One thing that always, always, always happens to Americans when we repatriate is the "grocery store freakout". At some point, you will go to a grocery store, and freeze.
"Man..." you'll keep saying, "Americans really love breakfast cereal..."
One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing, but I feel like I went into a coma and woke up 20 years later in a world I can barely relate to. As an example, I'm thinking about stuff like Miley Cyrus' performance. And a lot of the social justice stuff -- I really just missed a whole lot of it and I've literally had to learn tons of new words and concepts to catch up and not appear bigoted. Living abroad in a more "conservative" culture and then coming back and adapting with a snap of the fingers is tough. The weird thing is that I was considered "very liberal" when I first left the US.
The hardest thing of all is perhaps how violent and aggressive and loud and rude Americans can be (in public, to strangers). It can be downright frightening, coming from Asia.
Edit: Also, I can't stop bowing to people. Asian Americans probably sometimes suspect I'm racist.
One wonders, if the rest of the world is more cautious about this sort of thing, if maybe it's America that's in the wrong. Maybe other cultures deal with these things more sensitively or more rationally or just better.
My experience travelling abroad is that people seem more comfortable in their skins, which is sad given that America is supposed to be the place where anyone can make it.
Try doing that with a disability, being a visible minority, being a woman, etc.
America is far from perfect, but it's at least accommodating. In other countries they don't hesitate to throw people to the curb.
It's the little things: The wheelchair accessible stores and streets, the effort made to deal with vision impairments, institutions that are fighting for women's rights and so on. There are some places in the world where people with disabilities do not seem to exist, they're always hidden away.
The amount of homeless, jobless, bad education, a meme president and all that is nothing you find in 'your usual developed nation'
What makes it seem worse than it is has been the way these unemployed people are highly clustered today. There's counties with 50-60% unemployment, but they're low-population so they don't skew the national rate all that much. It certainly sucks to be in one of those affected areas, and I know people who are stuck there, but the big picture is a different thing.
America is far from a homogeneous thing, but it's also full of opportunity if you're able, willing and prepared to move to them.
Wheelchair accessibility is simply not a thing here, not even in Vienna and Berlin (let alone small towns or rural areas). E.g. you will often find the bathrooms in restaurants or cafes to not be accessible without going up or down a bunch of stairs.
Another example: get out of the big cities (and sometimes even just get out of the central areas of the big city!) and try to get vegetarian or vegan food in a restaurant. Sometimes the waiters won't even know what that means (when speaking in German, so not due to a language issue).
But the downside is that they're not nearly as livable as new construction. Disability access is one. Nobody's going to install a wheelchair ramp in a 500-year-old building.
Here's another: air conditioning. I'm from Dallas and still live here, but my family is from New York City. I visit my ancestral home every few years, and what really jumps out at me every time I visit is the lack of central air conditioning. In any residential part of Manhattan, all you have to do is look up, and you'll see hundreds of room air conditioners hanging out of every building. The house in Westchester my aunt and uncle lived in when I was a kid had neither central AC nor heating; I have memories of staying in the guest room with this ratty old radiator grill that was encrusted with unidentifiable gunk. Actually, that whole house just felt ancient. Visiting my aunt and uncle felt like walking into a time machine because of how old their house looked and felt.
You don't see places like that in Dallas. Dallas is a pretty new city; the city proper didn't reach its current borders until 1977, and the suburbs were mostly farmland until the '80s and '90s. The northern part of Dallas where I grew up was built out in the late '70s and '80s, after central AC had become standard. The suburb where I work wasn't built up until the '90s and the '00s, and there are places not too far north of here that were built this decade. Everyone has central AC and heating here. The idea of going without is ludicrous, because all our construction is new enough that central AC and heating were incorporated in the design from the start. Now, yeah, the sweltering climate has something to do with it; state law requires landlords to provide AC at all times, and it's actually a crime for them to fail to resolve complaints about a broken AC within a certain amount of time. But a lot of it is just because Dallas is mostly newer construction.
It's just not hot for a long enough part of the year to be worth the expense.
In most of Europe, it's not uncommon for trans women to be forced to crossdress in public in order to get hormones. It's not uncommon for trans women to be denied hormones for a number of stupid things: if you're attracted to women (you have to be 100% straight to get hormones in most of Europe), because the outfit they wore to the doctor isn't feminine enough (you have to be wearing a dress), because you have no interest in bottom surgery, because you don't specifically hate your penis, because you didn't play with dolls as a kid, because you've had any sexual thoughts about being a woman. You have to go out of your way to prove to the shrinks there that you're trans enough, and their standards are so ridiculous that they'd tell 90% of cis women they're not really women.
