9 Reverse Culture Shocks in the USA after Living in the UK!

we just you gotta read the sign to see if you can bring your gun in basically welcome to america hey guys welcome back to the girl gun london channel if you're new here my name is kaelyn i'm an american who's lived in the uk for almost 10 years and i'm tired of my intro so if you have a suggestion for a new intro leave it below the basics are i'm an american as evidenced by my accent i typically live in the uk i have for the past 10 years but right now i'm in america and actually i'm in one of my childhood bedrooms i have divorced parents so i have multiple childhood bedrooms but this is one of them and i have to say the natural light for filming in florida is so much better than my room in england um people get very offended when i make these very factual statements like there's more space in america than england or the natural light in florida is better than the natural light in england and this is not meant to be offensive or a jab at my home in the uk or any of you brits out here it's just a fact so i'm enjoying the natural light um it is not entirely sunny there are a few clouds in the sky so you know we'll see if it feels like england anytime soon probably not uh because we are in the depths of a florida summer which is an entirely different beast than anything you'll ever experience in england and i don't necessarily mean that in a good way anyway so in this video i thought that i would talk about some of the culture shock i've experienced being back in the us things that i'm just not used to anymore or that i've noticed about my surroundings that i wouldn't have noticed when i was living here but now that i live in the uk and am coming back to visit i'm definitely noticing okay so the first weird thing about america that i'm noticing is the roads are so straight they just go on for miles and miles and miles without making a turn this is what makes an american road trip so much fun because there's not as much stress involved in getting to your destination because basically you just get on the highway and you go like 700 miles and you don't make any turns and your car just goes straight we use cruise control here in the states a lot because you're just going straight but that is really weird to me coming from the uk where we've got the roundabouts you're making turns like average with the roads themselves even if you're not turning off the roads are turning um so yeah the street roads here are definitely weird however it's not all straight roads if you go to the northeast particularly somewhere like boston i know boston is definitely not straight roads and that's because it was set up by the brits back in the day um but places like florida that you know suburban florida it's all straight roads um so yeah that's gonna be number one the straight roads you can see it even when you're landing on the plane you just look down and you just see roads going on forever straight as can be and that is my first culture shock okay so my second culture shock or reverse culture shock i should say because this is my home culture um are there are flags everywhere like american flags everywhere um on homes everywhere at businesses everywhere outside of businesses i to have like a school in the uk flying the union jack out front i've never seen it i don't know if it happens let me know if it does but we love the flag in the u.s it is seriously you drive down the road you go flag flag flag flag flag everywhere um so that's a kind of reverse culture shock that i've been noticing is all of the flags everywhere and i've talked about this in another video but american homes like we do sometimes have the american flag out front that is very popular people might also do like the state flag i feel like it's getting more popular to do the florida state flag but i'm like most people are in florida are from somewhere else so it's a little bit weird um but places like texas that have like a lot of state pride you'll see the state flag and you'll also see just like random flags that say things like happy halloween or summer's here or it's fall y'all which is totally an american phrase that i have learned since being here um fall slash autumn in the us basically starts like july because people are so pumped for halloween but back to what i was saying about flags uh we could you could fly a flat like a a house flag that says one of these phrases just everywhere just any american street just drive down it and you'll see all the flags okay the next reverse culture shock on a more serious note that kind of freaks me out are the signs about whether you can or cannot bring your firearm into that particular location so i have seen signs on something like the walmart that says kindly do not bring your firearm into this establishment some things have no signs some things are like uh no concealed firearms a lot like it's a very different world constant reminder that people here could possibly all around me like be armed and when you're in traffic you're like do not honk at that person because they might have a gun totally different than in the uk where i can walk around freely without worrying um if someone is going to like lose their temper in traffic and have a bad situation so that is definitely one of those things these are the one of the downsides about america that i feel i definitely feel safer walking around in the uk not needing to worry about whether the pub accepts my firearm or not because guess what it doesn't because uh no one has one so that is a culture shock happens to me every time i come back here again didn't even think about it for one second until i left the us um but yeah we just you gotta read the sign to see if you can bring your gun in basically welcome to america okay so my next reverse culture shock is about everybody going out to eat um and also as i'm saying is completely unrelated i feel like the actual florida sun is making me very washed out so maybe this lighting isn't even the best maybe i was i don't know maybe the english lighting is better but i'm definitely feeling like it's hitting me hard i'm looking a little bit like a ghost um i actually have gotten a tan since being here but you can't see it in this video so anyway everyone goes out to eat it is so much more popular in the u.s to go out to eat on a regular basis than in the uk and by regular basis i'm talking about multiple times per week going out for lunch for dinner for breakfast i feel like in the uk people cook a lot more people cook here but not to the extent that they do like in the uk i feel like the default is we're staying in whereas in america i feel like the default is kind of like we're not entirely it's 50 50. the default is not necessarily that we are staying in to eat and cooking here it's kind of a toss-up whereas in the uk you'd make specific plans in advance we're going out on friday it's a special occasion americans just we go out to eat all of the time i feel like we do have a lot more like restaurant options and i'll qualify this because i know people in the uk are going to be like what the heck like america just has olive garden and outback which by the way i'm not knocking because i like those places um but i feel like in the uk it's very like you go to the pub or maybe you go to like an italian place or maybe like a thai place the kind of like catch all family restaurants i don't actually feel a like the chains are that good in the uk or b that they're that popular um especially around where we are um about an hour outside of london i just feel like we don't have as many options here in florida at least you have just got endless endless endless restaurant options i'm not saying anything about the quality of the food versus the uk i'm just saying i feel like we have more options and that makes sense because i feel like there is more of a market for people going out to eat here okay the next reverse culture shock is the four-way stop so we have intersections in the u.s a lot more commonly is that a phrase a lot more they are a lot more common than a like a roundabout i've talked before about like there are roundabouts in some parts of the us but not here where i am in florida we don't understand roundabouts we have intersections so a you could all be stopped at an intersection with the red lights not going anywhere so that definitely makes my husband annoyed when he's here because he's trying to like redesign the traffic to be more efficient based on the uk style but in general even if you're not at a stoplight you could be at a four-way stop intersection with four stop signs and in that case whoever gets to the stop sign you go in order of who stopped first so if you in another car are coming from opposite sides you've both got stop signs you both stop and whoever got there first is the one who is allowed to go first if it's not if you get there like exactly the same time you're gonna have to look at them and be like a hugo no you go kind of situation um we don't i have never seen this in the uk doesn't fit with the way the roads are there um so the four-way stop is a funny kind of traffic reverse culture shock uh for me every time i come to america okay the next culture shock and for me this is in a good way is the amount of space in the u.s the parking spots here i swear it would fit like three british cars everything particularly in the suburbs is just massive the roads are so wide again plenty of parking basically all free thank god that is one thing about the uk that i cannot get on board with how we have to pay for parking practically everywhere here so much easier you go to i mean we i can't think of if you go to like a city yes you'll have to pay for parking worry about parking here in the suburbs absolutely not parking is free everywhere you go hospital it's free it's free it's amazing but this wasn't about that this was about the space um so yeah we have more land in the u.s again this is not a knock on england uh i prefer having more space but england can't help this size so um please don't be offended british people by me saying i prefer the space in america i just grew up with this i feel like i've just got room to spread out to run around not that i run around anywhere um but it doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic as sometimes it can in the uk and this even relates down to the size of houses i showed you guys the size of emily's apartment or at least the size of like her guest bathroom which i feel like is basically half the size of my two up two down uk terraced house there's just a lot of space in america that i'm not used to having in the uk i do really like it but that is another reverse culture shock and the next reverse culture shock as these rays of sun i didn't actually set this up to like make anyone jealous of this florida sun beaming into my room but as somebody who does suffer from seasonal depression and the uk winters i'm soaking it up as long as i can um so the next thing is the sheer amount of selection america just has a lot of options we like having our options you go to the grocery store and there are like a hundred different types of cereal as opposed to maybe like 10 in the uk and i do think this is like a cultural difference so i'm not saying that one is better than the other we just we like our options on the menu when you go somewhere we like having 50 options as opposed to like 5 or 10 of like the best uh you know meals we we want 50 options it might not be like great options but we prefer to have 50 of them as opposed to five and america bigger is better more options so even when you like make a decision here about what kind of bread to buy it's just it's just crazy how many options that there are okay so the second to last reverse culture shock thing i've experienced as always is tipping in america so tipping in america is very very common it's expected it's not necessarily you do it for good service but you do it anyway so if you get good service you might give an even greater tip but if you have a waiter or waitress at all you tip um it relates to them not being paid enough they're not paid a living wage it's hugely problematic uh and a lot different than the uk where they are paid a living wage and then you might tip for like really good service on top of that so i'm not arguing against or or for tipping or anything but tipping in the u.s is what you do and it can add like quite a lot onto the end of your check or bill um the amount that something costs just always costs uh you know 15 to 20 kind of 20 more because of that tip that you are expected to leave so that's something that i have stopped taking into account in the uk when i'm ordering or thinking about the final cost of going out to eat totally different in the us you need to account for that extra money for the tip speaking of extra money that you need in the u.s the final reverse culture shock that i'm experiencing is because the price of something on the shelf is not the final price why because we have something that we call sales tax which is not baked into the price on the shelf i think the reason for this i'm almost 99 sure is because sales tax varies by county which are relatively small areas so the sales tax in my county could be seven percent but the sales tax in the next county ten minutes away could be six percent different states have different things and so when you go to a target or a walmart and you're shopping and you see something cost 9.99 that is not the final price and i forget that living in the uk when vat and any kind of tax is already baked in you should expect to go to the checkout or the till as they would say in the uk and you're going to have to pay extra on top of what you thought it was going to cost because you haven't accounted for that sales tax there are certain things that aren't taxed there are certain states that have different amount of taxes so again this is not like an all-encompassing this is exactly how much to expect everywhere you go but definitely uh don't be surprised when you go to pay somewhere if you thought it was going to be 20 and it's like uh you know 21 or uh whatever the the increase is it's because that sales tax is not included in the price on the shelf it's included when you check out okay so i hope you guys enjoyed this video um and really following me along on my journey i know a lot of you have been around since the early days of january six months ago seems so long ago of this channel and me traipsing through the fields near my house in the uk all the way to applying for my visa my indefinite leave and citizenship and finally being able to come and visit the us thank you guys so much for being here and for watching and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Girl Gone London

Views: 62,707

Keywords: american in the uk, american in england, american expat in england, british life, american across the pond, american expat

Id: TIzzBpWrbzg

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021