What was your impression of the US growing up? (for non Americans)

[Holmbo]

I was reading the religion poll thread and it made me think about my reflection about USA when I spent a high school exchange year there. I thought maybe it could be fun to start a thread where we non Americans can talk about what we thought of the US growing up. Since most peoples early introduction is through pop-culture and other media it can lead to some funny assumptions, or just ignorance of big parts of reality.

 

The thing that got me thinking about this is that I remember how surprised I was, at the start of my exchange year, by the mainstream-ness of Christianity. I did know about it in theory but I had no experience of it. Swedish people are love the US but since most don't care about religion I suppose most religious themed culture never really reach us. So I knew that many Americans went to church on Sundays and might say grace at the table but I could never have expected all the different ways religion would pop up. Like my soccer team mates getting together to pray before each soccer game, or encountering people who were in every sense completely ordinary except that they believed things completely outlandish to me like creationism or that oral sex was morally wrong. You don't really see much of religion in every day life in American media I think.

 

Does anyone else have reflections about their view of the US? (lets stay away from reflections of the cheto man though because otherwise there will be room for nothing else)

[Apathetic Echidna]

so....when I was growing up my main adult male influence disliked the English but liked the Americans (actually pretty much all of the continental Americas), so as sort of a rebellion I got obsessed with the UK which created a sort of superiority complex for the Commonwealth. I was quite young and it came out in ridiculous ways as I reacted to pop culture.

 

I don't remember particularly thinking about the US except to be weirded out by the fact that they give God a mention or a blessing in almost every public speech and the populace seem to mainline coffee. I knew Americans in Australia and they didn't do that, apart from the odd bible joke at dinner and watching that Christian vegetables cartoon there seemed to be no obvious religion, so I thought in their native country it was like a social cult, to be seen as worshipful (though I didn't realise then that Australia is massively discriminatory and distrusting of religion, wrap it up as cultural expression or do it in a church and you are fine but do it openly in public and you are branded a religious weirdo).

 

I never understood any of the sport either (still don't ), their football is just a stilted game of rugby with armor and baseball is like [censored list of discriminatory words], Cricket is better. 

 

When I was in my teens I had friends go to the US and return complaining of the food resources, there were only supermarkets, no individual butchers or bakers or grocers grouped together. Apparently all the bread was sugared as well, which made it uneatable to them. (though to be fair when I went to the UK a NZ woman and I shocked a UK man when we complained of the food there because neither of us eat sandwiches and were hoping for pork pies and jellied eels everywhere).

[Holmbo]

On 2017-09-08 at 3:27 AM, Apathetic Echidna said:

I never understood any of the sport either (still don't ), their football is just a stilted game of rugby with armor and baseball is like [censored list of discriminatory words], Cricket is better.

 

Cricket seem weird too I think
In Sweden we have a sport we play only in school called brännboll (burn ball) and is played with a bat. It's the only bat sport I've ever played so I lump all such sport together and it feels weird to me that people would play them outside of schools or big picknicks.

[SamwiseLovesLife]

Childhood view: Lots of obese racist people on ranches

 

I am so sorry..