Hey, we’ve got those, too. We wear shoes and everything!
Soft toilet paper and my own dang bathroom. I think I could pretty well adapt to everything else.
No kidding. Or how about a soda that isn’t lukewarm, miniscule, and overpriced?
The one thing I really miss when overseas is a great big fountain soda with lots and lots of ice. So cold and bubbly it makes your teeth ache and gives you shivers. Yum.
I’d miss really big-ass, really cold soft drinks, with free refills. I need lots of liquid and caffeine and in Europe, I’m always . . . unsatisfied. I buy three little bottles of Diet Coke at a time and they’re all warm.
Oh, and coffee. Yurpeans just can’t do it. If it’s in a tea cup (yeah, that’s why they’re called tea cups), it tastes like tea, and if it’s in a thimble, it’s some sort of espresso caffeine injection.
I like a mug of coffee I can drink, not shoot up or sip like Earl Grey.
ETA: German coffee is excellent, but needs to be diluted a bit so you can drink it by the mug, and not by the thimble.
Peanut Butter.
Football. Funny, because I hardly watch it here, but I found myself unable to gage what month it was without a countdown to the superbowl.
People who follow simple driving rules - like staying in your lane, allowing others into traffic, stopping for pedestrians, stopping at red lights.
Effective police.
Christmas lights.
Pizza, just once. Maybe the day after the peanut butter.
Good candy bars.
Tart orange juice.
With the advent of the internet, not much else/
My immediate response was ICE. However, we once spent a week in France enjoying the wonderful food and when we hit the Detroit airport we headed directly to KFC. :o
Slurpees. In the first six months after I moved to Germany, I even dreamed about a Coke Slurpee a number of times. 7-11 is my first stop after landing every time, although oddly, that first one usually satisfies the craving for the whole trip.
One more vote for Mexican food.
On the non-comestible side, I miss the feeling of belonging, of feeling completely comfortable in my surroundings and able to strike up pleasant conversations with anyone at all. I’m fluent now, after a bitterly hard slog, but I still have a constant low-level anxiety about whether I’ve fully understood what the other person said or if my answer will reveal that I’m an idiot. I didn’t feel like an idiot in America.
Also, cookie mixes, especially oatmeal chocolate chip.
… but from that very narrow experience, I would miss two things:
-
Coffee to go, any where, any time
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Multiculturalism
I get nervous when I go too long without hearing a “foreign” language, or seeing people of obviously different ethnicities …
I am an American; it is my right to hear at least one language I do not recognize each day, to see at least one facial bone structure I can not categorize to a single root continent.
Coffee. I’ve spent time in Asia, and when I came back, coffee was the drink of the gods. Guzzling soda, or potfuls of jasmine or green tea just doesn’t do it for me as a means of caffeination.
Seriously. I didn’t even want the stuff to last a whole week, I would’ve been happy if my bread had made it from the Monday I bought it until Friday. It always ended up moldy by then. And I haven’t been able to drink much milk since the great Long Expiration Date incident – turns out that, even if you manage to find a container of milk marked for an unusually long period of time, it doesn’t guarantee that said milk will actually remain good for the entire time. I just wish I could’ve learned that without then having to swear off dairy for a few weeks.
Anyway, when I was studying in Northern Ireland, most of what I missed was food, like everyone else. I would’ve killed just for a taco at first, but I ended up keeping a list of everything I desperately wanted that I couldn’t fix for myself, like cornbread and a certain flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I only wish it’d been something easy like peanut butter because I lived next to another American who apparently was singlehandedly running an import business from her suitcase. I still don’t know how she managed to bring that many jars of JIF and all her clothes too.
But, aside from food, I also missed feeling certain that I was going to be able to understand what people said to me. Presumably everyone was speaking English, but that doesn’t help when every other person speed-mumbles in unfamiliar accents and then expects you to understand every word because, well, it’s the same language, right? I had to get an embarrassingly large amount of stuff translated for me by an English friend. I wasn’t expecting that.
The food, and private bathrooms with running water, internet.
