8 Reasons Why This American is NOT Moving Back to the US | American in The Netherlands

hi everyone i'm ava and i'm an american living in the netherlands and today i want to talk about why i will not be moving back to the u.s at least anytime soon so a bit of background to this is that a couple of weeks ago i visited the u.s just a short trip to see my family and i was kind of curious about what i would think when i was there because it was only my second time back since i moved to the netherlands thanks kovid but regardless you know it had been a while since i had gone back and i was curious to see if my impressions of the us had changed since i lived in the netherlands for a while i was also curious about whether i would develop feelings of wanting to move back to the us so i was particularly attuned to how i felt there and what i want to share with you is how i was surprised to find that even though i love the us i am american i love the culture that i grew up in but i was surprised that i overwhelmingly felt that i wasn't ready to leave the netherlands and that i really wanted to continue living in the netherlands because i felt that there was a better fit so in this video i want to talk about that i came up with a few reasons why i felt this way some of them are very personal others are a bit more systematic and at a societal level but before i get into that thank you itaki for sponsoring today's video now i'm really excited to work with itaki because italki is a language learning platform and i am a linguist and i love all things about language learning now what i like about italki is that they offer one-on-one conversations so if you are someone who needs a native speaker or an advanced speaker of the language you're trying to learn this is the perfect place to find one now what's great about italki is that they're running a special in september so that if you take your first lesson in september you will be eligible for a lottery for free lessons for three whole months 40 lucky winners will get free lessons worth a total of 305 euros and if you don't know on italki that's actually quite a lot because i find that the lessons are reasonably priced i mean especially if you're thinking about the fact that these are one-on-one personalized conversation lessons and i've used italki myself in the past so i can definitely recommend that so here's some great highlights about italki that i want to share with you to kind of give you a feel for what the platform is like well the first thing is that in addition to these lessons on the side you can also practice for free with the italki community so that is a nice plus and i want to mention their trial lessons because i actually really like that you can get three trial lessons when you sign up and they start from as low as one euro so that's pretty great this gives you a nice opportunity to try out the platform and see if this is something for you and i already mentioned the september campaign that they have going on so if you take that first lesson in september you'll be eligible for this lottery and you will maybe get to take lessons for three months for free i love the word free so i cannot promote this campaign enough so to try that out click on the description box below and use the link that i've included down there for you what's also nice is that if you use my code dutch you will get five dollars off when you make a purchase worth ten dollars so that's also a nice additional incentive to go ahead click on that link in the description box below and check out italki it's actually surprisingly easy to register on their platform okay now back to why i will not be moving to america anytime soon um you know if you are dutch or european and you're watching this just be happy in general because as i was writing down some of these things i thought man the us still has a long way to go and of course the netherlands for instance i live here so i can say this that it's not perfect it's pretty great but it's by no means perfect and every place has something to work on but in comparison i feel like i'm very grateful to have this opportunity to live here because things are a whole lot better so enough of that intro the first thing i want to share with you today is how i find that americans tend to have more superficial friendships now maybe you've heard in some of my videos that i talk about how americans like to do a lot of small talk hey how are you and how are you is you so often that it just means hello it's not a real question but besides that you know you think that okay these small talks are a great way to have conversations meet new people i mean i actually believe that i think there's a nice function of these small talks but do you ever get past that and sometimes i will say yes but here are some issues that i've had as an adult so in college i found it pretty easy to make friends and also form deeper friendships because i think people just were all in one place at the university campus and we know we had classes together same in high school but what happens after that and i've had this conversation with many americans who live in the us and we've realized that friendships in adulthood tend to be way more superficial so what will happen is that you'll meet someone maybe you'll have the best time ever you'll have this great connection and you'll just see sparks flying in your friendship after you've had this great connection and meeting with this new person what i find happens in the netherlands is that people then frequently will ask you to hang out or they'll you know make plans with you and of course the dutch have their own friend group built in already so it's very hard to get to that point but if you have a connection with someone you've had a great time you most likely will be invited to their birthday or something you know something or another it's not that they just forget about you in america they forget about you i cannot tell you how many times i've had this the same conversation with people you know we'll have this nice time and then at the end we'll be like oh my god we should do this again you think we're gonna do it again no and the funny thing is both people both parties know that that's not going to happen there are very few instances where you actually follow up on that but generally if you have a nice time and then afterwards you know you're parting ways you just say hey we should do this again sometime or afterwards when you message them about something random you might say like