The American Way (2 Hour Reddit Stories Compilation)

people who have visited the us what is your wtf america story when i went to the u.s the first time and ordered a meal from burger king ordering a large fry coke and a whopper i was blown away by the size of it all each item was larger than the same item back home i was already like what in the world but then the cashier said i could have a second whopper for one dollar again i was like what the heck sign me up another time while i was in daytona i went to a restaurant and the woman kept refilling my drink again and again being a bit shy i did not tell her to stop and expected a bill with 15 for sodas but then i found out the refills were free incredible free refills i'd only seen that at places like subway but so many restaurants in the us had free refills i love the us for restaurants and food in general the portions are massive and very reasonably priced i'm from canada and went to cece's pizza in florida holy crap five dollars for an all-you-can-eat buffet which was basically a fast purse to witness a crap ton of gluttony that was on another level had a similar experience at a bar we ordered a pitcher of beer and when it came out of 5.50 we all looked at each other in bewilderment the waitress then apologized for how expensive it was for those that don't know a picture of average beer typically costs 16 20 canadian dollars i'm from america and i have a friend from australia it amazes him that there are so many flags everywhere apparently that is a distinct usa thing he'll make jokes about how we all forget where we are on a three-week trip to the u.s last year i counted over 1 000 u.s flags i don't think i've seen that many australian flags in australia despite having lived here for nearly 30 years french x exchange teenager in cali here summer 97 i was young and missed the field trip bus to disneyland from san diego so i did something pretty stupid i hitchhiked to go there by myself dude who took me looked like a plaincloth cops but a good buddy when he heard i was friend she told me to never ever hitchhike in usa because it's pretty dangerous plus people could assume i am a serial killer so i boasted look at you you don't think i am a serial killer i am not that dangerous looking or you are careless he told me to open the glover box in front of me there was a sip possibly loaded freaking dessert eagle inside he dropped me at the bus station and insisted to give me ten dollars for ticket i had cash and waited for me to go in the bus i saw fifty chicken nuggets for five dollars went to walmart the fabled creatures there are just as the internet portrays them as nonetheless still mind-blowing my first trip into a walmart i saw a man in a brass button blazer with perfectly brill creamed hair sparkling white teeth orange skin and white slacks that looked like he had stepped right out of an advert from the 1950s he was with a very large woman wearing i love my gay daughter t-shirt i was so happy so do you live in east germany or in west germany sorry my world encyclopedia set is from 1985. a woman was quite surprised to learn that we don't celebrate thanksgiving in the uk to be fair they celebrate thanksgiving in canada when i first moved to america one of the first things i saw after leaving jfk was a homeless man masturbating outside of union station it wouldn't have been that strange except i had heard a lot of things about nick from people who had been there or knew someone who knew someone etc and i was worried what i was seeing was just going to be an everyday everywhere thing all throughout the country those gaps in your toilet store doors what are they even for peeking when i started chatting to a cashier she squealed and asked where i was from i told her australia and she instantly dumped down how she spoke do y'all speak english down there i replied sporadically she laughed and informed me that wasn't a word singaporean here i feel your pain you speak really good english for an asian korean friend who just got off the plane in atlanta so men are big fat black women yes he said it loudly and in public but my favorite was a japanese fellow who went to a buffet with a group of us in vegas he sits down and his plate looks like a normal little meal we all have heaps of crap all over ours and his eyes bug out that we have so much food i said he's really going to freak out when he realizes this is only our first plate so many big fat black women i would like to imagine that this was expressed with great joy i was 12 years old when i spent a month in minnesota i remember going what the heck or at least a french equivalent when we went to mall of america and i saw the frigging roller coaster inside of it me paying at gas station attendant hears i have an accent smiles at me you speak english so well thanks although i should do i'm from england cue confused look wait they she trailed off speak english there her colleague stared at her an open mouth disbelief and then broke out laughing with the other customers she looked mortified to be fair i felt terrible for her she was only trying to be friendly to a foreigner how spread out everything is like it's pretty much impossible for me to survive without a car while everywhere i needed to go on a regular basis back in london was in a 10-minute biking distance also the number of pickup trucks people owned without needing especially out here in the west the metro area i live in is like eight percent the size of london population wise but it'll take you 45 minutes by car to drive from one side of town to another if you live anywhere in america outside of washington dc new york boston downtown chicago or a few other places it's vital to own a car do you have cell phones in norway this was in 2012 kids nowadays get an iphone and or ipad before they're born must be very painful for the mother i asked an old lady if it's true all americans carry guns she smiled and pulled a revolver out of her purse she was a nice lady they're complimentary with your birth certificate here i visited from canada a couple years ago everyone was very nice and had the exact same mildly interested reaction to a credit card with a chip we've finally started transitioning to these in the last year or year and a half we're a bit behind when i first came to the us and my dad took us to a restaurant i ordered a fish dish and when it came out i asked my dad how come the fish doesn't look like a fish i was used a whole cooked fish so deep fried fish fillet looked really strange to me i had the opposite dining in france i was not expecting my dinner to stare at me i was complimented on my excellent english by a girl from ohio i'm canadian she thought we all spoke german after moving from africa as a teen i am repeatedly asked why i moved to africa in the first place to which i reply that i've always lived there i am also asked so why are you white to which i reply oh my god karen you can't just ask people why they're white however when they reply with blank stares i realize they aren't referencing mean girls was in northern new york near buffalo and a waitress over her that i was headed back to the pacific ocean she asked where i was going and i said vancouver no honey vancouver is in canada and that is on the atlantic ocean i said canada is from c2c just like america she replied no that's not right only america's from c to c the combination of her being absolutely sure about something and her total ignorance was surprising enough but the fact that she felt she should basically interrupt our conversation by telling me i am wrong about what ocean i live beside was weird that's western new york i'd never been out of australia before in australia only farmers and cops have guns and some criminals i guess so i had never seen a gun that wasn't in a cops holster in my entire 30-year existence we go to the us for our honeymoon and have the honor and privilege of visiting a walmart the guns are just on the shelf you can touch them a fellow aussie friend who was with us at the time asked the cashier if she could hold one he looked at her as if she had asked if it was okay to breathe the store's hair can i hold one this big one she asked incredulous sure if you want to the guy said confused and bored at the same time she picked up this big ass gun sorry not a gun guy don't know what it was it was about the size of a shotgun but was bulkier and was getting us to take photos of her with it if i had a gun like that at home and walked outside my house with it someone would drive past and see me in about 10 seconds they would call the cops which would take about 30 seconds the police station is just up the road so i estimate a cop car would arrive in about three minutes and it would take about 10 seconds for a cop to ask me politely to jump in his car and come for a nice chat down at the police station but it would be fun for four minutes about the size of a shotgun but was bulkier that sounds like a shotgun canadian was in a gas station waiting to pay before prepay took over and a couple of guys with handguns in holsters were in line in front of me resting their hands on the guns not so much what the heck i knew to expect it but it's a memory i think of often as a texan a group of people with their hands on their holsters would make me extremely nervous it's one thing to carry or even open carry acting like you might draw that gun is another thing completely when i went to florida i was stopped by the police for jaywalking i protested that the road was clear so therefore safe to cross he said i don't know how you do it in your country be here in the us we take road safety seriously aghast i explained i was from england and my only knowledge of jaywalking was from lethal weapon 3 and that i believed it was just a made-up law that they used in the movie to sass people he chuckled and said that's a great movie i prefer the first i agreed and said it was by far the best after a brief chat about the entire lethal weapon saga he said in future make sure you use the crossings i agreed but asked in a pretty decent south african accent what if i have diplomatic immunity he chuckled nodded his head and pointed to the crossing and said cross there enjoy your vacation and off he went it was the highlight of my holiday he said i don't know how you do it in your country be here in the us we take road safety seriously as someone living in nick i can't help but laugh at this jaywalking is a way of life that said i got the nastiest looks in japan for doing the same and would be terrified of getting fined in switzerland apparently that's a thing though i've never gotten fined when traveling there asked a girl in the hooker lounge if she knew where new zealand my home country was she replied asking is that the country above us well it is a globe if you get the angle right you'll hit new zealand eventually a couple i went to university at cal state fresno i was the country boy from canada when i was there the entire downtown of fresno was boarded up and you did not go there after dark actually any time and a full-blown gun gang fight outside of my apartment in clovis a suburb near the university for a kid from small town canada that was mind-blowing a couple i went to fresno that was your first mistake even californians avoid fresno especially californians was it an all-you-can-eat buffet with a soft-serve ice cream machine as kids we thought we were being little pigs by swirling as high as we possibly could while our parents weren't looking or they certainly would have stopped us the guy after us grabbed a full-sized drink tumbler and filled it up with ice cream no shame at all no child like gliad making the mother of all sundays i suspect now it was something he did regularly the first rule of all you can eat buffet there are no rules only the strong survive i'm canadian and i went down to the us to do a little shopping i accidentally pulled out some canadian bills in the cashier asked why i kept monopoly money in my wallet there was a place called norma's in washington state somewhere rural anyway it was like a shrine to george bush the owner was guy in the back of a menu had his face with the quote just call me normal on the back best burger i ever had called the gerage w bush burger a universal what the heck for both foreign and u.s citizens the golden corral everything was submerged in liquid butter the patrons were larger than some cars one time at golden corral many years back i saw an overweight guy in suspenders whose chest primarily due to the suspenders was a freaking square he wasn't round instead he was wide but flat he was only about five feet five inches so that likely played a role into his geometric shape as well which was the most mind-blowing thing i'd ever seen from a golden corral first night in la watched as a stolen cop car and a million cop cars flew past me down hollywood boulevard at 60 miles per hour at 10 pm then i turned and walked back into the thai restaurant where i watched the fugitive get pit maneuvered and shot dead live on the news via helicopter chase cam dude sitting next to us was excited to tell us we had officially experienced the over-the-top car chases action chase cam news neon lights in hollywood an asian restaurant that made me feel like i was in an art film he was right i've told this story on reddit before but my biggest what the heck was in fall 2005 google earth had just come out and my colleague at the universita lab and i were looking at it she was a blonde bombshell from san diego and i'm a portly indian boy when i showed her mumbai my home city she was blown away you have buildings look there's an airport oh my god you have cars how the heck do you think we get around i asked her reply still rings on my head not walking not cows not elephants not bicycles not horse-drawn carts she said camels if i ever saw a camel in mumbai i'd stop everything i'm doing and say holy crap that's a freaking camel i went to disneyland in anaheim and it just struck me that there were a large number of disabled people out and about enjoying the rides i'm from india where there is no shortage of disabled people but it was just a sheer number of disabled people that made me extremely happy that the park was accessible to everyone you done good america i said to myself as i ate some horrible expensive fried thing i later realized that most of those people were not disabled but fat people on scooters who did not feel like walking where do i sign up non-americans what is the most shocking thing you saw when visiting the united states woke up early on vacation in florida and the sidewalk outside my hotel was absolutely covered in lizards and it was amazing today i was in a shopping center and there was a woman pushing a push chair around however it wasn't a baby in there but two dogs that's more common than i'd like to admit right aid i can get a flu shot hiv test a bottle of tequila snickers bars and pizza pockets all from the same store awesome ihop i can get an entire day's worth of calories in one meal also having one dollar notes made me feel like i was rich i had a huge wad of notes bit like 20 of them were