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[travel] Amerika, land of opportunity!
Jun. 15th, 2009 10:52 amI've just re-entered the US after four and a half months of absence. This place seems like just another foreign country to me, and I'm automatically treating it as such. I happened to arrive on some sort of minor national holiday called Flag Day, and my host family took me to the Flag Day ceremonies, which turned out to be very interesting. I'll write more on it later.
I was also amused that immediately after crossing the border, I was met by the twin American cliches of Indians and Buffalo. While historians will note that many tribes of Indians hunted buffalo and therefore it would not have been surprising to see them together back in the day, these weren't the same Indians or the same buffalo. These were the real Indians, not the kind for which Columbus's mislabeling of them managed to stick until modern times despite the fact that it was known to be false even by the end of the 1400s. As for the Buffalo, it was the underwhelming city that somehow picked up the name despite the total lack of buffalo in the area. But to my mind it was all parsed as, “oh hey, I'm in Buffalo, and look, there are Indians!”
My border crossing adventure was much simpler this time. I walked across a beautiful bridge next to Niagra falls. There was a stupid 50 cent toll, with limited options for payment. The customs officer accusatively wondered why I had such a large backpack, so I told him I had been traveling around the world for 4 1/2 months, and then he wondered why I had such a small backpack. He asked a couple of questions about my time in Jordan, and that was it.
Before and after:
And in between, the exact border between the two countries as marked by my foot:
I was also amused that immediately after crossing the border, I was met by the twin American cliches of Indians and Buffalo. While historians will note that many tribes of Indians hunted buffalo and therefore it would not have been surprising to see them together back in the day, these weren't the same Indians or the same buffalo. These were the real Indians, not the kind for which Columbus's mislabeling of them managed to stick until modern times despite the fact that it was known to be false even by the end of the 1400s. As for the Buffalo, it was the underwhelming city that somehow picked up the name despite the total lack of buffalo in the area. But to my mind it was all parsed as, “oh hey, I'm in Buffalo, and look, there are Indians!”
My border crossing adventure was much simpler this time. I walked across a beautiful bridge next to Niagra falls. There was a stupid 50 cent toll, with limited options for payment. The customs officer accusatively wondered why I had such a large backpack, so I told him I had been traveling around the world for 4 1/2 months, and then he wondered why I had such a small backpack. He asked a couple of questions about my time in Jordan, and that was it.
Before and after:
And in between, the exact border between the two countries as marked by my foot:
