It helps if you have traveled extensively for this one so you can learn what is not commonplace elsewhere.
I’ll start with China and America, the two countries I’ve lived in extensively.
America:
On average, we’re very fat.
We really do think we’re “the best” country ever.
We all do own cars, sometimes 2 or 3(except in New York).
The McDonald’s small size drink is the large in your country(I get asked this by Chinese a lot). It’s true; their large drink is our small. Their small cup is almost as round as it is tall. And no free refills!
China:
They spit. I wish this wasn’t true, but it is.
It’s extremely crowded.
They think Europe and America are filthy rich. They’re right, by the way.
They are primarily irreligous.
They have counterfeit and bootleg everything American, with almost no copyright laws.
I think Canadians are seen as polite, not overly religious, and overall they know more about other places in the world from their basic education. And the country really is clean. That is the adjective I’ve heard most frequently to describe Canada, by Americans who had never been there before.
It’s not a stereotype about my nation, but rather about my home town, a little village outside Memphis I shall not name. Ask any Memphian and he’ll tell you that the girls here are are petite, buxom, limber and sexually-forthcoming, owing these qualities–as well as their extended lifespans–to their habits of offering fellatio to random passing strangers and then happily swallowing the results.
Canadians sound more polite… until you realize that a significant amount of the “pleases”, “thank you’s” and “you’re welcomes” acutally mean “f*ck you”
Not a stereotype about Canada per se, but a true stereotype that other Canadians have about the West Coast… it does rain a lot (nearly every day since early December), and we smoke a lot of pot. The latter helps you deal with the former.
Ah…so Canadians are a lot like Southerners (American Southerners). Well, bless your heart.
Gotta say, much as I love Canadians (and the polite English, and the Japanese, and some Southerns) I kinda prefer the New Yorkers who just say fuck you and have done with it.
I don’t own a car. In foul weather, when I ride the bus, I see lots of people who don’t own cars (I can tell because they know the drivers and are, on the whole, better at riding the bus than I am).
I am pretty fat though.
The US is a big place, so here’s two just about Baltimore:
There are a lot of churches here. And a lot of bars.
Well, I meant that an extremely high percentage of people have cars, not that literally 100% outside New York do.
Actually, I’d love to see statistics of what percentage of adults over the age of 21, outside New York, have cars in America. I bet it would be over 90%(urban anyway), which is huge compared to China and a lot of the world.
Urban? Probably higher rural. Given that it’s only in (some) urban areas that living without a car is even remotely possible. Sad. I don’t think there’s anywhere even in the rest of the “Western World” where it’s as impossible.
One cannot overstate the importance of having a car in the vast majority of the U.S. It is absolutely essential for U.S. style living. There a parts of a handful of cities where someone doesn’t have to own a car and it not be an everyday handicap. Everywhere else, not owning a car is a true handicap and the only excuses would be being elderly, or handicapped. In any case, that would require friends or family members to have cars and drive you around. In most areas, if you didn’t have a car or anyone to drive you, you are effectively under house arrest until you come up with a new plan. You cannot just walk around freely in most of the U.S. Its, not that it is always illegal, but the distance to even one store can be miles and you would have to walk along roads with no sidewalks and nobody else walking with you. The U.S. is not set up for any alternate forms of transportation. Geographically speaking, there is no public transportation in most of the U.S. In areas where there is public transportation, there is usually not enough to sustain any kind of quality of life.
I live outside of Boston which does have good public transport but none where I live. If I couldn’t drive, I would lose my job, we would have to sell our house our daughter would have to change schools etc.
In most areas, almost 100% of adults of sound mind and body do so.