one dollar but still it's a nice feeling i'm vietnamese and when i moved to the us cars outnumber motorcycles so it was like going to the future the less shocking was seeing white and black people because i have never seen other races before i was surprised that i couldn't buy over the counter cough syrup without it went to a walmart in maine that was so huge the ceiling met the floor at a horizon also they sold liquor there on the cheap peruvian here the first thing my mother and i said was wow everything is so quiet i'm from singapore and we're pretty much a conservative and reserve society i visited the us for an elective program at ucla go bruins and the thing that struck me most about america was everyone's friendliness or socialness people just strike up conversations with you ask how your day's been and really connect with each other based on whatever's happening around them the weather how long the wait for the bus is etc and somehow these fleeting connections were very real and genuine to me i came back home a much more enlightened person with my horizons very much broadened so thank you americans for showing me simple human kindness i was told i speak very good english i'm english french living in california american are super friendly and will engage a discussion whenever they can oh and american speak very loud too i was walking to target the other day and this woman was shouting at me asking for directions she wasn't panicked or angry or anything she was just shouting whole camps of homeless people living under highway overpasses in new orleans in new orleans those people are referred to as the middle class clean air clean tap water people even drink it wtf i came here from russia people wishing me a good morning and saying hello when i didn't even know them always had a misconception that americans were mean and rude wouldn't say would be shocking but just a tad startling basically flags flags everywhere on the pavements in the windows on the side of buildings up poles on cars on doors on posters pretty much anything it could be stuck to oh and the real comfy feeling of diners genuinely felt welcome in any i went for a cup of tea always got a raised eyebrow and a question when i asked for hot tea instead of iced tea that seems like such a strange idea to go into a diner just for a cup of tea i'm from australia and i couldn't believe how high the water levels are in your toilet my balls nearly touch the water how ha also your drive-through atms crazy yeah when i went there i suddenly realized why their toilets overflow when they get clogged in australia the water in the flush isn't enough to overflow the bowl how freaking big the cars are i'm italian if you like those prices you should go to costco 4.5 gallons of ketchup 1 and 30 cents so much types of fast food canadian as well i'm used to like max 4 choices but in the states there's like 15 and there's a definite hierarchy of quality i'm american but i live in hawaii and visited virginia which was more than just a time change i have never in my life seen so many restaurants they are everywhere it felt like every second business was a restaurant and there weren't any hills where i was so directions were given thus take a left at the golden corral then right at the cracker barrel if you get to the olive garden you've gone too far the us is huge and even states adjacent to each other can be very very different from each other the experience is a person who visits san diego california compared to rural west virginia or houston texas or wyoming is very different if you think mcdonald's is cheap you should go to speedway you can buy like three hot dogs and not even spend a dollar these hot dogs will probably kill you if you eat too many of them but still they are cheap sam's club hot dog for 99 cents 30 ounces drink 89 cents combo 1 and 70 cents it's like a huge ass hot dog too coming in from china it was amazing how not crowded the public transportation was well after i got over the lack of public transportation sure rush hour was busy but i didn't have to wait for three trains to pass to rudely push my way into the subway also no one stole my stuff drive through banks my cousin from vietnam flew into america sometime in december and she recalled that her first reaction was wow there's so much sugar covering the ground it was snow but she really thought we sprinkled sugar everywhere for shoots and giggles why she's never heard of snow i don't know but it was adorably hilarious yep we frosted the north just for her this is probably the most interesting thing i've read in a while i love to hear people's views on our country i just came back from three weeks usa and i remember being shocked by the huge amount of diabetes products in your average walgreens glucose meat is everywhere here in holland people don't just get diabetes and if they do it's mostly type 1 and then i tasted butterfingers frick then i understood as an australian who just came back from america this year what the frick man you guys have pretzel m and m's share that crap around frick give us tim tams brit with a short list after visiting florida one felt very very weird not recycling empties two battled by savory food getting a sweet accompaniment pancake batter corn dogs pizza and cookies etc three the cars being so big driving a crown vic felt like being a bus driver 4 everyone being so friendly took me two days to figure out how to react to random conversations with strangers awesome trip i never expected a culture shock i lived in china until 1999 grade 5 in elementary school then our family moved to dallas texas within the next year the following things were very surprising to me one everything is ridiculously big from the size of our apartments to people's houses to the size of roads to the length of time it takes to get downtown we lived in north dallas near arapahoe and hillcrest two school classrooms resembled something like a wonderland there were bright colors everywhere tables are put together into clumps instead of ordered in neat rows from back to front then there were stuffed paper mache animals on the walls with people's names on it cute little mailboxes for everyone tvs and computers in every classroom a cafeteria filled with tasty foods and snacks and playgrounds with swings three we were learning 405 equals 2000 in math class 4 the nice people at church actually took their religion seriously like actually believed it to be real i always thought religions were stories you learn because they were important cultural stories that had some education value like the story of prometheus giving fire to humans for example i used to teach english in china i can see why you are so impressed about the state of american classrooms considering what the average chinese classroom looks like your students are amazing to teach though even the naughty kids were a welcome break from the average british pupil how hard it is to get a drink i'm irish and over 21 and in california even with a passport and driver's license i was treated with skepticism blood started to enter my alcohol stream a few times while i was there shudder brazilian here everything is so freaking cheap from food to soda to cars and computers everything is a tenth of the freaking international price there were a few things both awesome and scary which shocked the obvious ones are food related obesity related which have been said to death here and in other threads for me in a road trip across america it was the sheer size of cities towns etc along highways coming from australia the sheer number of people and large cities was astounding nb i haven't been to china or india and while i have traveled elsewhere nothing compared to usa for me with regards to this children on a leash never seen that in europe confederate flags on trucks in vermont yeah that has become a redneck thing it's weird i have even seen black men rocking confederate flags tax why not put a freaking price sticker that includes it so i don't have workout if i have enough money for everything you have to freaking drive everywhere canadian here i first went to the us in the 90s when i was in my early teens i had assumed that people would be rude and worst case scenario shoot me i was shocked when people were friendlier than they were back home so where y'all from followed by a big grin was the most common occurrence it was awesome the water pressure in american showers is so freaking high you could seriously kill people with those showers whoa that is cheap macca's meals here in new zealand cost at least eight dollars and are upwards of ten dollars for a hunger buster or anything bigger a huge sing advertising hong kong with a big cannabis leaf in mexico we're killing each other in a stupid drug war and in the us is so casual that they have conventions it really shocked me i was on the west coast for about two months a couple of years ago i'm from the netherlands things that struck me one portion sizes your small pizza is our large pizza your medium pizza is our family pizza your large pizza doesn't fit inside our borders two clean streets i saw a lot of one thousand dollars littering fine signs must have worked because there wasn't so much as a cigarette but on the streets three space you have a lot of it everything is bigger taller larger wider and further apart four food is cheaper than in europe alcohol is more expensive five i figured out why you don't see a lot of american cars outside of america i'll stop here before i insult people 6 no aggressiveness at sport matches i visited a giants game in sf and couldn't believe my eyes when a giants and cardinalston were sharing a couple of beers and eating hot dogs together while cheering for different teams in europe we have two separate soccer fans from the moment they arrive in the game city until the second they leave to stop them from bashing each other's brains uh heads in also the entertainment value with all the songs and games is much higher than in european sports matches it's just football fans who can't be trusted in europe rugby fans are allowed to sit next to each other and drink alcohol etc there were not posters of castro everywhere pedzing ped means duck in thai zing means virgin racing depending on the accent those signs are warnings so you don't get caught up in a duck race that's some dangerous crap i was in the eminem superstore in times square and saw a woman so fat just so fat she used a scooter sigh that's unfortunately not exceptionally unusual when i came to the states from bangladesh i was shocked how rich people are so skinny and poor people are so fat in my country it was the opposite waffles from new zealand and i've only ever seen them in america non-americans have read it what is the craziest rumor you heard about america that turned out to be true surfer dudes actually speak like that californians speak like that too so apparently yellow school buses are actually a thing in america i honestly thought it was just a cartoon thing but nope i'm from quebec and when we went down to boston for a school trip i sneezed in public and heard two or three people say bless you quite a weird rumor i had heard not two months prior to that i thought it was nice i really want to check something in the movie series schools have a frick ton of extracurricular act ivs and clubs basketball football swimming cheerleaders chess and a lot of more how true is that also how serious are those games between schools my best friend is a teacher and runs a pokemon card game after school club pocket club or something he actually gets stipends from the school to run it so he gets paid to play pokemon after school it's also the most popular club in the school with a waiting list to get in that people actually get attacked by alligators which got in their pools specifically referring to florida here there are boa constrictors in florida as well i'm still not 100 sure is true so hopefully can confirm boy is pronounced bowie yup it's bowie booked on phone x doesn't work with a lot of maritime terms likely word is pronounced luward and bosun is pronounced both son the dolly parton has her own theme park in tennessee i thought it was a joke that woman is a son she has a book program for children where once they are born they will receive a free children's book once a month until they turn five that is amirah zing i always thought that the olive garden in the simpsons was just code for generic restaurant i studied in maryland for about half a year back in 2017. i'd always heard that americans alike super good at pie i was pretty much all alone during thanksgiving since everyone else was with their families one of the ras i'd befriended knocked on my door and brought me all different kinds of pie dear lord i've never tasted anything that delicious from blueberry to apple to pumpkin every single pie they were all amazing all the food is bigger free refills i actually don't properly know if this is true but you also have like a whole aisle in your supermarkets dedicated to just the hundreds of cereals you have mostly true it's cereal and other breakfast items like granola and oatmeal but mostly cereal i'm from australia and all my life i believed red solo cups were like 555 area codes a hollywood prop when i immigrated to the us my mill was making dinner and offered me iced tea in a red solo cup i lost it made everyone sign the cup i've still got it masked people come to your house knock on your door asking for candy mostly it's just packs of kids but sometimes whole families this was my friend's halloween culture shock it's a ton of fun to hang out next to the walkway in a costume pretending to be one of the decorations and scare people as they walk past you sports bars are actually exactly how they're portrayed on tv just much less attractive people drink sizes holy crap when my family visited in 2017 we landed in texas for a stopover first thing i saw in the shops part of the terminal was a dude who was drinking from what looked like an actual freaking bucket here in nz our large drinks would be considered an american small or maybe medium texas is known for basically having double sizes of anything from any other states biscuits and gravy is a legit thing also you can ride motorcycles without helmets in some states and your iced tea isn't sweetened unless you ask for sweet a good sausage gravy with sage and black pepper with some good flaky biscuits is one of the best southern comfort foods along with a cup of strong sweet iced tea two dollar bills crazy hospitable turned out to be true talkative turned out to be true as well american state and national parks are some of the most beautiful places on earth all parks could use more funding but american parks are well staffed and maintained there's real pride i love our national and state park systems one of my state parks recently got a herd of bison which i haven't seen in the wild since my trip to yellowstone the week i graduate i'm going to go see them and relax in nature the minimal amount of paid days off you get from work a friend of mine from wisconsin was very proud he got 20 days off per year if someone in germany