Things I have to adapt to every time I come back to the States:
Grocery stores; fast food and how much of it there is, roads and drivers- namely how wide the roads are and how many cars are on them.
More than 50 channels on cable but not much worth watching. TV commercials every 5 minutes, including lawyers touting for trade from people who’ve had automobile accidents - do you call them ambulance chasers? Drive through ATMs. No footpaths. People telling me I had a neat accent and very interested in where I was from - that was in Maine. (People at home usually couldn’t give a stuff because so many foreigners). Conservative clothes - have to really search for clothes that are a little different. Cool bras in my size! Bland food.
Paying for using the motorway (still free in NZ).
Forgot to add, that I can fit into clothes sold nearly everywhere, whereas at home, I have to make sure the shop goes up to an 18/20.
India, sorry.
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The same was true of my little brither when my family moved to Singapore (he was 6) But the completely opposite reason. Hell, it was two years before he would eat rice of his own will.
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From New Zealand/Australia
Driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road
Some things begin cheaper and some wildly more expensive
Significantly lower wage rates
Religion everywhere
Not being able to get meat pies and good fish’n’chips
The food is different anyway
No footpaths (sidewalks), at least here, on most roadsides
Flags everywhere
Billboards
The entire political spectrum being a lot further right
Everyone dressing pretty much the same - conservatively (tough to find clothes here that I like)
People thinking I am English
Probably a bunch of other stuff as well, but these are the ones that come to mind first.
I’ve not lived in the US but I have visited as a tourist. I’d echo some of the points that others have made:
- no footpaths;
- the bland taste of so much of the food (and the huge sizes of the servings);
- having to tip so many people
[list=a]
[li]I thought a “footpath” was a mugger/bandit. Wait, that’s “footpad”? Here, we call em sidewalks.[/li][li]Season it to your taste. As for the size, you won’t leave the table hungry.[/li][li]Tip a dollar, if it bothers you, with more for really good service, if any.[/li][/list]
I don’t think the point of the thread was to give solutions - we know this after living or visiting the US.
Wow. This thread has really taken off. Thanks to everyone for your replies. Keep 'em coming.
DC
I’m native-born and raised American, but I lived in Europe for several years.
One French person told me of an unusual experience she had while visiting the States before she met me. In Europe, beer (the alcoholic kind) is commonly sold in fast food/hamburger restaurants, and she was quite used to ordering a beer with a Big Mac at the French McDonald’s. When she was visiting California, though, she ordered a Big Mac with a root beer–she just saw “beer” and assumed that root beer was beer. She said she spat it out when the root beer touched her tongue, and she couldn’t drink another drop. That was far and away the most memoable experience she had during her two-week stay in the States.
I also seriously dated–and came close to marrying–a Moroccan man that I met in southern France, back in the mid-1980’s. One of the main reasons I decided against marrying him, though, was that he seemed to think that marrying me and moving to the States would erase all of the racism he had to experience in France. I did tell him many times that Americans were much more racist than the French were, but he really didn’t want to believe me, because he was convinced that Americans were Just with no Prejudices at all, because that was how they/we were portrayed in the movies. I realized that if we were going to have any kind of future together that I would have to move to Morocco, and while I would probably have had to endure fewer problems as a white woman in Morocco than he would have had to endure as a Muslim in the US, I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment.
This is the biggest thing that struck me after each time I returned to the States. The money problem is probably different with the Euro as the common currency now, but I lived in NE France, and if we travelled more than 20 minutes in any direction other than west, we ended up in a different country with either a different currency or a different language, or both.
Most of the Europeans I’ve met simply don’t understand the sheer SIZE of the US. When I told my students in France that I could literally travel for a WEEK in one direction without having to change currency or language, they didn’t believe me at all, and they couldn’t understand how surprised I was about the proximity of Germany, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.