note to self

canadians get angry when you say that canada is pretty much like the us.

americans get angry when you remind them that the canadian dollar is doing better than the us dollar.

i said the first jokingly (kind of), and when a fellow canadian became rather irrate, i tried to recover by making the second comment, thus angering the american walking with us. he wouldn't talk to me the rest of the afternoon.

oddly enough, being surrounded by international students in sweden has made me rather more patriotic than i have ever been before. but i still hate that word.

oh, and then there's this: apparently 'washroom' is a distinctly canadian word. it's the linguistic equivalent of maple syrup, really. whenever i say it people either start laughing or give me that "you make no sense" look i've come to love so well.