would offer me only 20 days i would laugh at him and leave i get like 14 max and i have to accrue them as an american i think you could also ask this question to americans cause there are some weirdos states man dry counties cities where places aren't allowed to be open on sunday or there are only certain hours on sundays not being able to pump your own gas americans are nice and will stop to talk to strangers canadian here living in alberta to anyone who has never been you will be blown away by the general americans generosity of their time knowledge and helpfulness i have done a few summers of road trips from calgary one time i went to as far east as ohio tennessee as far south as new orleans and dallas went through the flatlands and rode up the rockies the rest of the way home i have visited almost all the landlocked states five more to go and four along the gulf states all by car i have been through a lot of big american cities and a lot of tiny towns all of you north to south make canadians look like bloody savages i expected something worse probably because of television and the internet i ended up leaving your country after the first time i visited blown away and with a newfound very real love for my southern neighbours been five times on multi-week trips we'll spend time and money there again 10 stroke 10. i've had several german friends who were amazed at house parties everyone actually does drink out of red solo cups they thought that was just a weird thing people did in movies and now they think it is a huge conspiracy or something so student loans how does it work in usa in the uk when you go to university you take out a student loan and after uni when you earn a certain amount per year a percentage above that threshold goes towards paying it back however if you don't earn that much idk how much maybe 2025k per year then you pay nothing then after a while if you haven't paid it back 30 years maybe 40 then it just disappears and you don't have to pay it in america do you have to pay regardless of income is there a time limit after which debt expires and disappears that you can identify texans with the simple phrase the stars at night are big and bright parents were from the ussr they were freaking shocked on how nice you americans are they said that you're a weird type of nice but nice regardless it didn't even matter they were from the ussr move to the state's post collapse you americans seem to accept them anyway that hawaiians really like spam yeah and there's a perfectly good reason for it too after pearl harbor the effects of world war ii started in the us and rationing became a thing well it turns out that it's kind of hard to get fresh rations to an island that imports a lot so for meat they had to make do with spam human ingenuity prevails and dishes were made and that's how hawaii learned to love spam the honking i thought it was a movie stereotype and then i went to new york it's rare outside of big cities demo before i moved to america i heard about dishwashers that crap sounded too good to be true well imagine my surprise that was me with lawnmowers people wear i was used sheers and scythes lawnmowers were magical to me that american kids eat straight sugar walked onto the playground and saw kids chugging these long thin sticks i try and it was just colored sugar lol called them pixie stix oh boy wait till you find out about fun dips you have a hard candy stick so all sugar that you lick and then dip into colored sugar to make it stick to the sugar stick then you lick the sugar powder off the sugar stick after you finish all the powder you eat the stick the take me out to the ball game song that's apparently sung at baseball games still not entirely sure that guy wasn't taking the p out of me yeah it's a thing at the seventh inning stretch not everyone sings it but they play it on the pa you can see into the public toilet cubicles female here i've been in bathrooms where the gap between the stall and door is so big i felt the need to cover it with my purse just to get some privacy but the absolute worst is when some mother brings her grubby handed son on the bathroom and you see a freaking eight-year-old's eye staring at you from the other side of the door not really crazy but i just learned you guys have like outdoor sirens that get tested somewhat frequently i've only heard those noises in video games and movies until my friend sent me a clip because i had no idea it actually happened in the midwest therefore tornadoes 2017 in athens georgia i passed out at work and was fine but my boss had already called an ambulance and insisted i get checked out a less than two mile ambulance ride cost me nine hundred and fifty dollars with insurance i was only dehydrated my friend has seizures everyone knows how to handle them one day he was with a girl who didn't know about them and she called the ambulance he doesn't have insurance and they did a full round of tests he's since had to get a third job and he's still paying off the visit they have milk and gallon cartons when i visited america i went to a supermarket for some breakfast stuff cereal and milk all they had was milk and gallons who could possibly have that much milk i asked for a smaller carton than the lady who worked there just laughed at me and made a remark about don't we like milk in england many supermarkets have half gallons and quarter gallons but honestly i'm surprised that's an issue i live alone and go through a gallon of milk in just a few days [Music] free soft drink refills in restaurants like wth before i came to the states as we called it i lived in germany the area i lived in had no fireflies so when i got to the states i did not believe my eyes as i finally saw fireflies light up the world as i fell asleep i also thought that new york city was a popular fictional city i didn't believe it actually existed at the time it seemed too large and extraordinary to possibly exist that there are many libraries of all kinds in the united states that they are able to drink from the sink i tried that and spit the water a taste like crap in my country but when i went to america it tastes great people at walmart one of the nicest people in one of the towns i lived in is pictured on people at walmart he's known as willy the pimp or just mr willy older gentleman just likes to dress flashy because it makes people smile to see beautiful things before he got too old to drive you could spot his car by the flower arrangements he attached on the side of the front bumper how much people smoked weed uk here as a brit living in america the amount of pharmaceutical commercials on tv is creepy smiling person living life to the fullest narrator side effect include anal bleeding gigantism lupus skin shedding and death ask your doctor about proloques today that public transport is almost non-existent in many smaller towns which makes it a necessity for teens to have their own cars 100 so if you want a job when you're 16 you better live walking distance to your job or have your parents get you a used car of sorts the sas exam being multiple choice multiple choice exams in general that you can get into university just by being good at sports like wtf europeans who visited america what was your biggest wtf moment did a house exchange in new jersey from uk and on the second day a neighbor came to the door with an actual cherry pie to welcome us and ask us to dinner it was one a huge confirmation of stereotype two really touching and sweet i was also wonderful btw three a bit weird because we knew our neighbors wouldn't give a flying frick and we felt bad colon not a wtf moment but nevertheless a moment i will remember it was my second trip to california i was only 18 years old when i got out of the plane as usual i had to go through all those severity checks at the last checkpoint the officer asked me whether i have anything in my suitcase that i didn't mention onto cbp thing then he asked for drugs and then for alcohol i honestly answered all questions with no one surprisingly he asked me why not a bit confused i told him that i knew i wasn't allowed to take drugs or drink alcohol in his country he got interested and asked whether it was different where i'm from germany here the minimum age is 16 for light beverages like beer and wine and 18 for the other stuff like spirits he was so interested he kept asking stuff for like five minutes not even minding the 100 people behind me when he let me pass he instantly turned towards the guy and the other checkpoint was like hey did you know double quote damn i just realized a lot of people's first experience in america are these clowns at sar first thing i saw after sitting down to have my first beer in portland was some guy walking in the middle of the street half but dressed as a ninja with two swords on his back oh and before that some homeless guy told me and my friend to go back to your country then some slightly hippie looking girl apologized for his behavior we just laughed at how scripted the situation felt and when to have the beer above also when you play grand theft auto you hear strangers on the street yelling and talking about weird crap that just felt exaggerated until i went to the us and realized it actually happens all the time ironic that a homeless guy tells you to go home in 2015 i went to florida we walked past a crazy golf place and a guy was holding an alligator in his arms he also told me he had an eight-foot alligator in the back i'm from england so i don't think i'll ever quite get over just how casual he was having a freaking alligator in his arms that's very much a regional thing my wife is from florida and isn't phased by alligators i'm from georgia alabama and i won't go near the dang things i went to pay with card in a restaurant and the waiter just took it and walked off sometimes people just give me their card while i'm working i'm from canada and once they hand it to me i panic and have to explain to them that they pay themselves with the machine and that we don't do it for them we have a lot of americans coming down from alaska because i live on a highway that goes from alaska down to washington state not european but arab went to some diner in portland oregon and i ordered coffee halfway in my coffee she asked me if i wanted a refill i politely declined telling her i was short on cash she laughed and said refills are free of charge and to top of my amazed reaction she complimented my shirt needless to say she cured my hangover and i fell in love had my cousins come over from latvia for a few weeks they never got over the absolute size of stores like walmart and the sheer amount of products offered excuse me i ordered a small my dad was in tennis last year he said it was really strange that everyone says hi to you i am vacationing in denmark right now and it feels so cold that nobody says hi to me even in the elevator all the prices are pre-tax when i ordered a cap exinoid ihop and it came in a bowl-sized mug with cream on top and was filled with sugar and vanilla ihop was madness i think my order was about 9000 calories not european i'm australian but went to a walmart in arkansas it was just like stepping into the people at walmart page coma walmart calmer arkansas hi you jumped in with both feet right there european gone to texas the difference in religion is astounding it's so much more prevalent in people's lives here there are some beautiful churches in europe but they don't seem to have the same spirit as texas also holy frick the driving distances are immense an hour commute in the morning is normal for people 24 hours open grocery stores so no excuse if you forgot to buy milk in netherlands some days markets close at 6 p.m [Music] till europeans all visit texas it's the america of america back in 1987 and asking for a burger and ships then sat wondering why the hotel waitress looked at me funny then my food turned up on the other hand if you ask for fish and chips everyone in the u.s will know what you mean the only time that chips means french fries in the us is if it's preceded by the words fishland so i've been living in the states for three years now originally from england i turned to my co-worker one day and asked can i borrow a rubber she proceeds to do a double take and said what i asked again and told her it was to rub out the mistakes i made with the sketch i was working on she proceeds to burst out laughing and explains to me what a rubber really means i should have said eraser while in florida we went through a drive-through and the lady couldn't understand what i was ordering regardless of how slowly and carefully i spoke so i decided to go inside instead where the lady behind the counter couldn't understand me either i am a northern brit but not too too broad an accent my little sister had to put on her florida accent to order for us the manager who eventually took the order said she was sorry as the staff were only used to normal english law boston didn't notice i had left europe houston the people were as friendly as they were huge and loud hugely loud and loudly huge i guess nashville and other places i went kinda blend together in my head except for the delicious food oh and the person who asked if my country had coins and traffic lights i what yes i mean what i was extremely surprised that in fast food restaurant you will find unlimited soft drinks from time to time like a refill cup yet people pay extra for a bigger cup so they don't have to walk too often i guess so much water in your toilet bowls it's like you're taking your turd for a swim no we just love the splash of toilet water on our buttholes when pooping we make our own b days thank you very much while walking around austin random people would just give me a hay how's it going as they walked past in the uk if someone even looks like they might glance in your direction it probably means they're about to try selling you something i probably offended a couple of them with how defensive i seemed come to new york you'll like it we won't even look in your general direction there's freaking flags everywhere the american flag density per square km is so much higher than any other place i've been it's like every other house has a flag the number of american flags on display very very dramatically shot up after 9 stroke 11. your commercials on tv for prescription drugs we found the disclaimers for the side effects hilarious yes so do americans this is not me i read a story of four germans who had just finished high school and were going on a usa road trip of beer and herb in some places they didn't find out the drinking smoking age was 21 until they got there i had a foreign exchange student friend come from germany when we were about 19 stroke 20 and he ordered a beer the first time we went out to eat but he was shocked when they asked for it and denied him a drink we laughed and asked if he knew that 21 was the drinking age here he just replied yes i heard that but it seemed to ridiculous i thought no one would care jacksonville florida 2010 during some jazz blue street festival a lady across the street shouts either i shout back hello she clocks my accent