10 Impressions of USA

About a month ago I wrote a report about my co-op experience in the United States for my Visa sponsorship agency. One of the requirements of the report was to write about 10 impressions that I had of the US. I decided to post this part of the report here(with slight modifications). Note that these were my impressions, hence not everything here may be absolutely accurate.

1. Americans seem to be more interested in politics than Canadians. During presidential elections most people were following it very closely. I haven't seen such interest in Canada.
2. Amerians seem to be very patriotic of the United States. There are lots of American flags everywhere.
3. The weather in California is beautiful. Possibly the best weather I’ve seen in my life. It was nice and warm during the day, and chillier at night; just perfect.
4. Americans are a lot harder working than Canadians. It was not uncommon for me to be at work past 7PM, with half the company still there. At first I thought it was like that only at Google, but after talking to more people it became evident that people in the United States (or at least in Software Industry) tend to work long hours.
5. Universities are beautiful. During my stay in the US I visited Stanford and UCLA. Both schools look gorgeous. Not sure how their Computer Science program compares to that of University of Waterloo, but walking around the campus of Stanford and UCLA made me wish I was a student there. University of Waterloo is really ugly compared to these two schools.
6. High prices of housing in the Silicon Valley. Although I knew that house prices were really high in the Bay Area, it was still shocking to learn that a small one bedroom apartment in San Francisco can cost around $600,000. This is really disappointing, and I’m not sure how people can afford to buy a house in their lifetime, unless they are lucky and win lottery or get good stock options.
7. People really like baseball and football. I knew that those sports were popular, but I never realized the extent of their popularity until I actually spent a few months in the US. It was crazy! Football is almost equivalent to popularity of Hockey in Canada.
8. Pretty much everybody has a car, and people are willing to drive long distances. I was amazed to see that some people commute more than an hour each way to work everyday. I never had a car in Canada, and never really needed one. It was a different story in California. I felt like I couldn’t get anywhere without a car. Sure there are trains and public transport, but it’s not nearly as good as public transport in Toronto.
9. The little differences like the metric system (temperature in Fahrenheit, distance in miles, weight in pounds) turned out to be surprisingly difficult to adjust to.
10. Number of restaurants. It seemed that wherever I went in the Bay Area, there were restaurants all over, and many of them were busy. Not sure whether it’s like that only in the
11. Bay Area, or everywhere in the United States, but it seems that people rarely cook at home and only eat out. It was a bit surprising since in Canada most people try to eat at home.