50 Of The Funniest Things Americans Have Been Told By People From Other Countries

My friend and I asked an Austrailian guy at our local bar why he was dressed so fancy and he said "I'm not American, when I go out I don't dress like..." and gestured to us wearing hoodies and jeans.

I am the foreigner in this case.

My uncle gaslit me for years regarding the meaning of Red and Blue states. I was about 4 years old during the 2000 election and we had family dinner once a week, before dinner we'd usually watch tv. And at the time the big thing in the news was about George Bush's victory in the election. And they'd show all the infographics.

So I asked my uncle why some places were blue and others were red. And he told me that in the blue states you were allowed to wear blue, but not red, and vice versa. And he kept that s**t going into my teens. As a non-American i never really cared to look into it, and obviously as a 4 year old i didnt understand the concept of a political party, so i just took him at face value.

Fast forward to 2010, i'm now 14 and my family goes on vacation to Florida. And i'm walking around seeing people wearing both red and blue. We go to a restaurant and I ask the waiter why people are wearing both, when its only legal to wear one or the other. My mother was mortified.

"Why do you chat with every cashier?" Asked incredulously by one of my German exchange sons.

Look, kid, the job sucks, it's underpaid and idiot corporate wanks insist on forcing them to stand.

The least I can do is be pleasant.

Saying I had an angry sink because it had a garbage disposal in it.

When I was thirteen I was in Paris with my (French ) friend and we went to the Paris McDonald's. Just before we take our food to the table to sit and eat, I do the "mom-grab" and take as many napkins as I can fit into a handful. My friend says, very alarmed and aggressive

"MICHAEL!! THIS IS A RESTAURANT! NOT YOUR HOUSE!!".

Freezing cold day in Maryland. Friend from Ukraine - “You think this is cold?”.

An International Student (from Malta) and I were hanging out at the "Smoker's Lounge" aka the place in front of the dorms where people smoked. A raccoon popped out of one of the trash cans, and he freaked out and said that the animals in North America were the size of monsters.

My Chinese dorm-mate sometimes struggles with English so when she walked in on me cooking completely hand-made enchiladas, she was surprised and asked what it was. when I told her and demonstrated how to do it, she beamed, started bouncing in excitement and said, "I didn't know you liked the brown people food!"

it was genuinely adorable and we both laughed XD.

I guess she had never heard the word 'Mexican' in English so she just improvised XD.

I have caused several incidents as a foreigner living in the US, if that counts? Including not understanding the protocol for when your car is stopped by the police for speeding. Apparently you are meant to stay seated, put on the interior light and put your hands on the dashboard. Not what I did: I leapt out the car and asked what the matter was. I couldn’t tell who jumped more, me or them. When very angrily asked if I’d never been stopped for speeding before, I replied “no, we just have speed cameras do that back home.” They didn’t take that well, either.

As for general hiccups, more than I can count. When I first arrived, I tried to plan a road trip to Texas. I was quite shocked to learn just how much of a distance that was… also quickly stopped calling my underwear “knickers” when I saw the horrified looks and way it made everyone quickly turn with whiplash speed to our black colleagues.

I was in spain, and a very loud irish man told me that i was “very quiet for an american”.

Are cheerleaders real? - teenager in London in 2006. Cheerleaders were in movies but they had no idea if that was a real thing. It was a charming conversation as a teenager.

Not said but done: when an international student took her top off at a public pool and unintentionally created quite a scene.

Had some visitors from Japan, and they asked if they could swing over by the west coast for an afternoon. I explained to them that it was about 3000 miles away and would take several days to drive there.

My Chinese roommate told me, "In America, if some is enough, more is always better.".

French guy at a bar in Paris would not believe that we had more varieties of beer than just Budweiser or Bud Light. I tried explaining that there was a bar where I lived with probably 50 beers on tap made just in my small midwestern state alone. Could not convince him that there are thousands of craft beers in the States. .

I had a friend come over from Belgium and she was shocked, saying "there is so much wildlife up close!" The wildlife in question? Squirrels and deer we passed by when driving...She couldn't believe that our area had so much more wildlife that she wasn't seeing (bears, coyotes, beavers, etcetc).

She also didn't understand how dangerous tornadoes were.

I briefly lived in Russia in 2003 and went to the mall with a friend. When there, we saw someone my friend knew and we started talking (in Russian) about whatever. Guy asks where I'm from, says I sound British, and I said I'm from LA. In English, he suddenly says "Ah! Los Angeles! For shizzle my ni***r!" The hardest 'r' in the history of 'r's. I was like, whoa, whoa, let's never say that again, shall we?

While being transported from the airport to the hotel in Morocco, the cab driver said “American?” To which I responded “yes.”

His response:

“Ahhh yes. Bill Clinton.”.

A guy from the UK I know loves to refer to Americans as melon farmers. Melon farming imbeciles. Doesn't know what some object I refer to is? Must be some kind of weird melon farming contraption. Where have I been the last few days? Must have been tending to my melon farm. I wish I had a backyard instead of a dumb asphalt apartment parking lot? Ah, I must be missing life back on my melon farm

It's really really weird.

I told someone who wanted to visit both coasts in a couple days, "It takes like 8 hours to fly from one side of our country to the other."
He answered, "Do American planes not fly as fast as other countries'!?".