immediately britain woo briatain i nod slightly i go back there in a month for the first time since i left my hotel in texas at 7am stopped at mcdonald's and got enough breakfast sandwiches to last me through lunch i then stopped at a gas station to get gas and six and two cokes i gunned it through texas sometimes going over 90 miles an hour i stopped one more time to go to the toilet and get gas and snacks at 7 30 p.m i stopped at the hotel to spend the night i was still in texas from beaumont to el paso is almost as far as paris to budapest guy casually selling scorpions on the vegas strip probably was at a fourth of july party in the middle of the woods chilling having a great time and some beers ziplining from a tree into a lake it was like a 90s film come true out of nowhere this redneck comes in with an ar-15 slung over his shoulder shouting let's shoot some crap up naturally i shat myself and made to run into the woods before realizing he was just a guest who turned up a bit late he turned out to be a really nice guy i'm canadian not european it's still the first time i saw a dude walk by me into a bank no less and he stood near a cop with a gun on a holster and not cause crap it blew my mind i went into a pizza hut in nevada and the guy working the register was open carrying it's normal here all arguments for or against aside the space you guys have so much unused in touch space it's crazy in europe there is barely anywhere that isn't owned or isn't being used in europe we have protected forests in america you have some unrestricted uncontrolled forests that are massive tell that to scandinavia they have all this freezing cold land and no people to populate it with it blows me away that stockholm has less than a million people in it and it's the biggest city in sweden i grew up in suburbs that were more populated than that i'm actually in nick right now so that was good timing i'm from the uk yesterday i went to central park and there were literally two guys just driving around on swagways with giant gut snakes around their necks occasionally they'd take them off and dangle them around the nearest random person i was actually frozen with horror in florida how amazingly friendly people were whilst talking absolute nonsense to make us happy we are from wales in the uk this guy at a burger store asked where we were from and started to tell us how he loves wales then went on about how his mum lives there we asked what part of wales does she live his reply paris i think i'm an aussie who visited usa hope it's okay for me to crash this thread we loved our visit loved the whole bloody place but i was absolutely gobsmacked when i found fruit loops with marshmallows i genuinely did not think it was possible to make froot loops more unhealthy but you guys did it love your work we're here for a good time not a long time initially it was people not understanding my accent but i am used to that now idk i can understand you just fine so many flags they were everywhere i used to live in canada but live in the us now it was really weird to me that when i use my debit card it can be ran as debit or credit didn't make sense and to my knowledge doesn't really make a difference in the us there is a law protecting credit card users from back in the early 70s i think that gives you legal recourse against theft and other things you don't have those protections with a debit card since the credit card companies charge less for debit transactions the store would prefer you do debit as a us consumer you are much safer using credit this in 2013 paying water bill by sending a check in the mail giving credit card information trough the phone the entire tipping concept when i was in las vegas i saw this 300 kilogram specimen pouring three packets of sugar sweetener into his pepsi at the breakfast buffet most americans would think that whole sentence is freaking disgusting i went to vegas and saw a homeless guy with a sign that said kick me in the balls for 20 this huge dude was well up for it he had a bit of a run-up and hoofed him right in the knackers this poor [ __ ] was rolling around in agony but got his money as an american this bothers me too [Music] i had that moment in almost every restaurant way too much food on my plate and even a small coke is a large coke in my opinion what's interesting is to see the differences from north to south as well when i visited the south for he first time i ordered a medium meal at a mexican place and was handed a tray full of food and a drink that was definitely a large up north later on for science i bought a large drink and honestly they're like a liter or more but dang i love me some sweet tea now went to florida for holiday and it felt like every third car was a toyota corolla i think there was an absurd amount of the exact same car in mostly the same color red and it was blowing my mind d couple we stayed with were hugely nice but very religious and overweight they voted for obama and then trump also drove us four hours for a day trip the bread is inexplicably sweet a nice healthy pancake with blueberries for breakfast was actually five pancakes with blue syrup and whipped cream i could get used to root beer floats though i could get used to root beer floats though a rare sentiment from a european mostly i hear that europeans think root beer tastes like toothpaste my brother lived in tampa for a while when i went to visit any american i spoke to told me their life story their military career how many jobs they have kids they have how old they are etc i took a 40-minute trip in aruba from the keys to weber end i'm not kidding this guy talked seemingly without taking a breath the entire time as a brit this was very very uncomfortable a guy i'm american and i hate talkative uber lyft drivers i'm hoping in the future the app has an option to choose quiet ride every time i fly into jfk i'm appalled at how rude and incompetent all the employees are so many freaking homeless people in sf sf was the first place i went in america and it wasn't just the homelessness that struck me but how many of them were amputees we have homelessness in the uk but they mostly have legs europeans who visited america what was your biggest wtf moment in 2015 i went to florida we walked past a crazy golf place and a guy was holding an alligator in his arms he also told me he had an eight-foot alligator in the back i'm from england so i don't think i'll ever quite get over just how casual he was having a freaking alligator in his arms that's very much a regional thing my wife is from florida and isn't fazed by alligators i'm from georgia alabama and i won't go near the dang things not european but arab went to some diner in portland oregon and i ordered coffee halfway in my coffee she asked me if i wanted a refill i politely declined telling her i was short on cash she laughed and said refills are free of charge and to top of my amazed reaction she complimented my shirt needless to say she cured my hangover and i fell in love had my cousins come over from latvia for a few weeks they never got over the absolute size of stores like walmart and the sheer amount of products offered when i ordered a cappuccino at ihop and it came in a bowl-sized mug with cream on top and was filled with sugar and vanilla ihop was madness i think my order was about 9000 calories not european i'm australian but went to a walmart in arkansas it was just like stepping into the people at walmart page comma walmart calmer arkansas ha you jumped in with both feet right there european gone to texas the difference in religion is astounding it's so much more prevalent in people's lives here there are some beautiful churches in europe but they don't seem to have the same spirit as texas also holy frick the driving distances are immense an hour commute in the morning is normal for people a lot of u.s states are larger than most eu nations yes back in 1987 and asking for a burger and ships then sat wondering why the hotel waitress looked at me funny then my food turned up crisp with a burger wasn't a thing back then on the other hand if you ask for fish and chips everyone in the us will know what you mean the only time that chips means french fries in the us is if it's preceded by the words fishland so i've been living in the states for three years now originally from england i turned to my co-worker one day and asked can i borrow a rubber she proceeds to do a double take and said what i asked again and told her it was to rub out the mistakes i made with the sketch i was working on she proceeds to burst out laughing and explains to me what a rubber really means i should have said eraser while in florida we went through a drive-through and the lady couldn't understand what i was ordering regardless of how slowly and carefully i spoke so i decided to go inside instead where the lady behind the counter couldn't understand me either i am a northern brit but not too too broad an accent my little sister had to put on her florida accent to order for us the manager who eventually took the order said she was sorry as the staff were only used to normal english lol boston didn't notice i had left europe houston the people were as friendly as they were huge and loud hugely loud and loudly huge i guess nashville and other places i went kind of blend together in my head except for the delicious food oh and the person who asked if my country had coins and traffic lights i what yes i mean what i was extremely surprised that in fast food restaurant you will find unlimited soft drinks from time to time like a refill cup yet people pay extra for a bigger cup so they don't have to walk too often i guess while walking around austin random people would just give me a hay how's it going as they walked past in the uk if someone even looks like they might glance in your direction it probably means they're about to try selling you something i probably offended a couple of them with how defensive i seemed come to new york you'll like it we won't even look in your general direction there's freaking flags everywhere the american flag density per square km is so much higher than any other place i've been it's like every other house has a flag the number of american flags on display very very dramatically shot up after 9 11. this is not me i read a story of four germans who had just finished high school and were going on a usa road trip of beer and weed in some places they didn't find out the drinking smoking age was 21 until they got there i had a foreign exchange student friend come from germany when we were about 19 stroke 20 and he ordered a beer the first time we went out to eat he was shocked when they asked for it and denied him a drink we laughed and asked if he knew that 21 was the drinking age here he just replied yes i heard that but it seemed to ridiculous i thought no one would care jacksonville florida 2010 during some jazz blue street festival a lady across the street shouts either i shout back hello she clocks my accent immediately britain woohoo brian i nod slightly i go back there in a month for the first time since i left my hotel in texas at 7 00 am stopped at mcdonald's and got enough breakfast sandwiches to last me through lunch i then stopped at a gas station to get gas and six and two cokes i gunned it through texas sometimes going over 90 miles an hour i stopped one more time to go to the toilet and get gas and snacks at 7 30 p.m i stopped at the hotel to spend the night i was still in texas from beaumont to el paso is almost as far as paris debuted the pest was at a fourth of july party in the middle of the woods chilling having a great time and some beers zip lining from a tree into a lake it was like a 90s film come true out of nowhere this redneck comes in with an ar-15 slung over his shoulder shouting let's shoot some crap up naturally i shat myself and made to run into the woods before realizing he was just a guest who turned up a bit late he turned out to be a really nice guy this is hilarious i'm canadian not european but still the first time i saw a dude walk by me into a bank no less and he stood near a cop with a gun and a holster and not cause crap it blew my mind it was somewhere in texas it was something like 30 years ago and for all i know he was breaking the law and just didn't get caught in the minute or so i remember looking at him i went into a pizza hut in nevada and the guy working the register was open carrying it's normal here all arguments for or against aside the space you guys have so much unused in touch space it's crazy in europe there is barely anywhere that isn't owned or isn't being used in europe we have protected forests in america you have some unrestricted uncontrolled forests that are massive tell that to scandinavia they have all this freezing cold land and no people to populate it with it blows me away that stockholm has less than a million people in it and it's the biggest city in sweden i grew up in suburbs that were more populated than that i'm actually in nyc right now so that was good timing i'm from the uk yesterday i went to central park and there were literally two guys just driving around on swagways with giant butt snakes around their necks occasionally they'd take them off and drape them around the nearest random person i was actually frozen with horror clearly this is more of a regular occurrence i also saw even more of these snake dudes at the statue of liberty today maybe they are following me in florida how amazingly friendly people were whilst talking absolute nonsense to make us happy we are from wales in the uk this guy at a burger store asked where we were from and started to tell us how he loves wales then went on about how his mum lives there we asked what part of wales does she live his reply paris i think americans don't have mums so he must have been lying i'm an aussie who visited usa hope it's okay for me to crash this thread we loved our visit loved the whole bloody place but i was absolutely gobsmacked when i found froot loops with marshmallows i genuinely did not think it was possible to make froot loops more unhealthy but you guys did it love your work we're here for a good time not a long time i used to live in canada but live in the us now it was really weird to me that when i use my debit card it can be ran as debit or credit didn't make sense and to my knowledge doesn't really make a difference i knew there was a difference it just seemed strange when i first moved to the us in the u.s there is a law protecting credit card users from back in the early 70s i think that gives you legal recourse against theft and other things you don't have those protections with a debit card since the credit card companies charge less for debit transactions the store would prefer you do debit as a us consumer you are much safer using credit this in 2013 paying water bill by sending a check in the mail giving credit card information trough the phone the entire tipping concept when i was in las vegas i saw this 300 kilogram specimen pouring three packets of sugar sweetener into his pepsi at the breakfast buffet most americans would think that whole sentence is freaking