let's catch up soon i mean what are you gonna catch up on you've met this person a couple of times like once but you always say that and then it will never happen if you're european you might be thinking this sounds very strange why do they do that now there's a perfectly good explanation for this just kidding there's no explanation for this i have no idea why this happens but it happens so often number two on the list is the fact that in the u.s you have to drive everywhere i mean sure if you're lucky enough to live in the city great but then if you want to leave the city tough luck good luck trying to get a trade or a bus out of whichever nice city you live in because the easiest way to get around in america is honestly just by driving here in the netherlands not the case i can just show up to the train station without reserving tickets in advance and go places yes it's expensive but do you think it's any cheaper to take the train in the us it is not do you think it's more efficient to take the train in the u.s it is not so i am very happy with what i have i could see that you know maybe the trains could be made cheaper but in the us it's just expensive and honestly if you wanted to get between new york and let's say washington dc and you want to take the train it's going to first of all be like three to four times more expensive than the bus and it's probably going to be late the amtrak and you would need to reserve at least three or four weeks in advance and americans don't like to plan so i don't know why they thought this was a good idea like it would probably work better in the netherlands where you don't need to do this you just hop on the train if even if you want to go to another country you can reserve not that far in advance and yes there are also buses but these trains and buses only go so far and i understand that the us is really big but because of it you do have to drive everywhere it's a driving country and there are some places where the trains and buses just don't go there so my parents decided no idea why they decided this but they decided to move to upstate new york from new york city i know i know i mean they live in the mountains and it's all really beautiful like for those of you don't know upstate new york is gorgeous has a lot of great nature but you have to drive like where my parents live i can't take the train all the way there they have to come pick me up because i i don't drive and the second thing is something that i've also just noticed from talking to friends who live in the u.s so it's not just from my trip there but my trip there definitely brought this to light again and that is that americans are so obsessed with the rat race like their careers and that is really their main focus now of course you know there's like better work-life balance in europe and that is something that i talk about but what i didn't realize until you know i went back and then i all the conversations that i've had with my friends came up to the surface again is that for americans for a lot of americans work is their number one priority so if they can make a life choice like to move abroad or to do something fun and that jeopardized their work or that meant that they couldn't spend more time at their work they wouldn't choose to do that other thing because work is number one priority and also they're always trying to get ahead of everybody else i also think that there's something to be admired about ambition that's definitely a great quality but it's this is everybody so if you are someone who wants a bit more balance or who doesn't subscribe to that rat race then you're going to have a hard time living in the u.s because when i was there for instance when i was getting my phd i felt like i had to be doing all of these things all the time that came with the program you know publishing working all the time like it was a badge of honor that you wore when you could say like oh i worked late last night i pulled an all-nighter and here i think people would just be like well why did you really need to do that they would question your priorities and i think that's healthier for me personally so i think for that reason i wouldn't be able to go back to the us and work there and immediately dive into the u.s working culture number four i decided to pull this out as a separate point because it irks me to the very core and that has to do with not just leave in general but maternity leave or birth leave you know family leave for when you as a family gives birth well the person with the uterus gives birth and then the partner of the person with the uterus if they have one like how much time do they get to spend with this offspring that they've created what an interesting choice of terminology there but we're just gonna go with it so in the u.s you are protected for up to 12 weeks of family leave this is eligible for both the person with the uterus and their partner however it is with zero percent pay that's suspension right like are you you're getting penalized for doing the one thing the human species is supposed to do reproduce now i will say that some states have taken it into their own hands to pay the people who need family leave a percentage of their salary so this is 50 in new york state i know that for a fact uh but 50 is not that much now in the netherlands you as the person with the uterus giving birth you get 16 weeks in total and here's the nice part you're required to take four of those weeks at least before you give birth not in america i've seen people ready to pop like they work until the last minute listen i admire these people with uteride uteruses never know what the plural is who work until the very last minute how are they doing this but in the us you're kind of forced to do that because you can take leave after unpaid leave by the way now in the netherlands you get 16 weeks in total four of those are before now as a partner recently there have been some great changes where you get six weeks and this is a bit more complicated the first week you get off immediately and i think that is full pay and the remaining five weeks is with seventy percent pay seventy percent pay is not great but now when i compare it to what i could have had in the us as a partner of someone with a uterus i think to myself i'll take the 70 and it also doesn't vary depending on what state you live in although how funny would it be in the netherlands if they had different laws based on the provinces in limber you could take six weeks with eighty percent pay and