It varies by country. Denmark and Finland are the absolute worst about this. Denmark in particular has been condemned by Amnesty International for this [0]. Norway is pretty bad, but I've heard stories of people who found a sympathetic GP who's willing to go around the law (in Norway, it's illegal to prescribe estrogen for transition outside the gender clinic system, but a doctor can prescribe estrogen for other reasons, and doctors don't have to report their prescriptions to anyone). I've heard Spain is one of the least-worst countries, actually, so much that trans people from other European countries actually go to Spain for treatment. Same goes for parts of Eastern Europe (estrogen might even be OTC in some Balkan countries). The UK used to be horrible, but they've gotten better in the last 2-3 years or so, which is entirely thanks to a single private doctor (Dr. Webberly). In Germany and France, it depends on exactly where you live.
In the US, I can just walk into any informed consent clinic or in some cases the offices of certain GPs, sign a paper that says I know what I'm getting into, get my blood taken, and walk out with a prescription for estrogen once the bloodwork comes back.
Oh, and in some European countries, you can't even legally change your name unless you've had surgery. I know this is the case in the Czech Republic (you can take a gender-neutral name, but you cannot take a female name if you have testicles). It's sad, because access to hormones is better in the Czech Republic than in most of Europe.
[0] News article about it in English: https://www.thelocal.dk/20170303/amnesty-slams-denmark-for-d... -- Amnesty International's actual report, in Danish: http://amnesty.dk/media/2263/amnesty-transkoennedes-adgang-t...
With free health care here I would imagine when you do get prescribed, the price is next to nothing. Even though you are jumping through more hoops here, in my opinion it's better to make it affordable than the insane prices the US has and easier.
It's like America gets a B/B+ at least in most categories where some countries are more like A/A/D.
That said development is not a simple linear scale. Each culture has good things others could learn from, but it's wrong to see low development level as some kind of purity.
Though it's true to some degree, I wouldn't go that far. My sense is that the higher the margin on a product or product-line, the more money the manufacturer and distributors have to purchase shelf space. Cereal, Chips, Crackers, Ice Cream, Mayonnaise.
The last time I was at the store I counted 21 separate varieties of Triscuit, 10-12 flavors over three sizes.
Don't freak out, it actually is weird.
This would imply that other milk-drinking Western countries would also eat a lot of breakfast cereal. And indeed it's something I notice when I go back from China to Belgium or the UK.
(Disclaimer: I haven't been to the US, so perhaps Americans like breakfast cereal even more than Europeans)
US also subsidies milk production to keep prices reasonable, which may have a side effect of increasing the amount consumers will pay for associated products like cereal.
What I find really interesting though is how that's slowly starting to change as other countries start to adopt more of the quick-eat consumerist culture similar to the U.S. What's more fun is that the local solutions to snacks and cereals are usually very interesting and designed for local tastes.
The first time I went to Europe, 20 some odd years ago there really was a slim selection, mostly variants of Muesli mixes. When I was in Russia in the 90s, I really wanted some breakfast cereal and there was a big effort to get milk and some corn flakes. In Germany I had more selection, but not hugely.
The first time I went to Korea about 15 years ago it was the same.
More recently I notice the amount and selection of breakfast cereals is exploding on those countries. Most of my experience has been in Korea, and there are now full-on cereal aisles with an entire list of different products. Not as many as the U.S. but definitely getting there.
So what's fun it that not only do I get to eat all the American varieties, but as other countries add other cereals to their cultural inventories, I get to try and enjoy those as well.
In this scene, the character has just returned from a tour in Iraq defusing IEDs. The movie portrays him as a total pro in the battlefield, but stunned and anxious as he returns to civilian life. Great movie not just about war, but about the psychology of war and purpose.
Edit: here's a better dissection – http://www.cinemablography.org/supermarket-scene.html
This is MUCH easier in a big city of course. Houston is surprisingly good in this regard: not only can you find all kinds of groceries, but the restaurants serving different cuisines are absolutely terrific.
One night while I was asleep, there was a clap-clap-clap next to my window at 3 AM in the morning. I just assumed it was some old guy exercising early in the morning by clapping and walking backwards...not a weird thing in Beijing. I ran outside ready to confront whoever it was, and it was just...water drops hitting a leaf.
Well, that's how it is when I'm just wandering around the store for fun. If I want to pick a toothpaste, it's frustrating that I need to make a tough choice for something so trivial.
so much space with nobody in it. Everything you need to live under one giant roof. There's 4 people at 4 registers and no line for any of them.
We are definitely not going to the same Walmart.
EDIT: To clarify, I know this is one of Walmart's strengths, but it doesn't improve my experience.
(And I see you'll be paying in pennies.)
</rant>
I imagine it would be more shocking moving from another country.
In my local stores there are feet of cereal aisle that all seems largely overkill. When I go to a suburban grocery store there are yards of it. I'm always baffled.