The kids and I are back in the U.S. for the summer and I have been going through some reverse culture shock. We spent our first week in the Bay Area. We are now in Seattle, and plan to continue on to NY, Boston, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming before returning home to Shanghai in mid-August. James is back and forth throughout this period.

First of all, I must say it's lovely to be seeing so many dear friends. I especially appreciate how people are making time for us on the spur of the moment, which has led to everything from lakeside playdates to impromptu S'more making in an outdoor fireplace. I have been running around doing errands and taking care of things related to our Seattle house and so hadn't made a lot of plans in advance. It's nice of people to fit us in.

Also, we are of course enjoying the beautiful clean air, fresh water, golden and green landscapes (SFO and Seattle respectively), availability of organic foods, and freedom of speech (I can post on Blogger without hassles! Woo hoo!)

However, having been gone for nearly a full year I am noticing things that I wouldn't have otherwise. It's a bit like boiling a frog -- gradual change goes unnoticed if you are already in the soup, but you feel it right away if you are jumping in late in the process.

1. The mood in U.S. is noticeably depressed. Things feel very quiet, closed down, somber. It's most obvious in places that would normally be busy and crowded, such as airports.

2. Prices are way, way up. This is true in restaurants, grocery stores, and retail stores. The amount of my average purchase has gone up by about 1/3. (And anyone who's ever gone grocery shopping with me can tell you that I have a freakish ability to estimate the cost before the cashier totals the bill.) An example of this is Noah's Bagels. Today we bought two chocolate chip bagels, one bagel with lox and cream cheese, one bagel with hummus and veggies, and 3 orange juices. Pre-China this order would have cost $18-19. Today it cost $26 and change. Looking carefully at the menu I realized that Noah's has changed their pricing structure. They used to offer a hummus and veggie sandwich for about $3.70 but now they offer a veggie sandwich, which is slightly cheaper, but charge $2.80 to add hummus. The same is true for the lox, though it costs only $1.70 to add (which makes no sense unless it is carefully calculated to squeeze profits without driving customers away).

3. Americans drive everywhere. The convenience of free parking and design of outer urban areas (strip malls, etc.) makes this especially hard to resist. Of course I knew this before but I am especially aware of it at the moment since I haven't driven in a year and now seem to be spending hours in the car shuttling the kids from place to place.

4. Americans are lured into eating way, way too much. Portions are ridiculously large in restaurants - what is served to one person at a place like Applebee's would be enough to feed a peckish family of four in China. There is a ridiculous amount of bad processed food available in supermarkets, though the Obama administration's initiative encouraging low-income families to shop at farmer's markets is one sign of hope.

5. Corollary to 3 and 4: The average American looks kind of soft and doughy compared to the average Chinese person. I'm not talking about relative size, just relative mushiness.

6. Corollary to 3: Americans are slowly losing their ability to navigate by maps and verbal directions. Everyone either MapQuests directions or uses a GPS. People seem slightly shocked if you say you plan to just look at a map -- the way they might have reacted a year ago if you had said you planned to hold a forked stick and dowse your way to your destination.

7. Despite the depressed economy, Americans continue to sell and buy crazy amounts of useless junk. A trip to Michael's craft store my first week here (buying props for a skit in an OT course I was taking) left me stunned. There was an aisle with something like 80 different types of glue -- and people were buying it! In my experience of China you can buy three types of glue easily: wood glue, paper glue, and super glue, the latter used for nearly everything.

8. The useless junk is packaged in even more useless junk, designed to make it look more attractive and more plentiful. We are creating way more trash here on a daily basis than we do in China.

9. My observations are not all negative -- we have been very impressed by the change in people's level of involvement in environmental issues. At least on the west coast, our friends seem to be doing much more than one year ago, whether it is composting, raising backyard chickens, or building their own salmon spawning ground where their property touches the water.

I wish I could tie all of these observations up into a single neat theme but maybe that will come at the end of the summer. In the meantime we are basking in the sun and clean air and I am thinking, Americans, appreciate what you have and don't fritter it away eating bad food and buying useless junk. This means you and it means me, too.