disgusting i went to vegas and saw a homeless guy with a sign that said kick me in the balls for twenty dollars this huge dude was well up for it he had a bit of a run-up and hoofed him right in the knackers this poor [ __ ] was rolling around in agony but got his money as an american this bothers me too i had that moment in almost every restaurant way too much food on my plate and even a small coke is a large coke in my opinion what's interesting is to see the differences from north to south as well when i visited the south for he first time i ordered a medium meal at a mexican place and was handed a tray full of food and a drink that was definitely a large up north later on for science i bought a large drink and honestly they're like a liter or more but dang i love me some sweet tea now went to florida for holiday and it felt like every third car was a toyota corolla i think there was an absurd amount of the exact same car in mostly the same color red and it was blowing my mind d pretty stereotypical stuff couple we stayed with were hugely nice but very religious and overweight they voted for obama and then trump also drove us four hours for a day trip the bread is inexplicably sweet a nice healthy pancake with blueberries for breakfast was actually five pancakes with blue syrup and whipped cream i could get used to root beer floats though i could get used to root beer floats though a rare sentiment from a european mostly i hear that europeans think root beer tastes like toothpaste my brother lived in tampa for a while when i went to visit any american i spoke to told me their life story their military career how many jobs they have kids they have how old they are etc i took a 40-minute trip in aruba from the keystone weber end i'm not kidding this guy talked seemingly without taking a breath the entire time as a brit this was very very uncomfortable a guy i'm american and i hate talkative uber lyft drivers i'm hoping in the future the app has an option to choose quiet ride 10 days in houston texas the amount of mexican food available chipotle etc caught my anus by surprise i had more than enough time to wonder why there is so much freaking water in the toilet bowl i'm sure it means nothing but it hurts my texan heart that you had all that mexican food available and chipotle is the example you choose us germans have the reputation of being deferential to all kinds of authority and may be deservedly so but when there is some trashy drama going on in a us supermarket there always seems to be someone who at some point threatens to call the manager of those shenanigans don't stop right away sounding like they are about to conjure up some omnipotent eldritch deity which executive powers do store managers have in america are there states where they can invoke some kind of castle doctrine and pull a gun on you it's just a way to have someone come over and properly defuse the situation by either giving some kind of discount or booting the person from the facility some places only the manager has the authority to do either without getting in trouble from the higher-ups i'd go into a store and everything had a price on it then i'd take it to the checkout and all of a sudden they'd had a load of extra charges on top of it why not just include it in the price so i know what i'm going to have to pay for it people things that happen in vegas don't count of course you're going to see weird and outlandish crap here that's what the city is known for holy crap guys i bought weed legally at a cafe and then fricked a prostitute legally sure i was in amsterdam but like wow it was weird just the sheer size of everything cos are all absolutely gigantic in fort lauderdale there seemed to be a parade of people driving on a sunday huge frick off trucks mustangs corvettes all of the bald eagle murica cars the food was gigantic in mexican restaurant we ordered a starter and main course each they asked do you want to quack and chips whilst you wait they give us a literal bucket of guacamole and the equivalent of about eight family bags of doritos tbh i felt like i was in a film the whole time i was there huge frick off trucks that made me laugh not me but a good friend of mine moved from france to florida he said he was having a smoke on his balcony when he heard someone in his apartment complex scream goddammit put the freaking gun down he doesn't smoke much on his balcony anymore that's good smoking is deadly in a reverse statement everyone in europe seems to know everything about american politics but i can only name the german chancellor merkel went to new jersey for work the classics portions are enormous and public restroom stalls might as well not be there considering the size of all the gaps toilets have a weird shape and hold too much water also everyone is so polite and talkative as someone who is really crap at making conversation myself this made me feel a lot less awkward talking to people so that was nice [Music] one waiter takes your card away at the burger joint two people with guns on their hip while doing their everyday wednesday stuff i'm from the nordics not used to the gun mania three attended a wedding everyone wearing suits that were a two three numbers too big four glass size when you go out to buy a soda large has a new meaning for me now five prevalence of religion in everyday life where i'm from nobody really attends church or talks about religion didn't realize that it played such a big role in the south six crap people ask you about regarding the nordics made me smile eight stroke ten like the place would visit again went to florida in 2014 i'm from england and there's people in the supermarkets who pack your shopping for you i always felt so lazy standing there while someone packed my food for me that space in public toilets doors that allows everyone to see you in your most vulnerable moment that's the dumbest design i've ever seen still rant about it 10 years later when i went to europe the bathrooms made me feel so secure it's like a small motel everywhere i read i was told that customer service in the usa was amazing then i visited nyc and it swung between decent and i can barely be bothered to deal with you actually you are an inconvenience this may be an nyc thing however wtf is up with your bread getting a normal whole wheat bread or the likes without 300 grams of sugar is min-blowingly hard to find i went to portland beginning of this year while on a business trip and i couldn't believe the amount of homeless people in downtown portland i am not talking about the odd person just sitting in the corner begging there were a couple of streets with homeless people just screwed on the pavement some laying down some sleeping some just talking to themselves and screaming this was the first time it really hit me at how big the class divide is in the u.s and how this is normalized i would like to believe if this happened in the uk it would be all over the news and don't get me wrong we do have homeless in london but not at this level while this is happening a few streets over you've got the most hipster of markets with people talking about stopping gentrification and change the country and i'm thinking look a few streets over mate there are about 20 people just on the floor homeless and no one gives a crap chicken waffle my god people what the frick is wrong with you it's delicious and i love it but i feel horrible feeling that way people have very profound senses of personal space especially when eating sitting down with someone else because there's an empty seat even in the market or park makes people genuinely uncomfortable in america american teachers abroad what is the craziest thing your students thought was true about american americans at my high school i was the immigrant mediator who would teach newly arrived russian and ukrainian immigrants and sometimes jamaican and haitian immigrants english and assimilate them into american society this was in southern brooklyn where there were thousands of russian immigrants coming in during the early 2000s every year i was picked for the russians mostly because i was from chechnya and new russian the biggest thing they would ask is how do they start with dealing drugs joining gangs and where is the nearest gun store they came from places with atrocious crime and often there were criminals and they probably heard about america's drug and gang problems and thought they could make a better living doing that in america they had watched movies like the godfather or even stuff like menace to society and thought america was this badass outlaw land when in reality their countries were a ton worse many of them came during the 2000s during the early putin era when crime was dropping fast and it became harder to be a criminal in russia but many were shocked that nyc was not the crime-filled nation it was back in the 1980s and 1990s he iei welcome to brooklyn i'm will master123 i'll be your immigrant mediator here's the steps to get your feed card and a list of local gun stores here's a common application to fill out to apply for the bloods crips and all the other major gangs in the area here's a list of gangs who are hiring and the positions they are trying to fill when i was teaching in spain i introduced myself to the class and told them i'm from miami i hear a kid shout out in spanish wow how is this guy alive csi miami dexter miami vice have really corrupted foreigners views of my city florida man i was living in tokyo in 2006 and the movie eight mile was still a pretty big hit over there when people would ask where in america i was from and i would respond with detroit they would go nuts they would immediately ask how many shootings have i seen if i knew eminem and so on i could feel my badass points going down each time i responded with number this thread is teaching me if someone in a foreign country asks me if i shot someone i say yes i was presenting at an exhibition in shanghai of about 95 percent chinese people and a young woman came up asked me where i was from i am white with brown hair and eyes when i said i was american she looked battled and responded but don't all americans have blue eyes a lot of people also think all americans are fat and tall it is a bit more understandable when the person is old an old man in a shanghai park asked where i was from and when i said the us he hollered then how are you so short i'm just over five feet too in south korea here have been asked by co-workers if high schools really have vending machines full of birth control pills also if i know any cowboys not the football team and if i have a gun back home students ask me if i know obama some kids yell obama anytime they see a black person in their books or in a video we're working on that just start yelling oh my god is jackie chan every time your student comes into class they asked me to explain what white trash meant and then they got confused when i said that it didn't apply to black people this is one of the most interesting ones to me my students seemed pretty shocked i didn't personally know obama also they call every black guy obama and every black girl beyonce [Music] friend of mine did a few years teaching in south korea and every new class he taught there was always at least one kid who would ask him if he knew leonardo dicaprio they were always so disappointed when he said no i taught in korea for a while and it was always obama for me black friends that got it a lot worse when i was teaching english in japan i had a 15 year old girl ask me if i saw everything in blue because my eyes are blue i almost laughed but she was dead serious and everyone else looked at me expectantly while waiting for the answer not a specifically american stereotype but similarly indicative of an insulated culture which actually reminds me i also had an ethnically japanese co-worker who had grown up in las vegas but who also spoke japanese his students often refused to believe he was american they thought it was some elaborate ruse till many countries think american equals white and that's that a guy i knew when i lived in central america asked if there was time to get out of the way of the snow upon questioning it turned out that he thought that snow fell all at once fwo mp like a big blanket that would be freaking insane and also insanely dangerous first question asked was if i'd ever shot anybody then asked if i owned a gun then they seemed skeptical i was american an exchange student from italy was disappointed when he came to colorado and attacks by native american tribes weren't a regular thing anymore i'm from oregon and i'm also kind of disappointed that's not a regular thing anymore i was teaching elementary school in seoul the day's lesson was about asking people what they ate for various meals kimchi has eaten that every meal in korea pretty much and i asked one of the students if he gets tired of eating kimchi he says it's okay you don't get tired of eating hamburgers at every meal right note i am very thin i'm trying to think of an actual equivalent for america but i don't think anybody eats anything as frequently as koreans eat kimchi this is second hand but mark swordsman's non-fiction book partly about teaching in china in the 80s iron and silk had some disease in it a grown man asked him if the rumor he heard about america was true that we had machines that did our work for us that looked like people but occasionally went rogue and hurt people i think someone heard about the terminator and played telephone with it is the only explanation i've got pta or perhaps blade runner yes best game of telephone i've ever heard played out i teach in the middle east and one of my students was legitimately scared of gay people in america because he thought they were aggressive like they would pull you from a car and rape you aggressive just a lot of scary weird misconceptions about gay people i live in alabama and you'd think it was the case here when i was mentoring university students in kyrgyzstan u.s embassy outreach program they thought the bachelor was how we actually dated in the us how is this not the top answer it's such a perfect combination of traditional customs plus hollywood soft power i was teaching in the public schools in shanghai my students didn't believe me when i told them i was american because eh i was not huge b i didn't bring a cheese sandwich with me for lunch and c i don't own any guns i'm thinking i shouldn't go i'm fat and i own guns i would probably have a cheese sandwich or something along those lines i taught high school english in france some sample questions from students how many donuts do you eat per week how many celebrities have you met they were under the impression that celebrities were just walking around all over the place and around every corner in a country of 300 plus million how many guns do you own do you really only drink from red cups at parties does everyone drive a big car like a hummer how many times a day do you eat mcdonald's why does everyone in america go to church how many gangs are there in your city everyone knows only cops eat donuts every day i taught english in china for a while