Yellow buses and fire hydrants

So in America there are a LOT of weird and wonderful things that us kiwi's would find quite fascinating... just little things that people take for granted but seem strange to me. I thought I would tell you about a few, mostly for my kiwi friends... my American friends would probably find this post super boring.
For starters...I got fingerprinted and photographed when I arrived in the States, which I thought was actually pretty funny, like in a movie, but the man was carrying a really big gun so I didnt want to laugh to much...He was getting quite annoyed because the machine didnt seem to be working but then we worked out it was because I had a band aid on! funny stuff.
And get this, they actually have fire hydants like in kids books! The ones that dogs can pee on and everything. So far no red ones, these ones are yellow and green..pretty awesome I think.
The power lines here are stacked vertically rather than horizontally like our ones are.
I feel like, in general everything is just much bigger. bigger buildings, bigger roads, bigger cars, way bigger houses, bigger people, bigger food.... Can be a bit overwhelming sometimes.
A lot of houses have flags outside them or little American symbols, lots of people are quite patriotic I think. Which makes me laugh, because in NZ, we think that if we like beer and watch rugby then we're patriotic. Nice. Not many houses in this area anyway have fences, and they have quite large sweeping lawns. It looks nice, but I never see anyone outside playing on them which makes me a little sad.
Everyone I've met so far (apart from airport officials!) seem really friendly, which Kiri pointed out is probably just because they like my accent and want me to keep talking! But I've appreciated it anyway :)
Something I've found out is that people here honestly have absolutely no idea about NZ at all! If they know where abouts in the world it is...they're doing well. Like yesterday... "Isn't there a bridge that goes from NZ to Australia.." Um, well, that gap is about the size of your whole country, so it would be a pretty long bridge. Or.. "Do you know what a chicken is..?" Oh, yeah, in NZ we have them too, but they're 7 feet tall and we call them Moa.  I'm kidding, I didnt actually tell her that.
I saw a squirrel yesterday! And then another one,dead on the road but it was still a squirrel!
My friends Kiri and Brian, have been so good at translating and interpreting things for me though! Yesterday I was in church and the pastor was talking about putting up Guard rails in our lives to help us be intentional, but it sounded to me like he was saying we need to put up "Gargoyles"... which had me pretty confused until Kiri translated for me.