Attending a conference in USA

I arrived on Sunday in the US. The flight was a long 9 hour journey from Germany to New York. On arrival, they asked for a special interview because of my last name matching with someone else (Shahrukh Khan? :)  But they were very nice in the interview and afterwards they skipped my customs line. Then the next flight was to Minnesota, where I had an American from California sitting with me. He was a very cheerful guy making jokes with passerbys, who also always smiled and replied jokingly. This was the 2nd difference I noted from Europe. The first was, that here they offer/use much less juices than soda, and use too much ice. The weather is excellent, but the distances which look small on maps are not that small to walk.The hotel is very nice for such a price, with big rooms and a pool+sauna. Another thing I noticed was that all the cups used in the conference, whether for water or for tea/coffee are compostable. Almost everything is recyclable; i don't know whether in the whole of US? The conference organizers were obsessed with shrimps, which they offered in every event.