Do Sheep Float?: US through the eyes of a Kiwi

It’s interesting to find out what people from other countries think and their general misconceptions of us. We checked into our first holiday park and spent the first half hour talking to the owner. He was fascinated by the civil war and race in our country wanting to know how we felt about the war now that were ‘a generation away.’ Lucky for us, Lewis has been on a Civil War/slavery/Early American history binge of late and was able to have a well-informed discussion on Abe Lincoln’s motivations, the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation, and more. I, of course, just stood there and observed the exchange with an occasional nod because, while I might be able to speculate about the journal entries made during the Civil War, I don’t know much about the actual details of it.

After his American history lesson, the park owner told us about his first trip to L.A. He caught a cab to his hotel and he arrived to find himself surrounded by black people. According to him, ‘they were everywhere’ and he knew that he was going to get mugged and/or beat up. He told us that he’d been in a pub fight or two and he was ready when he got into the elevator to go to his room and several black people joined him. He stood in the corner of the lift waiting for the pounding only to find out that they were just normal, nice people and that what he’d seen on the television was not representative of black people in the U.S. (gasp! Television isn’t true??)

Either way, the little holiday park was interesting, to say the least. I’ll have to let the pictures speak for themselves.