This post is not to judge any culture, anyone or anything. I want to share my experience about how I see this country and what's the difference to where I'm from. Don't take anything personal, this is based on my experience here in general.
#1 Cars/Public transportation:
The cars here are so much bigger than the cars in Switzerland. When I saw my host family's car here in Fresno at the airport for the first time, I was like OMG ARE YOU SERIOUS? IS THAT YOUR CAR? ITS HUGE! And they were like 'yeah, it's just a normal car'. About 95% of the people here don't use public transportation like trains and busses, they take their cars to get everywhere & tbh I understand. It's difficult & expensive to travel here. Most of the people I know have never been in a train or bus and most of them also not in an airplane.
#2 Politics:
Okay, as we know a new president got elected & the people in Europe, especially Switzerland are not happy with Trump at all. However, many people here are happy that Trump won, and I get why but I'm not sure if he was the better choice. People in the United States have a different imagination of how the politics here should work. Honestly, I didn't really care when Trump won, because I feel like they're both stupid.
I can see why people here like Trump more, he has never been into politics, people here think that he is "just a normal person" (who has many towers made out of gold, lol) but Clinton is evil. There is a lot of gossip that doesn't reach Europe. Publissity wants Europe only to know certain things about the candidats and they reached their goals.
#3 Food:
I'm pretty sure that all you guys think that food in the US is mostly fast food, which means fried, fat, sweet,...
That's actually true, but I know that there are people who cook fresh stuff like vegetables & things like that, where I live it's different. We have a lot of Mexican food and we heat up a lot of things in the microwave or we go out to eat.
Tbh I gained a lot of weight because of that, but the food tasts amazing. And also you get free refill for Soda and free water everywhere, and for me that makes sense.
#4 Geography skills:
Okay, I don't want to sound mean, but Americans have a lot of trouble with geography. I feel like for most of them it's just the United states and the rest of the world is like a really really small place without civilisation and stuff. I got so many dumb questions & people still think Sweden & Switzerland are the same. "Do you guys have cars?", "Is there WiFi in Sweden" (tbh I'm not sure, not Swedish tho), "Do you have water over there?"
Once I was looking at an America map & a girl came up to me, putted her finger on the state of Nebraska & asked me if that's Switzerland.
I think you should have your own opinion about that, I think it's pretty sad.
#5 School:
Americans have 12 years of school, Swiss people have 9. Here I'm in 11th grade and at home I gratuated after 9th grade. For me, the school here is much easier than in Switzerland, even English class is not hard. It depends what classes you take, my classes are like medium hard. Everyone picks their classes by themselves, that's what I like here, but you have different people in every period, which makes it harder to make friends.
#6 Religion:
Many people here go to church every Sunday morning. My host family doesn't, but my host siblings go to youth group sometimes. I have many mormons in my school, where I'm from there are not many religious services.
#7 Shopping:
In my hometown, I took a train & I was in Basel after about 20 minutes, then I went shopping in the streets there. In America, there are basically almost just malls, there are only a few stores downtown. Malls are much easier because they have parking lots & since you have to drive a car to get anywhere, it's much easier in a mall & you have basically all the stores you need in one mall.
It really matters how you look, what clothes you wear and if you wear something more than once a week in school, I think that sucks.
#8 Houses/rooms:
The houses in America are really nice, but it depends where you live. There are not many apartments & if, then in really big cities like Los Angeles or Vegas. The rooms are decorated really cute & most families have their name printed on the walls. They have seasonal decoration & planners on blackboards & stuff like that. It is kinda important how your house looks like.
The dorms are also really cute, most people have little lights over the windows & the bed matches with the colour of the rest of the room. Americans hang up all their clothes with hangers in their closet.
Most teens have a TV with netflix in their room, some don't.
#9 Social media:
Basically all the Americans have a smart phone or a tablet. The adults all keep in touch with other family members that live far away with facebook. There are people who are about 80 that use FB or IG.
The teens have Snapchat & they snapchat everything. Even if it's just *I had chicken for dinner*
I think it's surprising that younger kids who are about 6 have their own tablets, they have netflix oder games on it & some also have Instagram. People do not use Whatsapp, they use iMessage instead, which means 99% of the people here have an iPhone.
Americans watch a lot of TV, they mostly watch Football or Baseball games or shows on Netflix.
There's wifi almost everywhere, in many cafe's like Starbucks or in trains you have free internet which makes it really easy to get connection if you don't have a deal with at&t or horizon or something.
#10 People:
I think Americans are way more friendly than Europeans. They are way more open and for example when you're at a train station, people come up to you and ask if you need help, they hold the doors, they say 'hi' to each other and stuff. But they forget about you, once they talk to you and on the next day they don't even say hi to you at school. They are more open but it's not like that you are friends with them from then on. In Europe that's kinda different.
As I already said, I did not want to judge anyone, it's just my point of view and I love both countries and cultures. I recommend a visit to the United States or especially California to everyone, it is really beautiful and totally different to Europe. And I also recommend Europe to the Americans, I promise, you're gonna love it.
BTW: Don't miss my last blog update down here, it's about Thanksgiving.