Are you serious? Have you ever had a real bagel?
I could make a list that lasts pages, but I’ll start with some basics
First off, I live in Japan, and it’s tough for many reasons (not just cause of the language. I can speak a decent conversational japanese, but it’s hard to just chat people up, and I REALLY miss being able to just look at something, a sign, a menu, whatever, and KNOW what’s on it).
DEODORANT! seriously folks, savor american deodorant, Japanese deodorant last until you’re outside for about 3 seconds. I have my parents send me Deodorant from the states (and condoms. Seriously, Japanese condoms either don’t fit or, if they do, break instantaneously).
Mexican food, an obvious one for a California Ex Pat, just can’t find a good burrito over here. Found one decent pizza joint, where they have real pepperoni and cook in a real oven, but even he offers the infamous “Mayonnaise and Corn” pizza. WTF?!
Goldfish crackers. Don’t ask, it’s a weird craving I’ve had for maybe 2 months now. I just need some damn goldfish…
I’ll give props to whoever said Mac and Che, I’ve been missing that stuff too, but I can make my own so it’s not TOO bad, ain’t quite the same as the boxed stuff we all grew up on though.
The sheer VARIETY of foods we have in the US is staggering, and I miss it quite badly. Everywhere you go in Japan has the same sorts of foods, traditional Izakaya’s have traditional izakaya food, Tonkatsu places have the same tonkatsu, italian places all serve the same pasta that tastes exactly the same and the same crustless crap pizza. When you can occasionally find a non-fastfood burger (thank you, Gasto) it has nothing on a real American burger. Oh, and leftovers. You can’t take a doggy bag home in Japan, how lame is that?!
which brings me to Beer. Oh sweet gods to I miss beer. Every beer here tastes the same. There are seriously like 20 different kinds of al the famous beers (Asahi, Kirin, etc) and they all taste exactly the same (clear tastes the same as lager tastes the same as “styleless” tastes the same as low cal) and they’re all crap. THere are one or two micro brews I can deal with, but I’m used to Bay Area California where every bar has 10 different micro brews on tap. That just doesn’t exist in this country. There’s usually only one beer on tap, “nama” beer (usually kirin or asahi) and, if you’re lucky, you might find Guiness too.
People who tell you they don’t like you. Thinking mostly of girls here. American girls will turn you down “hey, you wanna go out to dinner on friday?” “with you? No” I miss that. In Japan they do this terrible passive-agressive BS and never say “no” cause it’s culturally considered very rude. I miss that bluntness of American society, though.
Not fearing for my life whenever I’m within eyesight of a road. Ok, I know it’s stereotypical, but Japanese people CANNOT drive. They drive on sidewalks (SIDEWALKS!) they look left as they turn right, they look right as they turn left, they never pay attention to anything around them. SERIOUSLY! I’ve been hit by a car twice in the past 6 months, not serious but still. They scare the crap out of me on a daily basis.
But most of all I miss being one of a crowd. I hate being “kono gaijin” (that foreigner) at times. I mean, they stare at you all the time, they NEVER trust you (cause americans are dangerous, “amerika-jin ga abunai ne!”) they think all americans own guns and get robbed on a weekly basis or, at the very least, witness gunfights on the street.
Oh yea, and dryers. I hate hang-drying my clothes… And garbage disposals in my sink… and energy drinks… and real potato chips… and style that doesn’t leave one wondering if that’s a chick or a dude… and boobs, I miss boobs…
oh yea, and going to bars on a night that isn’t Friday or Saturday before 1am and there actually being PEOPLE there. I remember going to a bar every night of the week and it being reasonably busy
…I should stop now…
What is this “peanut butter” that you all talk about not being available here? I just looked in the supermarket. There are lots of varieties. Is it not the same?
j666, where did you vacation abroad that multiculturalism wasn’t in evidence?
I miss not being stared at when I talk to someone.
It’s particularly bad in pubs, when we’re all having a great time and I’m the only American in the group, and then when we all get up to leave I get stared at. It’s the polite but pointed “Did you realise you were being an American in our pub?” stare, and it really grates on me after a while.
