The USA in general

Hi everyone! The Unites States is an interesting country, and in this post I’m going to tell you about the USA in general.

The flag of the USA is usually called «Stars and Stripes», «Old Glory» or «The Star-Spangled banner».  The United States of America got their own flag on the 14th of June 1777. The design of the flag has been very different through the years, but the current version has been used since 1960. The current flag has fifty blue stars and thirteen white and red stripes. The fifty stars symbolises the fifty states in the union, one star for each state. The stripes symbolises the first thirteen states that formed the republic.

All the states has a common federal government that consists of the president and vice presidents’ office in The White House, and 15 ministries. A president leads the government of the USA, and the current one is Barack Obama. He was given the title for the first time in 2009, and was being reelected on the 20th of January 2013. The president is elected for four years, and accedes on the 20th of january the year after the election. The vice president is always elected together with the main president.The current vice president is Joe Biden. 

 

Washington D.C(District of Columbia) is the capital of the United States of America. The State was originally divided into five different counties/cities called Georgetown, City of Washington, County of Washington, City of Alexandria, and County of Alexandria. Both the White House and the Congress is situated in the City of Washington. In 2013, the population in Washington was 646 449 inhabitants.  

The American dollar is the currency of the U.S today. The symbol of the dollar is «$», and is often written «USD». When the Americans talk about money, they usually say «bucks» instead of «dollars». 1$, 5$, 10$, 20$, 50$ and 100$ are values that are in use now. One dollar is the same as one hundred cent(¢). The coins that are in use now is penny(1¢), nickel(5¢), dime(10¢) and quarter(25¢). At the moment, one USD is worth 6,55 NOK.

Independence day in the U.S is the 4th of July, and is the National day for the Americans. The federal holiday is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, carnivals, barbeques, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, and so on. On the 4th of July 1776, was the United States decleared independent from Great Britain.

 

Some of the most famous buildings in the USA are located in Washington DC. These are called The White House (Where the president lives), U.S Capitol (Where the Congress and Senate are governing the country), Jefferson- and Lincoln Memorial (These are memorials after previous presidents) and the Pentagon (US Department of Defense building). In New York, you can find the Empire State building (The tallest skyscraper in NY),  Statue of Liberty (Which was a gift from the frenchmen, it is located at Liberty Island) and United Nations building (That you can consider as a «parliament» for the whole world).

 

I hope you enjoyed my post, and maybe learned something new. I’m looking forward to write the next one, and update you guys.

Lots of love, Synne