back when i was in high school they thought all white guys could surf shoot a gun and walked around without a shirt all white girls had huge boobs and were very stupid all black people were drug users serious note asian countries have a bigger racism problem than america i know it's because they didn't have much contact with other races but it's still just a few people that we have all but squished out of society making me look bad besides being asked if americans shower with their shoes on in order to keep them clean enough to wear in the house i've had to keep a straight face when a barely five foot skinny japanese girl asked me if she seriously had a chance to be a big black rapper's ho upon graduation if she went to college in the u.s other noteworthy ones were an adult student whose mind was blown when i told her that we have sewing needles she thought they were a japanese-only thing and a kindergarten teacher who didn't know that kat's cradle string games were known outside of japan studied abroad in japan and people were surprised that my english was so fluent i'm a white australian i'm super late to this party but i taught english in france for a year one day one of the kids made a comment about seeing me out running over the weekend the kid sitting next to him goes how did you see her if she lives in america the teacher was like wait what turns out this one kid thought i flew home to the us every day this was a fourth grader i'm an american in europe who tas and most things are from movies super and safe callous people everyone has a gun women sleep with anything that moves etc when i ask say a german if i should then base my opinions on how they are shown in movies i get a look of horror followed by one of understanding my point not a teacher but i'm from tornado alley and a group of students in new zealand asked me how do you get to school aren't there just tornadoes everywhere it must be so scary apparently they thought that there are tornadoes everywhere all the time and you just drive by on the road like oh look there's three tornadoes out today you should let them know that so long as you pay protection money the tornado gangs tend to leave you alone late but here it goes i work in what we would consider an inner city school in bangkok thailand these kids got kicked out of public school for behavioral issues so now they are at my school naturally these kids are the best academically they are 17 or 18 years old but have the english ability of a preschool kindergarten level so when they ask me questions they tend to mime everything out the two most common questions i get are teacher mimics hitting a bong smoke weed every day then the other most popular one is the boys will come up to me put their fists about chest high bringing it down to their hips while thrusting their pelvis forward teacher boom boom men a lady the best part is they look at me wide-eyed filled with excitement like i'm going to respond yes i smoke blunts the size of beer cans and then bang h not just an american thing but one of my teachers was in the peace corps back in the day and went to the philippines she said that all the kids thought that snow grew on trees because the only snow they'd ever seen was in pictures taught in england in the late 1980s all of the kids were dallas fans and thought that everyone owned a cadillac and that everyone carried a gun american in taiwan co-teacher you have guns in america right me yes co-teacher there to protect you from the black people right me um no i'm not sure where to begin with this the kindergarten students also think i go back to america to sleep every night and i live with my parents that last one is kind of cute middle eastern people are convinced that american women are total w they love to have sex with high heels on if you are a copier repair man you will get laid laid laid i'm teaching in china and a lot of the students people here believe that their pollution problem is america's fault that we have brought giant ships of garbage across the ocean and dumped it in china government propaganda probably while working in south korea one kid assumed i ate hamburgers every day i was like no there's lots of different kinds of foods like pasta and pizza why is most of the world america me how what do you mean you know north america south america central america latin america united states of america he was from a very small place in a south america so we scrounged up a world map and talked about it for a couple hours when i was teaching english in spain i was very earnestly asked if notre dame was a school or a minor league sports team truly a valid question kind of cheating since this was a teacher but i think it's too good not to share you be the judge was teaching in a japanese elementary school a few years ago this particular day i was covering a very international theme lesson with my sixth grade classes and covered some simple topics on china the us france and other countries just as i began to finish up the last class before lunch the homeroom teacher walks over to me and this conversation occurs in japanese just loud enough for our impressionable students to hear homeroom teacher so about obama he is not american right isotopic uh well no he is certainly american he's the president of america after all homeroom teacher right right but he is asian asia kelly i sit atomic the bell rings as i stand there dumbfounded this teacher had to be 40 or 50 years old and i didn't even want to think about what other nonsense she had been teaching kids about the world for decades tried to explain obama's ethnicity nationality and parentage to her and a few nearby kids as quickly as i could before the dash to lunch only partially succeeded and she gave me one of those quizzical hum responses tl dr ethnonationalism and whatever my former japanese colleague was smoking equals asian non-american obama watch japanese anime from the 70s not only is obama japanese but so apparently a marco polo columbus alexander the great genghis khan and zheng he english teacher in japan here i was once asked by an elementary school boy if there are police officers in america yes i said he then asked if i'd ever been arrested by one i think my answer disappointed him i work in the middle east and get a lot of casual n-word dropping i think because students hear it in gangster movies and pop culture and think it's just commonplace they have no idea that it's even slightly taboo i tried to argue one day and a student pointed out that snoop dogg said it about someone else so why can't he says something about our culture i guess i am not a teacher however my brother is over in germany he told me that he went to a skate park and got thirsty so walk to the snack bar area to get a water my brother hey could i get a water please snack guy hands him the water no here it's free my brother i appreciate that but i would like to pay snack guy no it's free see i am not an artsy my brother oh no no i wasn't implying that you were long story short apparently some german people think we think that they are all nazis still i'm confused how he would assume that wanting to pay him for the water equals thinking he is a nazi i taught a few english lessons in china while i was working there and was surprised that only a few minutes into my first lesson there was a widespread gasp when i began writing basic phrases on the board several hands shot up into the air immediately and i quickly realized that everyone's question was how long it took me to train myself to write with my left hand the average age in the class was probably 35 and all had us come from a generation where they were forcibly taught to write with their right hands even if they were natural lefties like myself not quite to the point of this thread but it sure was interesting [Music] my mother taught in australia from 1979 to 1986 her students found the way she pronounced things strange at times but other than that nothing weird the students just accepted she was american like a lot of the people they saw on tv she said the adults were worse my mother is african-american so she had to deal with racists my uncle called her a negro until my father told him to stop she also dealt with some guy on the street who called her a bloody negro when he bumped her car with his car my father was with her and instructed her on how to insult him so she pokes her head out of the car window and calls the guy a freaking [ __ ] having an african-american woman yell that at him caught him off guard so he shut up and drove away also a lot of the australians my mother interacted with found her natural hair very very interesting i taught english in china for a summer one of the chinese teachers a college graduate told me that china is vastly more ethnically diverse in america because in america you only have white people and black people actually i wouldn't say china is more ethnically diverse but there are 56 tribes of chinese people they all have different customs costumes dance blah blah i think that's what they mean by ethnic i wasn't teaching but while traveling i was asked by some school kids from london to confirm that it's illegal to talk in elevators in the states especially new york city from new york can confirm not a teacher but did do volunteer work in a lot of other countries how i disappointed people in various parts of the world i did not know britney spears chile i could not take them with me to adopt brazil i was not fat or stupid germany i could speak spanish spain and chile no i am not a s and will not freak you iraq i don't own any guns and do in fact know my way around international politics netherlands atheist netherlands your disappointment to them all jay canadian in japan when i worked at a junior high school one of my co-workers thought all north americans just don't eat fish or rice ever at all he was shocked when i told him i ate fish and rice all the time as a kid i'm pretty sure he thought it was just an asian thing asians thinking everything is just for their part of asia seems to be the theme of this thread my sister went on exchange in germany for a semester last year someone asked her if all californians surf to school i don't think they understand how surfing works i'm canadian and my esl students keep thinking i'm american american light one of my favorite moments in japan was when some colleagues asked where i was from and were puzzled when i told them montana what's your mlb team they asked because that's apparently a good way to locate things in america i laughed and told them we didn't have one well what's the closest one seattle i guess i told them since it's you know only a 12 hour drive seattle ichiro they said enthusiastically one guy always called me ichiro after that my kids here in korea were shocked when i told them i couldn't remember my blood type because pretty much everyone here knows theirs and it's supposedly related to personality traits i told them that blood type isn't really that important to americans and they didn't seem to believe it while teaching fourth graders how to tell time they told me that they go to bed anywhere between 11 pm and 1am and they definitely didn't believe me when i said that fourth graders in america go to bed earlier than that to them i guess kids everywhere are sleep deprived also a third grader once asked me why i'm so dark i'm mixed black and white people who have visited the us what is your wtf america story first night in la watched as a stolen cop car and a million cop cars flew past me down hollywood boulevard at 60 miles per hour at 10 p.m then i turned and walked back into the thai restaurant where i watched the fugitive get pit maneuvered and shot dead live on the news via helicopter chase cam dude sitting next to us was excited to tell us we had officially experienced la over the top car chases action chase cam news neon lights in hollywood an asian restaurant that made me feel like i was in an art film he was right and you got to watch someone die on live tv welcome to america i've told this story on reddit before but my biggest wtf was in fall 2005. google earth had just come out and my colleague at the universita lab and i were looking at it she was a blonde bombshell from san diego and i'm a portly indian boy when i showed her mumbai my home city she was blown away you have buildings look there's an airport oh my god you have cars how the heck do you think we get around i asked her reply still rings on my head not walking not cows not elephants not bicycles not horse-drawn carts she said camels if i ever saw a camel in mumbai i'd stop everything i'm doing and say holy crap that's a freaking camel many americans don't know the difference between india and the middle east and think while it's 2016 here it's 1876 in the rest of the world was it an all-you-can-eat buffet with a soft serve ice cream machine as kids we thought we were being little pigs by swirling as high as we possibly could while our parents weren't looking or they certainly would have stopped us the guy after us grabbed a full-sized drink tumbler and filled it up with ice cream no shame at all no child like gliad making the mother of all sundays i suspect now it was something he did regularly the first rule of all you can eat buffet there are no rules only the strong survive when i went to florida i was stopped by the police for jaywalking i protested that the road was clear so therefore safe to cross he said i don't know how you do it in your country be here in the us we take road safety seriously aghast i explained i was from england and my only knowledge of jaywalking was from lethal weapon 3 and that i believed it was just a made-up law that they used in the movie to sass people he chuckled and said that's a great movie i prefer the first i agreed and said it was by far the best after a brief chat about the entire lethal weapon saga he said in future make sure you use the crossings i agreed but asked in a pretty decent south african accent what if i have diplomatic immunity he chuckled nodded his head and pointed to the crossing and said cross there enjoy your vacation and off he went it was the highlight of my holiday he said i don't know how you do it in your country be here in the us we take road safety seriously as someone living in nyc i can't help but laugh at this jaywalking is a way of life that said i got the nastiest looks in japan for doing hte same and would be terrified of getting fined in switzerland apparently that's a thing though i've never gotten fined when traveling there i went to disneyland in anaheim and it just struck me that there were a large number of disabled people out and about enjoying the rides i'm from india where there is no shortage of disabled people but it was just the sheer number of disabled people that made me extremely happy that the park was accessible to everyone you done good america i said to myself as i ate some horrible expensive fried thing i later realized that most of those people were not disabled but fat people on scooters who did not feel like walking where do i sign up according to new yorkers my mother and i can't possibly be portuguese