other oddities...

I saw a girl riding her bike in boots- like those knee high leather boots with a heel!
That seems like it would be difficult.

as opposed to things you might expect:

People, on average, are pretty polite here. I would say almost always people (both men & women) hold the door open for you and people often say thank you if you do the same. Okay well almost all of my "research" is confined to the population of ISU students but in general, people seem pretty mannerly. I don't know how this would compare to other cities/towns/regions. Would the average level of politeness be higher or lower?
People also play cornhole a lot. Like it is everywhere. And in general, eat pork.
Seriously. I would say pork is way bigger than corn.

Someday I will have something more profound to say. Today is not that day however.

things you might not expect...

On Sunday I walked downtown to go to the library and remembered it was the day for the art festival. So I decided to check that out and was pleasantly surprised to see it actually was a
"real" festival with a very respectable sized crowd. We've been to a few things downtown, including the alleged art walk, which were just kind of lackluster and not very well attended and just seemed sort of depressing in general. But this was a nice art festival, the usual kind of arts and vendors, you know, ceramics and jewelry and photos. There were a lot of people and 2 different
groups of musicians and lots of food booths too. After I had walked around and looked at everything, I was going to walk back home. But approximately one block from downtown are the train tracks and I could see there was a train, or really multiple trains (freight) barreling down the line, so it would probably take a while til that was finished. I was standing at the corner, debating for a few minutes, whether I should just mill about there while waiting for the train, or go look at the art some more. I must have looked more lost than I'd thought, because after a couple minutes I saw a woman approaching me, with a sort of determined, purposeful look on her face. She was handing me something, at first I assumed it would be some sort of coupon or advertisement for one of the local stores, but instead she hands me a card, and says something like this "I want to give you this chant that will help you release your greatest inner potential". The card has a flower on the front, and it says "The Key to Unlocking Your Highest Potential" It also says Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.
Okay well the internets tell me this is called the Lotus Sutra, and is a Buddhist meditation.
I think the woman said a few more things to me, although none of it was about Buddhism or anything specific. The back of the card says Buddhism for Modern Living and gives a website.
I have to say that was unexpected... i wouldn't expect too many Buddhists in Ames but who knows... I wasn't sure what to say to her, since I don't know that much about them but it didn't actually seem like she was interested in having a conversation, just telling me about meditation, I think.

the rut of all problems..

the teaching assistant for my class says the word root as rut. As in, now we are going to find the
square rut of the variance. It's odd, because it's the only word I've noticed that is pronounced differently. I wonder where he's from. Actually I think he might be from Iowa, maybe northeast. I don't know if that is some regionalism though. I have noticed there are some differences in pronunciations here, especially with vowels. But that might be more of a Minnesota/Wisconsin factor, as many people I've met here are actually from those places. Two regional words here:
pop (not too surprising) and occasionally sack (instead of bag). Like at some store, do you want a sack for that?
I can't remember any other new words right now. Dialects and accents are pretty interesting though.

Man vs. speed gun

Observed today:
Periodically law enforcement here put up one of those speed gun type devices- you know it has a big screen and tells you how fast you were going as you approach. I take it they do this in areas where people commonly drive too fast, hoping if you see how much you are violating the speed limit, you'll mend your ways.
A few times I have seen this on one side of the main street here, I'm guessing because people tend to drive too quickly and come speeding through the curve in the road. There are often buses, both school buses for kids and Cyride, the public bus, stopping on this road; and there was a Boys and Girls Club, before it got flooded.

Today the radar speed gun was on the OTHER side of the road, just up from the bus stop. As I was walking over to the stop to wait for the bus, I saw 2 guys: one was running down the street & the other watching (yes, Dumb and Dumber here) to see if the radar gun would pick up his running speed! Um aside from the fact that they are now RUNNING in the road, into oncoming traffic, which seems a little bit of a bad idea, I kind of don't think that these speed guns actually measure PEOPLE speed.
I'm not entirely sure of this but I get that feeling. Plus this explanation on How Stuff works website tells me, " A laser speed gun shoots a very short burst of infrared laser light and then waits for it to reflect off the vehicle. "
I could be wrong on this. But anyway... running in the middle of a busy road to try to see if it will measure your running speed, just doesn't seem like the safest or sanest idea.

Good things, bad things about small town life:

Good thing:
Our extremely friendly & conscientious mail carrier. He brings packages up to our apartment.
He's very pleasant. He just handed me some stuff and said he will be back, because he has a large package in his truck that he'll need to come back for. He said it's like 2 feet tall. I have no idea what this is. Could it be that robot I wished for? The bathroom scrubbing, coffee-making one?
That would be nice.

In contrast the Fed Ex person came up the stairs and didn't even knock on the door and just left some package outside the door!

Bad thing:
Excessive hyper-interest/absorption in college football. Seriously. I thought people couldn't take football MORE seriously or passionately than Pgh'ers and yet I was wrong.

bear...

I'm not sure this deserves a post without an accompanying picture but to be honest, I haven't been daring enough to snap a picture of someone's front lawn. On one of the streets on the walk to downtown- I couldn't actually say which one because I don't really pay attention to the street names. But on the corner house, a while ago, we noticed the bear. At first it was placed prominently out on the front lawn, near the edge of the lawn by the sidewalk. It's a sculpture/metal (?) or maybe ceramic black bear- maybe one foot tall, maybe a little larger. Yes a bear. And on its head it wears a pair of mens' underwear. The briefs kind (in white). I'm not making this up (why would I????) Soooooo... on the walk to town we pass bear with underwear.
Periodically the bear is moved to a different location- it was on a different spot on the lawn and then moved to the area closer to the front door.

I don't know anything else about it. Except it's a bear with a pair of underwear on its head.