Geographical stereotypes.

Something I've learned about the UK is that there are major geographical stereotypes here. It's crazy that, in such a small country, there can be such a well-known and distinct personality for every region. And the accents vary widely, as well. My flatmate is from up north, and since London is in the south, people comment on it all the time - "You're so northern!" 

I mean, we have that in the States too. 

I'm mostly "Mexico-ish", with a side of "Yes sir and yes ma'am" and a pinch of "Chicago and grass."

But what's weird is that even though the Americans in our building come from very different regions of the country -- California, Michigan, Virginia, New Mexico -- none of us have very identifiable accents (okay, so maybe one does), and we all have pretty similar personalities. In fact, people comment on our similar accents all the time. To which you might reply "Oh, they just think all Americans sound the same," and while that is probably extremely true (ask any Brit to do an American accent, and they'll usually say "cwa-fee"), we really don't notice much of a difference in our accents either. 

And yet, I swear that just about every single British accent in our whole building is noticeably different from the others. It's strange. I guess you'd expect that with the thousands of miles between, say New Mexico and Virginia, Lisa and I might at least sound a little different. Especially when you consider that the entire UK is just under 95,000 square miles, while the square mileage of New Mexico alone is almost 121,500.

How'd they get so many stereotypes in such a small space? Crazy.