apparently we're russian the other than incredibly nice and friendly i loved it no we are not russians we are portuguese ivan berto and i are just tourists whispers into watch they are on to us alert the kremlin abort mission korean friend who just got off the plane in atlanta so many big fat black women yes he said it loudly and in public but my favorite was a japanese fellow who went to a buffet with a group of us in vegas he sits down and his plate looks like a normal little meal we all have heaps of crap all over ours and his eyes bug out that we have so much food i said he's really going to freak out when he realizes this is only our first plate so many big fat black women i would like to imagine that this was expressed with great joy a couple i went to university at cal state fresno i was a country boy from canada when i was there the entire downtown of fresno was boarded up and you did not go there after dark actually anytime and a full-blown gun gang fight outside of my apartment in clovis a suburb near the university for a kid from small town canada that was mind-blowing a couple i went to fresno that was your first mistake even californians avoid fresno especially californians when i first moved to america one of the first things i saw after leaving jfk was a homeless man masturbating outside of union station it wouldn't have been that strange except i had heard a lot of things about nyc from people who had been there or knew someone who knew someone etc and i was worried what i was seeing was just going to be an everyday everywhere thing all throughout the country there was a place called norma's in washington state somewhere rural anyway it was like a shrine to george bush the owner was guy in the back of a menu had his face with the quote just call me normal on the back the best burger i ever had called the jared w bush burger not my story but my mom's again and instead of visiting it was more like a people who have emigrated to the u.s what is your wtf america story so it's the early 1980s and my mom's plane touches down in lax from tokyo as she was collecting her luggage and waiting for her friend to pick her up a harry krishna which she had never seen before came up to her and asks her in english if she could donate a few dollars my mom who only had a few yen and a poor grasp of english tried to explain to the harry krishna that she couldn't understand him and that she had just arrived in the united states the moment she started talking to him in japanese he just gave her some of the money he had and went on his merry way leaving her at the luggage carousel confused as heck that's kind of sweet i asked an old lady if it's true all americans carry guns she smiled and pulled a revolver out of her purse she was a nice lady they're complimentary with your birth certificate here i was 12 years old when i spent a month in minnesota i remember going wtf or at least a french equivalent when we went to mall of america and i saw the frigging roller coaster inside of it canadian on tour in america witnessed an enormous man at a big boy in wisconsin pull out five jumbo freezer bags and fill them to the brim with sausages from the all-you-can-eat buffet he hid every bag between the overhang of his belly and sweatpants then filled a full plate of sausages and proceeded to sit calmly at his table and finish them canadian was in a gas station waiting to pay before prepay took over and a couple of guys with handguns in holsters were in line in front of me resting their hands on the guns not so much wtf i knew to expect it but it's a memory i think of often as a texan a group of people with their hands on their holsters would make me extremely nervous its own thing to carry or even open carry acting like you might draw that gun is another thing completely me paying at gas station attendant hears i have an accent smiles at me you speak english so well thanks although i should do i'm from england q confused look wait they she trailed off speak english there her colleague stared at her an open mouth disbelief and then broke out laughing with the other customers she looked mortified to be fair i felt terrible for her she was only trying to be friendly to a foreigner i'm from america and i have a friend from australia it amazes him that there are so many flags everywhere apparently that is a distinct usa thing he'll make jokes about how we all forget where we are on a three-week trip to the u.s last year i counted over 1 000 u.s flags i don't think i've seen that many australian flags in australia despite having lived here for nearly 30 years was in northern new york near buffalo and a waitress over her that i was headed back to the pacific ocean she asked where i was going and i said vancouver no honey vancouver is in canada and that is on the atlantic ocean i said canada is from sea to sea just like america she replied no that's not right only america is from c2c the combination of her being absolutely sure about something and her total ignorance was surprising enough but the fact that she felt she should basically interrupt our conversation by telling me i am wrong about what ocean i live beside was weird that's western new york french x exchange teenager in cali here summer 97 i was young and missed the field trip bus to disneyland from san diego so i did something pretty stupid i hitchhiked to go there by myself dude who took me looked like a plaincloth cops but a good buddy when he heard i was french he told me to never ever hitchhike in usa because it's pretty dangerous plus people could assume i'm a serial killer so i boasted look at you you don't think i'm a serial killer im not that dangerous looking or you are careless he told me to open the glover box in front of me there was a supposedly loaded freaking dessert eagle inside he dropped me at the bus station and insisted to give me ten dollars for ticket i had cash and waited for me to go in the bus rtl dr still don't know if playing cliff angel or zodiac i'm an american i hitchhiked from sacramento to nyc in one week it was fun everyone i met was super nice and willing to help me out i guess it all depends on who happens to pick you i guess i got lucky i'm canadian and i went down to the us to do a little shopping i accidentally pulled out some canadian bills in the cashier asked why i kept monopoly money in my wallet as a michigander it is always common to pay with accidental canadian and to receive the accidental canadian currency it pisses me off when i didn't pay attention those gaps in your toilet store doors what are they even for peeking i visited from canada a couple years ago everyone was very nice and had the exact same mildly interested reaction to a credit card with a chip we've finally started transitioning to these in the last year or year and a half we're a bit behind after moving from africa as a teen i am repeatedly asked why i moved to africa in the first place to which i reply that i've always lived there i am also asked so why are you white to which i reply oh my god karen you can't just ask people why they're white however when they reply with blank stares i realize they aren't referencing mean girls some other questions commerce so africa is one country and all the borderlines are like states como are there you know buildings comma you guys have memes over there right comma are you australian australian here i went to houston last year and spoke to a girl my age in the airport we got chatting about uni college it was around july and she asked me if i was on my summer vacation i casually explained i was on my winter break she was genuinely confused and did not understand how it was summer in the u.s but winter in australia i tried to explain but eventually gave up an american once complimented me on my excellent english when i told her i was from australia aussie here when i started chatting to a cashier she squealed and asked where i was from i told her australia and she instantly dumped down how she spoke do y'all speak english down there i replied sporadically she laughed and informed me that wasn't a word singaporean here i feel your pain you speak really good english for an asian when i went to the us the first time and ordered a meal from burger king ordering a large fry coke and a whopper i was blown away by the size of it all each item was larger than the same item back home i was already like wtf but then the cashier said i could have a second whopper for one dollar again i was like wtf signed me up another time while i was in daytona i went to a restaurant and the woman kept refilling my drink again and again being a bit shy i did not tell her to stop and expected a bill with 15 for sodas but then i found out the refills were free wtf free refills i'd only seen that at places like subway but so many restaurants in the us had free refills i love the us for restaurants and food in general the portions are massive and very reasonably priced went to walmart the fabled creatures there are just as the internet portrays them as nonetheless still mind-blowing my first trip into a walmart i saw a man in a brass button blazer with perfectly brill creamed hair sparkling white teeth orange skin and white slacks that looked like he had stepped right out of an advert from the 1950s he was with a very large woman wearing i love my gay daughter t-shirt i was so happy how spread out everything is like it's pretty much impossible for me to survive without a car while everywhere i needed to go on a regular basis back in london was in a 10 minute biking distance also the number of pickup trucks people own without needing especially out here in the west the metro area i live in is like eight percent the size of london population wise but it'll take you 45 minutes by car to drive from one side of town to another if you live anywhere in america outside of washington dc new york boston downtown chicago or a few other places it's vital to own a car every single one of you bastards asked me where in england i was from i'm from australia pretty much as far away from england as you can get without leaving the planet asked a girl in the hooker lunge if she knew where new zealand my home country was she replied asking is that the country above us well it is a globe if you get the angle right you'll hit new zealand eventually a universal wtf for both foreign and u.s citizens the golden corral everything was submerged in liquid butter the patrons were larger than some cars one time at golden corral many years back i saw an overweight guy in suspenders whose chest primarily due to the suspenders was a freaking square he wasn't round instead he was wide but flat he was only about five feet five inches so that likely played a role into his geometric shape as well was the most mind-blowing thing i'd ever seen from a golden corral i'd never been out of australia before in australia only farmers and cops have guns and some criminals i guess so i had never seen a gun that wasn't in a cops holster in my entire 30-year existence we go to the us for our honeymoon and have the honor and privilege of visiting a walmart the guns are just on the shelf you can touch them a fellow aussie friend who was with us at the time asked the cashier if she could hold one he looked at her as if she had asked if it was okay to breathe the store's hair can i hold one this big one she asked incredulous sure if you want to the guy said confused and bored at the same time she picked up this big butt gun sorry not a gun guy don't know what it was it was about the size of a shotgun but was bulkier and was getting us to take photos of her with it if i had a gun like that at home and walked outside my house with it someone would drive past and see me in about 10 seconds they would call the cops which would take about 30 seconds the police station is just up the road so i estimate a cop car would arrive in about three minutes and it would take about 10 seconds for a cop to ask me politely to jump in his car and come for a nice chat down at the police station but it would be fun for four minutes about the size of a shotgun but was bulkier that sounds like a shotgun i was in vegas with three danish friends and we were very hungover three of us not the driver we decided to go for a drive in the convertible after 15 minutes a police officer on a bike drives up next to us and just stares into the car this lasted like 5-10 seconds so the driver turns his head and asks anything wrong officer the officer replied in a super angry tone keep your mouth african eyes on the mathefakan road he continued to follow us for about a mile just staring at us super freaking creepy also had bad police experiences in florida new york and san diego some people join because they honestly want to help people and then a distressing segment joins because they are power hungry psychopaths i'm from canada and the first thing i saw upon my arrival to port angeles washington which happened to be the first time i stepped foot in the states was a large spherical lady sitting in the middle of the sidewalk blocking my path to the bus terminal just staring at me another time i was in san diego one summer and a woman genuinely curious asked me if it was summer in vancouver too on a bus going into new york city from new jersey there was a middle-aged white man on the bus as he goes to get off the bus i noticed the tip of a used condom hanging out of the back pocket of his khaki pants instead of saying thank you as he is leaving the bus he tells the young black female bus driver not too bad for being black that's just uncle bob he's harmless do you know any vikings asked by a nice young blonde with a straight and serious face in mcdonald's i'm from denmark also good god texas has a lot of fat people i went to applebee's mistake number one i guess i was then served by a nice young lady called brittany who asked me with a serious face if we have trees in scotland sorry about that everyone knows brittany is an idiot brit here we went to ruby tuesdays in the florida mall and saw a woman take a bowl from the salad bar fill it with ranch dressing and sit back at her table eating it like it was soup luckily that wasn't the only treat florida had for us on that trip i think florida is just like one giant walmart i was in an uber going to the airport and the driver asked where i was flying to i said hong kong he asked if i spoke japanese i told him that we speak chinese in hong kong he says what's the difference ages genuinely didn't know that japanese and chinese were different languages went into a shop they had spray on cheese i don't think the majority of americans here know how ridiculous that sounds to the rest of us spray on cheese i'm from the uk lived in the us for about five years now few things that annoy me you want to get a loan for a new car there's a fee for that on top of the interest you want to take money out of the atm there's a fee for that you want to exchange some currency there's a fee for that on top of the exchange spread your product has money off you'll have to send something to receive it they hope you can't be bothered pretty much any service someone will try to make a