"It's okay to visit, but wouldn't want to live here", was Alex's comment about the US -- his first impressions were heavily coloured by the number of garbage cans he observed in the Miami airport (many) vs the number of recycling bins (none)! This lead to a conversation about consumerism in general, and America's consumerism in particular.
The consumerism conversation was shortly followed by a discussion about guns in the US vs Canada (this was prompted by the boys' observations of and comments about several news items in close succession being broadcast on one of the TVs in the airport, about various shootings). In particular, Alex and Simon wondered what kind of crazy nation would want to have items intended solely for harming so easily accessible by anyone?! As a fellow Canadian, I must confess that I share their puzzlement with our southern's neighbours relatively lax gun laws.
Despite our politically philosophical and environmental disagreements, however, I personally found everyone surprisingly friendly, especially considering this is an allegedly homophobic state. (Of course, Tatsy soon pointed out that people were probably not being so friendly to the nice queer family as they were being friendly to the nice, middle-aged mother traveling solo with her three sons: the twins and the teenager. Haha.)
I was struck once again by the area's bilingualism; the vast majority of people we encountered seemed to speak Spanish fluently. This intrigued the boys, and we were able to draw parallels to Canada's French-English situation; we discussed similarities and differences between that and the Spanish-English situation in the States.
Tats is making anxious motions that we need to get moving to our gate: The next leg of our journey is four times as long as this last one.
Buenos Aires, here we come!
The consumerism conversation was shortly followed by a discussion about guns in the US vs Canada (this was prompted by the boys' observations of and comments about several news items in close succession being broadcast on one of the TVs in the airport, about various shootings). In particular, Alex and Simon wondered what kind of crazy nation would want to have items intended solely for harming so easily accessible by anyone?! As a fellow Canadian, I must confess that I share their puzzlement with our southern's neighbours relatively lax gun laws.
Despite our politically philosophical and environmental disagreements, however, I personally found everyone surprisingly friendly, especially considering this is an allegedly homophobic state. (Of course, Tatsy soon pointed out that people were probably not being so friendly to the nice queer family as they were being friendly to the nice, middle-aged mother traveling solo with her three sons: the twins and the teenager. Haha.)
I was struck once again by the area's bilingualism; the vast majority of people we encountered seemed to speak Spanish fluently. This intrigued the boys, and we were able to draw parallels to Canada's French-English situation; we discussed similarities and differences between that and the Spanish-English situation in the States.
Tats is making anxious motions that we need to get moving to our gate: The next leg of our journey is four times as long as this last one.
Buenos Aires, here we come!