When my daughter was in Namibia, one of the big misconceptions there was that all Americans knew each other. She was often asked “Do you know Oprah?”
It’s not an unreasonable assumption. Namibia is sparsely populated, and people move around a lot. If you say you’re from a particular town, someone will probably know someone there.
I have lived in Asia for about 15 years, and many of the people that I meet insist that American children leave home at age 18.
They are legally adults at age 18, but most Americans at 18 either live at university, or at home with their parents.
All of my friends and family left their parent’s home in their mid twenties.
Still have not found the reason for this misconception about Americans at age 18.
I’m in the Caribbean and I still remember buying a bag of fresh corn on the street from a produce vendor, cooking it up and going :eek:
Turns out thats normal, all corn here except for canned is feed corn. It is used in soup, not eaten off the cob.
EDIT:I think I saw imported sweet corn on the cob once in a grocery in a nicer area, not easy to find.
Of course it is. I’m not sure what your point is. My point was that most of the corn you see in the miles and miles of fields is grown for feed.
Or E85. We ended up with some field corn on the cob once: not exactly inedible, but far from enjoyable.
And the corn-on-the-cob I grew up with in the Midwest is nothing like Jersey sweet corn. Sometimes nice things happen in New Jersey.
Given that it is a national holiday here I don’t know how anyone can say it is a much bigger deal in the US than in Ireland. Also red hair is pretty common here although the red hair/green eye combo isn’t so much.
It is probably a YMMV thing. One way or another, everyone I knew was booted out within a year of graduating. That is not say some did not return for periods when they were a little older, but the “living in your parents’ basement” thing was something from fiction.
so what? “everyone you know” is pretty much 0% of the population. only Internet Bullshitters think “everyone I know” is a cite.
Thing is, many Americans (and the majority of American media picturing college students) include “left home to go to college” in “leaving home”, whereas in other countries we don’t. If you’re 31yo and your Mommy still does your laundry… you may live on your own but you haven’t quite left home!
I know many people who think of Scandinavian countries as being snowy year-round. Heck, I had a mental climatic border between them and Germany myself, before I started interviewing for a job in Sweden…
No, Spain isn’t all beaches. Those beaches surround a place called “the interior” which has many mountains, a couple of large flattish spaces, the occasional river and lots of old buildings. You can take a day trip from Madrid to the beaches of Valencia, but you’ll spend more time in traffic than on the sand. And the weather of Bilbao or Compostela is more similar to Cardiff’s than to Seville’s: bring a raincoat.
I think there’s a general tendency to forget that any country bigger than a postage stamp (and even some of those) will have regional differences and regional stresses.
When my brother was in Germany one summer in high school, his host family saw a news story about California wildfires and thought he might have to stay with them indefinitely because our house would surely have burned down. We lived in Maryland.
I went to China as a teenager and got food poisoning and barely wanted to eat anything for a number of days, enough that the people I was with became concerned. They thought I might recover better if I got a “typical American diet,” so they attempted to medicate me with McDonald’s cheeseburgers. It was very “Feed the American cheeseburgers and it will start working right again!” which would have been more amusing if I hadn’t been feeling so crappy. They were surprised to learn that it wasn’t really a staple, and it definitely wasn’t a recommended food for sick people.
The “without uniforms” thing I can get.
But being fascinated by a co-ed school? Co-ed schools are and always have been the norm in Australia and NZ. 99% of people will have attended one. They are so much the norm that there isn’t a word for co-ed. Schools that aren’t co-ed are the exception that need to be labelled as “Girls schools” or “single sex schools”.
It’s hard to believe anybody in Australia or NZ being fascinated by a normal school.
Sorry, I’m probably the reason for that. I think this probably varies a great deal by family income.
even sven reminds me:
Yes, Egypt is a majority-Muslim country. But there are Christians there too.
Story told before:
we had a project involving factories from different countries, including one in South Africa. One of the ZA delegates mentioned that, since their lowest-level operators were illiterate… and got interrupted by a mob of agitated Europeans and Americans who couldn’t believe that there is such a thing as illiterate adults in ZA.
They had the notion that most countries in subsaharian Africa were composed of hungry children (not true), with ZA being the exception where everybody had college degrees and nice jobs. On one hand it was kind of a compliment but on the other whadafuck?
I’m pretty sure that most people are aware of the fact that heavy rainfall is common in the Iberian peninsula, particularly in the flattish spaces.
I remember the time my niece was visiting Los Angeles from the midwest and asked if I wanted to pop down from San Francisco for a visit.
Also, the idea that the entire state was as warm as San diego
It could be a regional thing, especially if it was a long time ago. In my dad’s era, my hometown had a public technical school for the boys and a public high school for the girls, as well as a private school for boys and a private school for girls. By the time I got to secondary school (late 80s), all were co-ed. I just barely remember the private schools merging during my primary school years.
I would say that misconceptions people have about my country are mostly about how dangerous the wildlife can be. Yes, we have a large percentage of the most venomous snakes or spiders in the world. That’s not something you need to worry about while you’re holidaying here. It isn’t going to be a factor in your vacation. If you die while you’re here it will be from a mundane, ordinary thing like a car accident, not death by snake or spider.
Depends when Alphaboi visited and what sort of schools Blake! During my school years, private schools were almost always single-sex schools, as were many government schools as well (think 1960’s-70’s). Some transitioned in the 1980’s but many remain to this day single-sex.
Not Spanish speakers, who instead know that the rain in Seville is a wonder to behold (la lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla). Given that it tends to take the form of “sudden deluges”, it’s a lot more wonderful if you’re indoors.
I’m not sure she’s got it. 