few extra dollars off you credit unions are your friend was in spokane at silverwood amusement park and asked where the washroom was i was promptly told there were no washrooms in the park this happened a good handful of times and it never even occurred to me that i had to say restroom to receive any real help weird although we don't typically say washroom i can't imagine someone not knowing that it is synonymous with bathroom sounds like you ran into a handful of real boneheads i visited america recently and there are so many more people than i'm used to i come from new zealand and our biggest city only has about 1.3 to 1.5 million people in it and the total population is around 4.471 million people and even auckland is too big for me i'm a wellington man for sure i'm canadian and have visited the united states multiple time and have had an overall enjoyable experience on each one i wouldn't blame this on america but i saw a fat bald middle-aged man standing on the side of a pennsylvania highway with bunny ears i'm sure this happens in canada too but this is the first time i've seen something like this i saw a fat bald middle-aged man standing on the side of a pennsylvania highway with bunny ears easter bunny has had a rough few years people just don't care about jesus coming back anymore well i hadn't even arrived yet in the us but in the plane as a foreigner you have to fill a paper to enter the country with various questions among which did you come to murder the president of the united states wtf america president is murdered he selected no in that field of the form there's no way we could have stopped him i'm american but live in france at the moment french people love telling me about the time they went to the us and the crazy things that they saw two of my favorites are one a friend was complaining about the food in the u.s and then said and we went to this restaurant and they only had one food only pizza and two a french friend visited the u.s and people kept saying voulez-vous culture of ekmoy cesoi to him this is a rather shocking thing to say to a stranger non-americans what is something you find strange or different about american culture how friendly americans are allowed to be in britain talking to strangers is seriously weird except in the proper social context and if you're forced into it it's still weird to talk about things other than the weather and how crap david cameron is and such for all the crap we catch abroad i've heard from a lot of non-americans that it's surprising how friendly most of us are i mean it's definitely regional in the states i'm texan for example did i love meeting other people even other americans traveling abroad it's just fun to have a chat every now and then the whole see the crap out of them really confuses me i understand it in some cases dentist doctor did a botched job i've seen a couple of threads on red did though where someone says that their arm was broken during a school fight just something stupid happening between silly kids and the top response will be encouraging them to sue i really don't understand that the same goes when it was an obvious accident with no malicious intent maybe i'm just a naive australian but suing for something like that just seems really excessive usually those involved would help cover the cost our health care is expensive how sports is integrated into college university i don't see how sports teams and games are relevant to education the fact that someone can get a football basketball or cheerleading scholarship is amusing and bizarre it's a who would luige money maker for the bigger schools i have to admit though in theory i don't see why having athletics at university level is a bad thing it's just the inevitable politics and corruption behind it that are bad your obsession with college this and college that football and basketball also how you have to apply for heaps of different universities and make a huge fuss on where you are accepted or not and how much emphasis on being successful equals going to harvard or mit americans are so enthusiastic about everything it's a breath of fresh air sometimes when i'm surrounded by and i'm a cynical british citizen what the blazes is homecoming and why is it called that i've had three different people try to explain it to me and i'm none the wiser it's a high school thing when the football team plays their last game on their field as opposed to playing at another team school it's called homecoming and there's usually a homecoming dance to celebrate school pride i've always thought it was kind of silly i've never understood the whole having to tip being so important also the pledge of allegiance seems somewhat cultish you have to tip because in nearly all cases the pittance we food service people make and wages goes entirely to state and federal taxes even if it didn't we'd still only make about two dollars hr why is the legal drinking age 21 seriously i live in canada where it is 19 and i find that to be a little too much how can you justify someone being able to vote for three years but not able to buy beer the instinctive and what appears to be knee jerk reaction to a national health service or any type of socialized medicine it's not the world's best system but it's got to be better than the insane insurance system america has and if people want to go private they still can many americans want a universal health care system how they communicate i have an american friend i am guatemalan that has email fights with her parents and brother as in bray mom is being crazy fwd to brother dad and mommy tc etc also kids and their sense of entitlement i got beat the freak up if i acted like a little c these kids just get their way the extreme capitalistic government finland is an excellent example of a mixed capitalist socialist economy and whemmer and any commies trust me okay comrade why does no one know how to drive a manual car over here uk most people learn in a manual and then very few people ever switch to an automatic car it just seems silly if you have a license for an automatic here then you can only drive an automatic car with manual you can drive both it's hard to eat a burger and drive a manual at the same time frick not this again every freaking week let me guess 1 healthcare 2 guns three tipping four taxes five military so help me last time these was a discussion on how it is odd that americans love freedom too much like not ironic freedom but actual liberty and what was so great about it these are legit issues but one we do this every freaking week and two it's never a healthy discussion but anti-american bs fueled by foreigners who refuse to admit the issues on their own end come on read it you're better than this well maybe not first one i seen thanks for the repost d i went to nyc this summer with my cousin and we found that the people there always talk very loud on the phone in the subway in restaurants on the streets even to say hello to each other it was all screams and yelling we were under the impression that yelling was the primary communication mode after a week we were glad to go home and eating at restaurants where we can talk without yelling to cover the sound of other patrons sorry for my poor grammar english is not my native language new yorkers allowed embalming i thought it was just for mummies and communist dictators it was big surprise that embalming is widely used in today's north america i think it stems from our deeply seated fear of the restless dead every american is taught in grade school that the only way to prevent a corpse's inevitable reanimation is to replace all of the body's fluids with safe patriotic formaldehyde it things we americans hate too seriously though came to this thread looking for enlightenment in social norms we have strange customs etc all i see is reiteration of american arguments and complaints why do you make heroes out of idiots in my country south africa if someone does something morally reprehensible like beating a woman looking at you chris brown we bury them in a hole of shame why are you so quick to forgive and forget why are tv shows made about people with such vapid personalities jersey shore anything by paris hilton real housewives of who the frick cares the hills etc that offer nothing to the benefit of art culture or even humanity yet they become idolized like gods among ants one plenty of americans hate chris brown two dollar sign dollar sign dollar sign which is why other nations have been adopting the reality show model yaha instead of your welcome i'm canadian and yes it's true we generally say please thank you and you're welcome i'm speaking mostly about the east coast and midwest but i don't understand the attitude when i go down to the states to say a dunkin donut and order a coffee i will say thank you every time when they hand me my coffee i'd say 8 out of 10 times my expression of gratitude is met with a slightly annoyed response of yahoo the other two times i don't get an answer at all it just comes off as so negative to me i don't understand why people can't just say thank you or you're welcome i don't understand it either and i'm from the midwest always say please and thank you and you're welcome taco bell all i ever hear about that place is how their food sends people running to the restroom in short order yet everyone still goes back why i'm an american and i love my country but after living abroad for a few years i'm astounded by how uncultured and unsophisticated americans are i've met beduin pickpockets street urchins and gypsies who all have been more cultured proud and sophisticated than the wealthiest americans i've met over the years that's just my observation but it's really sad to me that kind of generally speaking americans are pretty freaking rough-hewn cowboys and crap it's embarrassing well i'm a little late but i find the driving culture to be extremely strange i'm staying with friends and they said we're too tired to cook let's go out for dinner a 30 minutes drive away back in sydney driving more than five minutes meant i was going somewhere fancy another friend drove three hours to spend a day with me in new jersey and they thought nothing of it as if it was a normal occurrence no one seems to want to catch trains and outside of the main metro areas there is no way to get to the train station besides a car when i mentioned that i live in the sydney suburbs but never drive to uni work or the shops everyone stares at me quite blankly i think the biggest culture shock for me when i started meeting more americans was the way they you build their relationships in general where i'm from we're polite but a little distant at first and then as we get to know a person we get friendlier and a lot more open when i was 16 i went on a program that had a really big american group and at first i thought they were the best people i'd ever met because of how outgoing and nice they all seemed however most of those friends i thought i'd made didn't really think of me as a friend and weren't really that interested in getting any closer to me it took a little longer than i'd like to admit to realize that and it actually sucks i do have a bunch of american friends now though but i still find it weird the way they treat people when they first meet them [Music] that in some states tax is not included in the retail price i have no idea why one would come up with that or why it persists i don't think it's included in any state every state has a different percentage for sales tax and in some states it even varies by city region each store would have to print tons of custom signs to include the tax your crap adverts whenever i watched the apprentice and the tasks had people making commercials i thought dang these are bad then i saw what commercials are on tv and they were the same in your face no nuance just a maturish this isn't meant to be an america bashing thing but i really don't understand the concept that guns equal safety i mean if we were on a shooting range and i pointed a loaded weapon of you you would probably freak out and say never point your gun at someone it's so dangerous but americans are fine with having these things in their homes and rely on the gun to keep them safe and dangerous situations egg burglaries whereas it just seems like it adds a whole new element of danger and unpredictability to me a gun is literally a machine designed to kill living things bullets are designed to penetrate flesh it blows my mind that people carry these things or keep them in their own homes the complete ignorance of many americans to the outside world that many americans cannot see why other nations do not want to be american why immigration seems to be such an enormous political issue the us is a nation of immigrants why do so many people get so angry about letting anyone else in guns violence and a bit of gore okay show healthy woman's breast or a bare butt no can do even casual swearing is a no no i find it strange when people will think it's funny that you're still a virgin at 17 but in my country people will already assume your s if they just heard you lost your virginity at the same age tipping everybody is dying for a tip all the time does nobody get paid enough like i sort of get in restaurants we leave tips here too the uk although i should say that i've noticed it becoming more and more popular in the past decade and i put that down to american culture as well tv shows and films and whatnot but i find any time i visit the states a lot of people working in the service industry feel their due a tip for whatever it is they do i wouldn't mind so much if it didn't totally affect the way they treated me they are almost overly nice in the hopes that you'll tip them to the point of being annoying and then if you don't the tone totally changes and i've had several occasions where they're angry to the point of providing a really bad service i had an experience with my dad where he didn't tip a delivery guy enough i think it was like a keep the change kind of thing rather than a proper tip who then point blank refused to leave until we gave him money we had enough for the food and a tiny bit more that we gave him and nothing else anyway he was a dong about it but now i just tip like everyone else in the states still find it really odd as a cultural thing though i don't want this to come across as rude or mean or anything i just find it weird if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] bye for now

Channel: Updoot Studios

Views: 46,531

Rating: 4.8197675 out of 5

Keywords: the american way, america reddit, reddit america europe, askreddit america, updoot reddit america, only in america, #updootst, updoot, updoot reddit, updoot everything, reddit on tap, reddit, askreddit, funny reddit, reddit stories, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, comedy, reddit compilation, r/, r/askreddit, top posts of r/, askreddit reading, best reddit posts, top posts of all time, people of reddit, askreddit question, ask reddit, subreddit, sub, reddit stories 2021

Id: 9uzPVjpG5mY

Length: 131min 42sec (7902 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021