The first impression to Atlanta is that it’s a clean city. The sky is blue and the air is fresh, what is more, there are a lot of trees wherever I go.

As time passes, I find a lot of things different.

Firstly, it’s about the traffic. I found the signal for the walkers crossing the street was different from China. They are in different symbols and colors. Besides, in the past, I had the impression that when I pushed the button, the signal would change for the walker to pass. It proves to be wrong during our visit to botanical garden. Someone told me that only if you push the button, will show the signal for walker crossing. The other finding of the city was that the drivers were nice and they let the walkers cross the street first. Then I learnt from other people that there is such a law in traffic. However, I had an unpleasant experience this morning and found the drivers didn’t slow down in rainy day. The last thing about traffic is that, in the past, I have learnt that the safe belt is required for all passengers, but in China nobody is required except the driver. So I’m not used to it when the driver reminds me fastening my safe belt.

Secondly, I found consuming is different. I found I had to pay more than the price shown in the price tag for my lunch and this is the first time that I realize the tax is exclusive. Now it still confuses how much tax I should pay, but I have had the conception that taxes are different for different products. The unprepared food has lower tax than prepared food, and food is lower than grocery. The thing surprised me most is the products can be refunded without any excuse. In China it’s impossible to have the things refunded or change to another kind except of a good excuse such as it doesn’t work at all. Actually, even if you have a good excuse, the shop may just change a new one but no refunding. But I can refund all kinds of things, even if the package is torn away or it’s fresh vegetable.

Thirdly, the food is really out of my taste. The biscuit and chocolate are too sweet for me and the pop corn is salty. Besides, the other classmates said the salad was tasteless and full of oil, so they would never eat salad again. So it’s better to cook by ourselves. However, it’s a tough task to cook Chinese food with American flavoring, and the rice here is hard to cook.

Fourthly and the last, I had taken a lot of activities in this week. I watched a baseball game on Wednesday, the film shown in the Park on Thursday, visited Botanical Garden on Friday, went to Emory School and China Town on Saturday, and watched the Atlanta Pride 2006 on Sunday. It’s a tight schedule, and I had learnt a lot about the thing that I hadn’t experienced before. People always don’t have the correct image if they only hear of the thing but don’t experience it by themselves. I’m glad that I have the chance to know what American culture really is.