in south holland you could do that with i don't know twenty percent paid that would be ridiculous i don't see that working here anyway um but it is funny to think about the us as this like huge thing where things vary so much so it is hard to you know make general statements period but it's harder to do that in the u.s because every city and state is so different so that's also something to keep in mind now you listen to the us's maternity leave policies and you think to yourself wow the u.s is lagging behind and it's true and this is not the only thing that they lag behind in and these are the things that also irk me so two of the things that i thought of was which are both very current is one is that there's still people in the us who like don't believe in climate change they still need to be convinced of it and i i don't know so the country as a whole lacking behind in that and the second one is recently there was this abortion ban in texas so as a person with a uterus i am offended by this abortion ban and yes it's in texas but i don't know how it's going to apply to the rest of the country this is what i was talking about it's so hard to talk about the us in general where the states are also semi autonomous or autonomous uh to some degree so yeah interesting right this happened really recently i don't know what to say about that it's also a very strange band and it has some really weird components to it where it makes citizens into bounty hunters where they can sue people who've assisted in abortion this is like the most american type of ban i've heard like i'm gonna sue you and get money out of it like no this next thing i wanna talk about is something that took me by surprise and it didn't take me by surprise because i didn't know that it was a thing it took me by surprise because i didn't expect to feel that way i'd completely forgotten about it and that was the feeling of feeling unsafe so often now in the netherlands i've gotten used to feeling safe most of the time now in the u.s that's not the case the moment it is dark i feel so unsafe and i didn't expect that um it also comes from the fact that there's a lot of gun violence and violence in general in the us so the statistics also just support that it's not that you know it's not just a feeling it's also supported by the amount of violence and crime that happens in the u.s versus the netherlands now personally when i lived in philadelphia i was actually jumped and mugged on the street i know you may be thinking rite of passage living in the big city but it was actually pretty traumatic it took me some time to recover from that experience because someone when i say jumped maybe you don't know what that means but let's say someone attacked me on the street and then took my stuff it was very short-lived a period of few seconds but that really had an impact on me no it wasn't the end of the world or anything of course and it wasn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things but feeling unsafe and then actually things happening to you is a part of life in the u.s just like in the netherlands you expect your bike to be stolen at some point in the u.s these things can happen to you now if you are european and you've lived in europe most of your life and then you go to the us you may be surprised to see how many homeless people they are outside it is really heart-wrenching this is because from my experience from what i've seen wealth inequality is a huge problem in the us there are a small small percentage of people who have everything and then there is everybody else who has very little and that shouldn't be the case there should be social security i really feel strongly about this that we should be doing our best to take care of everyone and needless to say there's more of that in the netherlands and on top of it what i find really sickening is this idea that lots of people have in the us that if you are homeless it's somehow your fault that you're not working hard enough you're lazy that you just decided to become addicted to drugs news flash most of the people who are addicted to drugs who live on the street become addicted to drugs because they live on the street i mean you need to find a way to deal with that and if they were maybe more social programs to help people then maybe this would be less of a problem and finally continuing on that note i want to talk about how i feel that in a lot of instances the u.s as a country just does not value people as much as they value businesses and profits this sounds harsh but it is true if you look at some of the cases like the incarceration rates in the u.s where people who are incarcerated work they work in prison and they work for really really low wages these are well below minimum wage and they're not sustainable in any way so that is one and then on top of it add the fact that the death penalty is still a form of punishment in 27 u.s states that is more than half so this is obviously a point that has more to do with ideals and the system and society as opposed to my personal experience but it is still something i don't agree with and as a member of society you engage with these topics and i find that here in the netherlands you know where they don't have the death penalty where the prisons are actually empty and being repurposed for other things like in uthrac there's a prison that has been converted into office buildings that's actually pretty nice i went in and was like this is a nice place anyway so this is obviously a difficult topic to talk about so i'm going to leave it at that but all i want to say is that if you live in a country where things are different a little better you know i would like to hear about them first of all in the comments and second i think it's a great time to think about these things and be grateful for what we have if you live in a society that matches with your ideals that's not something to take for granted [Music] you

Channel: Dutch Americano

Views: 67,010

Keywords: reverse culture shock america, reverse culture shock back to america, nederland, life in holland, the Netherlands, American expat in the Netherlands, expats in the Netherlands, American in holland, American in the Netherlands, Dutch culture, American vs Dutch culture, moving to holland, moving to the Netherlands, italki, italki review, italki teacher, italki video, language learning, learning language, education, american abroad

Id: nBAGoYf6r-A

Length: 18min 45sec (1125 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021