You know that one lolcat where there’s a Pomeranian sitting with a bunch of cats and one of them thinks “There’s a spy among us”?
That’s what happens in a pub every time I open my mouth. Sidelong glances, etc. In fact it happened today…I was in WH Smith picking up some mechanical pencils and happened to answer my phone, and the ambient volume of other people’s conversation dropped off.
I’m shy anyway.
I’ve been in India for the some time now and I gotta say, this thread is making me tremendously homesick. And hungry. I’ve found most of what I miss is food-related. My apologies to my friends and family…
Here’s my list:
A good 'ol American Bacon double cheeseburger with a hearty serving of homemade guacamole.
A Chipotle naked chicken fajita burrito with extra veggies, corn salsa, cheese, sour cream…and a hearty serving of guacamole.
Potable water. Somewhere amidst my journey I unknowingly ingested some of the local brand. Enter 3+ weeks of sporadic sloppy ploppy…
I’m generally a health-conscious eater but man, I would cut out an organ for a well-made cheesecake right now.
The American Dream Roll (aptly named) and a bottle of warm saki from my favorite Sushi place in Littleton.
And, ironically enough, I miss Indian food. The food here in India (well, southern India anyway. I’ve never been north) is very different from the Indian restaurants I go to back home. Not really better or worse, just… different. And MUCH spicier.
A few things not related to foodstuffs:
Sports conversations. I’ve managed to get a few NFL games via streaming internet (though it means staying up until ridiculous hours, lately to see my poor team get walloped…stupid Broncos) but I have nobody to relate to the next day. And, though I’ve had it explained to me multiple times, my mind simply cannot grasp the concept of cricket.
A bed that doesn’t remind me of the night I spent in a holding cell for driving without a license.
Driving. I simply do not have the testicular fortitude to brave the roads out here. Far as I’ve gathered, there are no actual ‘rules’. You just drive where there is room. This includes sidewalks, shoulders, medians, and the other side of the highway (seriously). I seriously spent the first ten minutes out here dead certain I’d been kidnapped by a driver who was fleeing the scene of a robbery or something and picked me up as a hostage.
There’s plenty more, but I simply don’t have the heart to go on. I’m gonna go sulk for a bit before heading off to dinner…
Yeah, but many people use the perfumed cloth for the dryer - which is not available in Europe.
When I lived in the UK I didn’t miss my favorite brand of tampons (snerk), but apart from that I could have written exactly what she said.
Well, there was a small handful of other things, none of which bothered me for long.
–Donuts. I’m not a big fan of jam donuts, and nobody in the UK ever seemed to get the holed kind right; they were always too dry.
–American sports in general. You could find scores in the newspaper, and the odd article or two, but you rarely felt like you knew what was going on. There’s a seven-year hole in my sports knowledge. (“Tennessee won a national championship? Are you sure?”)
–Being able to go somewhere a decent distance away on a moment’s notice. Without a car it took a lot of planning to get somewhere outside the city (as long as that somewhere wasn’t London). Sure, you could just show up at the bus station, but I learned from bitter experience that travelling by bus or train on the spur of the moment often led to hour-or-more-long waits in places like Reading or Slough or Norwich or the like. Granted, it was great that you could do it without a car, but it’s something you had to plan in advance to make it tolerable.
–Doing a “big shop”. Again, the lack of car was the problem here. But as someone else said, it seemed that food was more perishable in the UK. It hardly seemed worth it to keep a few staples around like bread or milk or eggs. We just got them when we needed them. We didn’t have the room for that anyway.
–“Dorm-style” showers, you know, the kind where you get a torrent of really hot water to wake you up in the morning. Our dorm had an electronic water heater dealie that conked out after a couple minutes. The house where I lived didn’t have a shower at all.
Really, there were not many things I missed in the UK. What I missed more was being around family and friends and familiar places. I changed a lot in the UK, and maybe there was a bit of that, missing what I used to be, but in general I think the changes were for the better.