Yes, yes, I do really need to go to bed, particularly since I need to be awake and functional in about five hours. Anyway, I was hoping someone might be up in the US and write me back about the web domain predicament, but to no avail, so since I'm awake but tired I've been looking at friends' pages and such when it occurred to me something that I've been noticing here recently and thinking I should maybe blog about it.

So, obviously each culture has different social norms, some which vary little and some which vary a lot. Also, mind you, it is spring/summer and the pollen count is high and I can attest to the fact that my nose has been more stuffy than normal.

Generally in American culture staring isn't a socially acceptable thing, well here in most cases it is perfectly fine, particularly if there is something to stare about, then everyone will (and more so if you live in the south, really, I'm not making this up). In fact I can remember on many occasions when I lived in Sevilla, mainly when I first got there and didn't fit in as well, the ENTIRE bus, kid-you-not, turned around to stare at us for basically the entire bus ride. In Madrid, it's much more subtle. Generally people don't stare for too long, but much longer than would be socially acceptable in the US. In fact, I now find myself doing the same thing. But I digress.

Another custom that we as Americans are not quite used to is nose-picking. I can't say that it's encouraged here nor something you would do somewhere nice, but over the past few days the number of blatant nose-pickers that I've seen is astronomical. There just isn't the same stigma attached to it. Yes, allergy season is high, but still. So, in that vane, as I looked for pictures I found that wikihow has a page on "how to pick your nose inconspicuously". It's cracking me up. But there you go.