More things I have learned so far

5. I need to work on my "I'm a mature woman now"-image. Starting with getting past the point where everyone seems to think I'm a teenager. The taxi driver who gave me a ride from the airport was trying to be friendly when he said: "So, you're here for school, huh? You'll be going to Stony Brook Prep?". Really?! I am waaay past high school - in SO MANY ways!
6. It's really, really hot here. And humind. Fortunately, this is the United States - most buildings have air-con. Unfortunately, the stairways do not. Even more unfortunately it seems that a high percentage of elevators are currently broken. In almost every office building of sorts I have had to find somebody the elevators (or stairs for that matter) where a) hard to find and b) broken, being repaired, out of commission - possibly they eloped. Who knows. Anyway, pretty much every office I had to go to was up several floors - I'm the kind of person who never showers directly after heavy excercise, because usually I don't REALLY start sweating until I'm finished. On the long run, showing up at every air-conditioned office and breaking out in a full sweat and having to make sure I don't drip on whatever form I was filling out: NOT cool (sorry, couldn't resist the pun!). Fortunately...
7. There are now ground floors. Okay, yes there are ground floors, but in contrast to Germany nobody calls them the ground floor. The ground floor is the first floor. So, for example though I live on the 2nd floor, I'm actually on the first floor you reach when taking the stairs. So everytime I figured out where I had to be (the probability of the elevator not running was exponential to the "largeness" of the number) and started up all those flight of stairs, I realized it was never as far as I'd initially assumed!
8. I am only short by comparison. In Germany, there was friendly teasing in some of my circles of friends, regarding my (lack of) size - German woman are usually about 10cm (make that 4 inches) taller than I am and, for example, I was the shortest player on my rugby team for some time. I always tell people that since American woman are 164cm tall on average and I am just a bit shorter than that I am only statistically short. And let's be honest, I am rather short than average. But here,... why I practically tower over people!
9. The bugs here are nasty. I just got back from rugby practice and my feet are a mound of HUGE bumps resulting from the five minutes between the time I took off my cleats, put on sandles and took off in the direction of home!