The score so far

Time to recap some pro's and cons of moving to the US. They are pretty much in random order.

Pro: They bag your food for you in the grocery store.
Con: You have to wait while they do it for the lady in front of you who managed to get three full carts to the cash register by her self.
Pro: You can pretty much return any item to the store within 30 days without hassle or explanation (try going back to store in Holland saying you did not like the product).
Con: Any time you order food be prepared to answer 20 additional questions about your food (what kind of dressing, bread, sauce, toppings, cheese etc.).
Pro: You can legally turn right through a red light (they actually leave it up to you to be sensible about it..... hmm, sounds more like a con now that I think about it).
Con: Nobody around here is aware there's a world outside his or her own car (trust me, it's worse then in Holland).
Pro: Clothes are lots cheaper (no, not for everything, but jeans are definitely a lot cheaper).
Con: The banks are severely outdated. Everything still revolves around checks.
Pro: Commercials for medical drugs are funny ("side effects may include vomiting, toppling over and cancer")
Con: (A)DSL sucks (bad cabling)
Pro: Fiber optics are available (not sure if that's a pro actually.... let's wait and see)
Con: Service intervals on cars are 3 times more often then in Europe on the exact same cars (I really don't get this one).
Pro: Gas and oil are dramatically cheaper.
Con: Labels on products really don't give information (try to find the alcohol percentage on your beer bottle).
Pro: Contrary to popular belief there are actually quite decent breweries around here (Yuengling, Sam Adams and of course lots of microbreweries).
Con: There is no countrywide public transportation planner website (try planning a trip from New Jersey to Rehoboth Beach, DE).

Photo opportunities

Here's just a couple of pictures I've been meaning to post. The first one is just for dutch people. I took this picture in a cemetery in a mission in San Francisco. Is it a sign?


Next is the Subaru. Now that we're in the land of Pimp-My-Ride we can't fall behind, can we? We decided to go all out. A 6-layered, fully adjustable spoiler.


Oh, did I mention we went to San Francisco for our first anniversary? Work got me there but it was an excellent opportunity to do something special for that weekend. Of course it sounds a bit strange to say that you went to prison on your first anniversary but in this case I highly recommend it. Alcatraz was pretty cool.

In the following picture you can see why the prison was closed. Some of those prisoners are just too dumb to notice that the door is open. They were all just relocated to post offices and told that these were the new maximum security prisons......