, religion and butter situation.
• Otherwise it’s all just accents and weather differences.

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