Things I'll Miss About the USA
- Free refills for your soda
- Toads, snakes, salamanders, and the amazing insect life of the South
- Real bagels. Last I heard, there was only one bagelry in New Zealand, run by New Yorkers in Wellington.
- Cheap clothes, kitchenware, books, and magazines
- The free New York Review of Books at the Duke bookstore, an exotic luxury in New Zealand
- The American sandwich: toasted, with huge amounts of meat and a salad dressing to bind it all together
- The New York Times on a Sunday
- Good Southern fried chicken
- Texas ribs and Alabama barbecue
- American gumption and self-confidence
- Free weekly papers, especially the Village Voice
- Baseball, mostly because everybody stands up and sings “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at the seventh inning
- Fresh okra at the farmer’s market
- The omnipotence of the internet: Netflix, Bookmooch, Lala, Amazon, Half.com, Emusic, and all the other sites that only work or only work well in the USA
- The free zoo and museums in Washington D.C.
- Autumn in a deciduous forest
- TaquerÃas and other real Mexican food
- American breakfasts, especially waffles and pancakes
- Cheap gasoline (see also Things I Won’t Miss)
- Effortless access to PDF articles and interlibrary loans at university libraries
- Bears, bison, and bald eagles
- Sticks of butter (although the butter itself is nasty)
- Seeing indie bands that will never come to the Antipodes
- Peaches and boiled peanuts from a roadside stall in Georgia
- Shops open almost all the time, including twenty-four-hour supermarkets
- Not needing a landline telephone
- Turning right on a red light
- A rodeo in rural Montana
- Thanksgiving, especially turkey
- Turtles
- Fireworks
- Squirrels
- Snow