<p>Okay, one more question. When they are asking “How was your weekend”, do they actually smile? Or its just like a robot asking the question?</p>
<p>That all depends on the person.
They could be in a bad mood but still care, and vice versa. </p>
<p>In my case, we just ask, there’s no smile, but there’s no “I DONT CARE” attitude either. </p>
<p>It’s just a normal thing to do</p>
<p>You Yanks are quite a friendly bunch, I like that about you. I refer to big city folk, not the hill billy types. :D</p>
<p>Yo its the same in Kenya… At least urban Kenya. It is just polite to ask. That’s why the generic response of “fine” will always suffice regardless of whether it is actually the case or not.</p>
<p>I’m not going until the fall, but I’ve visited the States on family holidays - although we were pretty much just in each other’s company when we went places. (Maui, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Vegas, Colorado, Florida)</p>
<p>The people are really friendly, and iced water is a matter of human decency.</p>
<p>I had one shocker of a moment when we went white water rafting in the Grand Canyon, and a couple of teenage boys said - with terrifying conviction - that Obama is a Muslim.</p>
<p>All I could do was splutter and say “-I - he goes to church!!”</p>
<p>The UK was rooting for Obama, especially because of Bush.
We stayed up to watch him win '08, even though it was 4am our time, and I studied his winning speech in school.</p>
<p>I honestly wasn’t surprised at all when I went to the US for the first time for summer school at UChicago. Maybe it’s because I go to an American school in China.</p>
<p>As an international student and a citizen of the world (I don’t really have a single country to call my “homeland”) I have noticed the following:</p>
<p>The USA is as a whole a better place to live in than most internationals think, but a worse place to live in than most of the American media portrays. It is really just another country.</p>
<p>
Most of the time the media give me the impression that this country is doomed to go up in flames in the near future: if we are not killed by high-fructose corn syrup, terrorist attacks, a nuclear accident or riots following government bankruptcy, our quality of life is about to deteriorate as health care, education and retirement become unaffordable, corporate America enslaves our free will, global warming takes away our peaceful sunny days and much of our arable land, and we slowly drown in our trash.</p>
<p>Well that’s the news … but what about fiction? To watch American TV, almost everyone is white and rich with interesting jobs, not to mention good looking. This isn’t the case in a lot of other countries. Just compare the cast of the UK office with the US version - they cast much better looking people in the American one, and made it more hopeful.</p>
<p>I do think the American media gives a bad impression of the rest of the world. The only time foreign countries ever show up on American news is either when there’s some sort of disaster in that country, or when America is interacting with that country (often warzones). Because of the insularity of the media, you could be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the world is entirely like Iran/Afghanistan/Russia.</p>
<p>
I grew up in Germany and the same could be said there. Other countries only make our news when there’s a disaster or we interact with them. </p>
<p>I think it’s true of media everywhere that they try to appeal to their audience. Who’s the audience of Hollywood movies? Middle-class Americans, who happen to be predominantly white. Modern German TV shows don’t usually feature farmers either, even though it’s probably the most frequent occupation in the country. </p>
<p>Since you mentioned optimism and the attractiveness of the cast in particular, I would claim that those reflect cultural differences too. I can’t speak for the UK, but Americans definitely care more about their appearance than Germans, and they also tend to be much more outgoing and optimistic and upbeat and bubbly and individualistic than Germans.</p>
<p>The above was just me thinking out aloud. I think my conclusion is the following: I agree with you that American fiction is not an accurate reflection of the everyday life of most Americans; but I am not convinced that it’s “more false” than the fiction products of other countries.</p>
<p>I didn’t come here for college, but a few years before. I was really surprised by how much people talk about money here. Growing up, I can’t ever remember caring about money so much as my peers here do. It seemed really rude, but I guess I got used to it.</p>
<p>Also, I had to get used to so many people running around saying their one country was so much better than everyone else’s. Really arrogant, but I guess it’s just how the culture is.</p>
<p>Oh, and it’s easier if you just let them act like they know things about your country, even though they’re wrong a lot!</p>
<p>But overall, people are usually nice, wherever you go, so adapting can be fun! I like it here, though I don’t think I’ll stay here forever (but who knows!).</p>
<p>And also, there is a lot of slang you probably didn’t learn in your country, so don’t be afraid to ask someone if you don’t understand.</p>
<p>I do not like living in the US for several reasons (although there are quite a few reasons to LIKE living in the US)
- I am black, foreign, and expect to be treated as an equal. Unfortunately the “Uncle Tom” personality is what gets you the most friends
- Us foreign students are exploited in biomedical labs when working on PhDs; there are literally different sets of rules we are expected to follow
- Nobody wants to stick their necks out for unpopular causes (anti-racism, anti-human trafficking, anti-white supremacy) but everyone is into gay rights (a good cause, but also popular and “cool”)
- Conformists, conformists
- Superficial interest in non-European cultures, histories, and countries in general (if any at all). Not a crime, but not very worldly either.
- This is my most contentious claim: “assimilated” minorities pander to, and desperately seek acceptance from, white Americans. They will posture and claim they find FOBs smelly, unintelligible, and laughable. This often suspiciously comes across as their trying to distance themselves from “dirty foreigners” and show the mainstream Americans that they are not annoying PC-identity politics-playing minorities, which leads me, ironically, to
- Political correctness is out of control. People are honest about their true beliefs only when in the presence of their “own kind”.</p>
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</p>
<p>Can you elaborate? I heard similar things too from most graduate students. Like excessive lab hours e.t.c. Is it true?</p>