30 Of The Good And The Bad Culture Shocks Non-Americans Experienced While In The US, As Shared In This Online Group

Your sugar has very little food in it.

Seeing children of all different colors. It was beautiful.

The treatment of veterans. A lot of communication around the respect they deserve. Yet many of them are broke, homeless and in a generally bad position.

Not really a shock but one thing that really surprised me was the sheer amount of flags.

It was like almost every building had an American flag. Here in Belgium, if I see a house with a national flag I assume there's some kind of sport event going on that I didn't know about.

The toilet doors (or lack thereof). Not enough door!

Seriously, you're a wealthy enough country you don't need to leave an inch gap at the sides and a foot and a half at the top and bottom.

Could not walk anywhere, or take good public transport. Always had to take Ubers or hitch lifts.

Everything was also HUGE. Cities, buildings, regular houses, food portions. I'd say people but I did not see anybody who was hugely obese there at least.

There was an insane amount of space just...everywhere. As a European used to being crammed into every available nook, even in rural areas, the way that towns and cities just stretched out was unimaginable.

Everyone I met treated me like a long lost friend

The air conditioning. Everywhere. And the literal temperature shock between the inside and the outside of any f**king building.

Everything being f**king huge. Literally. Road lanes, groceries, soda sizes. Especially distances: where i come from, 3 hours of driving are enough to cross half of the country, in the US it's just a small drive to go to see a relative or something.

Lawyer commercials and "if this happened to you, you can sue them" commercials.

Christianity everywhere. On your money, in the school, every Sunday, churches everywhere, in your pledge, in the Boy scouts, verses at the bottom of In&Out milkshakes

I was walking down the street and there were some road workers doing something a bit ahead. When I got near them, one of them approached me and super kindly asked me to cross to the other side, halted the traffic so I could cross and wished me a nice day as I went along.

In my country they would've probably heckled at me for not crossing, and I would've told them to go f**k themselves for not signaling things properly as I walked in the middle of the street potentially getting hit by a car

Turn right on red. Beautiful.

The importance of the College/University you go to. For me it felt like the name, you can even call it brand, of the College is more important than your actual skills and knowledge as well as the quality of education you receive. So many times, people asked me which College/University I visit and told me about their College and the College their childrens are visiting. Totally different than what I am used to in Germany, where it is mainly focused on your skills and grades not the College/University your are visiting.

Tipping. And not just tipping, but tipping so much that the entire thing I bought (e.g. a meal) is now in an entirely higher price bracket.

How early everything starts. School, work. 6am wake ups. That was hard.

Advertisements in between the title credits of the show and the actual show. You guys have a LOT of advertisements.

Spray cheese. I was not ready.

No sidewalks, not everywhere, but outside of major cities, you often literally can't walk between places safely

The different kinds of flavors for beverages. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of options.

Just so you guys know,I enjoyed having multiple options, until I came to the US I had no idea I liked Blue Raspberry flavored soda and I found out that I liked to mix different kinds of sodas from the fountain and make a cocktail soda occasionally.

Also, I like how you guys have a s**t ton of flavors for your alcohol. I liked a lot of them but to be honest I didn't enjoy the whipped cream flavored stuff.