I just moved fom England to Austin, TX. You know the best thing about moving to the States? American beer! Not Bud Lite etc., but all the little tiny places that make real nice stuuf that is cloudy and best drunk warm. Maybe you yanks HAVE learned something from us Limeys!
And where else can you E-mail for a pizza?
Have been to the States several times, mainly to the mid-west where several of our suppliers are based.
It’s always been fun. Hospitality, as you would expect, was universally superb. Doing business was always tough, but we won a few and lost a few more.
A couple of experiences that come to mind…
One of the managers once proudly showed me his home arsenal. With it he could have captured Iwo Jima single handed. Said that having them all made him feel safe at night. Still gives me the willies thinking about it!
One thing I still struggle to handle is the amount of food that gets served. After a trip to the States I barely eat for a week! At one stage I was at the Iowa Steakhouse in Des Moines. For a dare, one of the group took on the House Special, which I think was a 38oz rump, cooked to a turn, served with a single humungous Idaho potato, sour cream, enough lettuce to choke a horse, and an endless cup of Diet Coke!
At another evening meal the highlight was provided by the waitress. She was cute, very efficient and had an accent straight out of Beverley Hillbillies. At one point in the meal she gave at one of my fellow diners an understanding look and in an ever-so-slightly patronising voice said “You’re not from around these parts are you?”
“No”, he agreed, “Actually, I’m from London”.
“Well, don’t you speak pretty good English for a foreigner!”
I guess the number of people who give the impression that they neither know nor care about anything else of the world that isn’t the USA is the most disconcerting part of the trips.
Yes, USA, highest number of Olympic medals. England= 0 medals. 
another brief post.
Yes, that is one thing restaurants are known for over here. For some reason they will serve ridiculously large amounts of food that most people bring half of (or more) back home with them in a “doggy bag.”
The amount of restaurant food you get was the first thing I noticed. I also find that the people are louder than at home (Canada, BTW), and less likely to thank you if you help them (I’ve had two bad experiences recently). The other bad thing I’ve noticed (besides the quality of television) is the stereotyping. If I hear, “You don’t sound Canadian!” one more time I’m going to put on my southern 'mercan accent and pretend to shoot the person. Oh, the attitude about guns, too. Americans treat them so causally; I get scared when I think, “Hey, that chick might be carrying a handgun.” That doesn’t happen in my country.
One good thing I’ve noticed (there are more, but they’re not as easily accessible as the bad points) is the willingness of shop-employees to leave you alone when you say you’re just looking, even in the most expensive stores.
Hey occ, check out Bill Bryson’s I’m A Stranger Here Myself. It’s all about his impressions ov America after living in England for twenty-some-odd years. Very entertaining.
…published elsewhere as Notes from a small island.
mattk: that’s a different book, the precursor to the one Necros mentioned. Bryson knew he was going back to the U.S. and did one last “jaunt” around the UK.
My stepmother moved to New York from Boston. We were having a little barbeque in the back yard in our house in The Bronx when stepmom started freaking out. She was running and screaming all over the place.
Apparently she was frightened by the fireflies! She had never seen one before. I couldn’t understand why, there are backyards and barbeques in Boston and that city is only about 4 hours away.
Only very special people get to see the fireflies, that’s my take on it. So all you non-firefly-seeing people better start acting nicer.
That would be because England doesn’t enter the Olympics.
Kuwaiti here, been to America 3 or 4 times now (2 summers and 2 winters)…mostly in Boston and California.
I had to admit, there were some good things and bad things about America…and they sort of intermingled, let me explain:
the SIZE of the country…I mean…it’s HUGE…I heard once Kuwait is smaller than New Jersey, and our whole population consists of around 2 million people (half of which are expats). When I was in the plane looking down on LA at night…it just looked like a gigantic microchip, and there’s this scary feeling that the chip will continue to spread and grow out until it engulfs the whole country . My best friend picked me up at the airport, and I couldn’t tear my eyes off the highways…so many of them, and millions of cars going all over the place…I felt so insignificant, whereas in Kuwait, everyone knew everyone else, or at least knew that person’s second cousin. No wonder fame is so attractive to Americans, one can get lost so easily.
Because of the size, I finally understood why Americans’ sense of family isn’t as strong as the Arab or the Asian sense of family (too spread out). Thus I expected Americans to have a strong sense of community, but I didn’t experience anything like that…my best friend had no idea who her neighbors were, and it’s not because we were foriegners, I noticed none of the nieghbors really spoke to each other. (However, I do admit that most of them were college kids, so things are probably different in a more settled neighborhood…and I do think not all American neighborhoods are the same.)
