More strange things about being in New Jersey
While we were on the charter bus, when we arrived at the country club, the bus inhabitants broke out in applause for the driver.
The wedding guests applauded the mother of the bride and the parents of the groom when they walked down the aisle.
I found this to be very odd, but it also caused me to remember similar applause events during previous trips to the Garden State (including one thoroughly unremarkable airplane flight that got applause).
One lady, on hearing that there were people from North Carolina at the wedding, came and sought us out. She told us that she had been to South Carolina several times on business, and she had always been touched at how warm and friendly the folks down there had been, and she wanted to welcome us to NJ and show us some northern hospitality.
I went to the bride's parents' house the first evening I was in town, and was urged no less than 5 times to eat more, in what I felt was a rather stereotypical fashion - 'eat, eat, there's plenty!', repeat.
There were several extremely minor incidents of people complaining or griping about things in a way that would have been taken very differently by a southerner had they been on the listening end of the gripe or complaint. The northern listeners were generally argumentative - for example, one man had gone to get coffee in spite of there being a coffee carafe on his table at breakfast. The waitress said 'What's wrong with this?' The man replied that it wasn't hot enough, and they actually stopped and discussed whether the coffee was hotter in the carafe or in the big pot, for a while. It was just a friendly exchange up there; it would have gone very differently down here.
My NJ cousins and aunt and uncle greet everyone by kissing them on the cheek. This always throws me, and I still have no idea how to respond.
Driving is different, too, not just the regional differences in following distance, behaviour in roundabouts, and at yellow lights and yields, but also the jug-handle left turns instead of left-at-the-light turns (these are quite different from Michigan lefts, as my Indiana cousin points out, having driven both), and navigating not by the name of the road, but by the name of the biggest store at the intersection of the road and the highway you're getting off of (the Target road, or the Home Depot road).
Truly a foreign country.