Hello Again!
British perceptions of Americans are one of my favourite things to appreciate. Most of the knowledge that they have about the Land of the Free and what many Americans claim as the “Best Country in the World” is based off Hollywood…With that in mind, we know that they have a very accurate idea of how we live our lives. 🙂
The funniest idea of Americans I have found are about our parties. I have multiple times been asked why I came to England when they parties are soooo amazing in America. Their idea of an American party comes from Project X and the types of college party all seem to be Blue Mountain State (BMS), the TV show, quality. Every party is a huge blowout with a DJ. The red solo cups are the icon of the American party. You can see how much that image runs true here because the cost of getting red solo cups is ridiculous in comparison to at home and is labelled as “The Red Cup”. American parties are good, but the English forget that the drinking age is 21 at home and our police love to shut down parties. Unless you are at college, a properly good party is relatively hard to come by. In England, one of my friends would throw parties relatively frequently with an upwards of 60 people there. The police don’t care. The parents don’t care. We can drink here at 18. It makes me laugh just how extreme they think things get…cars often don’t end up in pools at parties surprisingly 😉
Spring Break is another thing that is a bit off. My house mates would yell “Spring Break whooo!!!” every time I mentioned Spring Break. Obviously there are loads of people who celebrate Spring Break to the max and go to Mexico and Florida and live it up for the week, but there are so many more people that just don’t. Apparently there is an idea that all Americans go away on some life changing Spring Break vacation. Spring Breakers and countless other Spring Break movies are the cause of that. To be fair, it makes me want to go to Mexico and live that life for a week. It makes you want to live up to their Hollywood standards.
This last one is pretty accurate to be fair…I am asked loads about the cars that we drive because they believe that we all drive massive cars. That is totally true hah. I have a truck and a Land Rover. You don’t get much bigger than those. Americans have trucks that are double cabs, with extended beds, and have double tires that end up taking up two parking spaces because they are so long. I was driving in my Land Rover, when I went home over Winter Break, and a truck pulled up and I could not see above the wheel arch…We love our big cars. In England, every single car seems to be the size of a Mini Cooper or a Fiat 500. As the roads here are the size of our sidewalks, they need the small cars.
Basically America is not quite what the English believe. These things hold an almost mythical and magical place in their minds. It makes me sad that I have to tell them that Hollywood lied. I try to let them down easy 😉
Goodbye for now!
Holly