And I can’t get over the space…so much SPACE…and such variying weather…(we only have two seasons in kuwait, Summer and Rain …and week of spring in between).
Also, most of the Americans I’ve spoken with were clueless about Europe or Asia or the Arabian Peninsula (especially the Middle East…“from Kuwait? Didn’t we have a war against you? …ohh, we had a war against Iraq…is that next to Kuwait?”)…I figured it’s probably lack of interest in anything that’s not American, but I was wrong, Americans are VERY much interested in other cultures…but by the time some aspect of a foriegn culture reaches the general public, it’s been too westernized…or it doesn’t get enough exposure. (ie, in Kuwait, all Movie Theatres would show American, Indian, and Egyptian movies …however, in America, if it’s not American made, one has to go to special theatres to view them.)
However, I must admit…it’s very difficult to come to America and not have fun; entertainment is paramount, as vital as the strict work ethic. And boy do you people know how to have fun…everything from shopping, to food, to entertainment parks…if it’s big and loud, it’s in America…and I loved it. I also loved the freedom of being able to actually LOOK at people without worrying about who’s looking at me. I live in a nation where everyone is watching everyone else, and we wear self-consciousness (sp?) like second skin. Most Americans are oblivious to this, there’s a carefree attitude among American’s that’s very appealing.
The verdict? America has to be my favorite country to visit so far (followed VERY closely by London), people are nice, open, easy to communicate with…but I cannot see myself living in America, the crime statistics alone are scary as hell.
Ack…I think I’ve said way too much…I could write a book about this, but so far, these are my peliminary notes about America…keep in mind, they’re not set in concrete, things will probably change in my next visit.
Is this true? If so, why?
It is true. The team that enters from these parts is Great Britain, and this year they won more medals than in any year since 1920. I assumed that handy looked down a list of medal winners, failed to see “England” listed and inferred from this that we had not won any medals.
It’s an understandable mistake in this context, given that the home nations enter separate teams for so many sporting events, but the Olympics is an exception.
That’s a very ineresting idea. I think you havew a point.
Regarding community, unfortuantly no, I don’t think it’s very different in settled neiborhoods(maybe beacuse not exactly settled. We move a lot. I supposed we think all this room will go to waste if we don’t live in all of it.)Personally I don’t think it’s very healthy.
My old neighbourhood in Lancaster, CA was very close-knit. Everyone looked out for everyone else. People would walk down the street and talk with people they met. My dad would have Easter egg hunts for the neighbourhood children. People would take each other cookies at Christmas.
There is a book, recently published, called “Bowling Alone” that discusses the decline in community feeling across the United States. it’s supposed to be very interesting.
Oh my God. They should move my post over to Americans can’t spell.
But anyway, since I’m here, here is my anecdote about lack of community:
I live in this little community- inasmuch as it’s a cluster of several dozen houses all surrounded by a state park. And my house is right in frount of the bus stop where every kid from the “community” get the bus to school. And I found it interesting to watch them sometimes- the difference between the way they acted at the beginning of the year vs the end. Who was playing with who. Who was trying to destroy parts of my front yard. And, on one occasion not too long after I moved there, like I do with anything that interests me, I took a few photographs from my porch.I’m a photographer. I photograph everything. Like a writer taking notes. Apparently some kids and/or parents were bother by that. Which I can understand. I mean on the one hand I think I can shoot anything I want while standing in my own home. But on the other, I can see how it might make a parent uncomforable. I didn’t think about that when I took them since I know I have benign intentions. Still, maybe I should have.
So there are these people and they have a problem with their neighbors. Do they walk the few hundred yards and talk to me? Do they call? If they are uncomfortable with that do they talk to Gary, my next door neighbor, who I know me very well, and who knows everybody in the place?
They call the cops.
So I’ve got, like three cops, knocking on my door, standing in my living room, questioning me to make sure I’m not a pervert.
When did we get to the point where in any conflict between people, neighbors even, the first recourse is the police?
If their worried about what that crazy lady is doing photographing their children, wouldn’t they feel better if they met me? I don’t even know who it was who was so upset (apparently ist was several people) so I can’t apologize. I find this very depressing.
Gee, apparently I really needed to get that off my chest. thanks for being there.