Oh, i don't know about that. One of the presidential canditates wasn't in military. Sure he lost, but still made it to the second election

And that is another remnant of the time when we had to fear the soviets, i'd expect that to lessen as time goes by too.

I don't know about that, national defense is one thing but for a country like mine where we are always jammed up occupying someone's rectum that isn't a very good idea. Main thing that stopped me trying to enlist was that I don't want to get shipped off. That and you know... I'm allergic to bullets.

Exuberant amounts of alcohol. I don't mean to generalize, but I have never seen somebody watch NASCAR while completely sober. I think that its boring myself. I love drag races and dirt tracks, though. Dirt track racing is basically NASCAR, only in dune buggies and without pavement.

To Canadians: Just how different is Canadian French from French French?

I have some friends who love NASCAR. They plan days around the races and root for their favorite drivers. Not all of them drink either. It seems the ones who love it most are those who are either gear-heads and love fast cars and working on them or those who know someone who drives at the smaller tracks in Fbks and Anchorage. One such friend used to work in the pits off and on for NASCAR and called it his vacation. Leaving the state for several months then returning to his business and regular job when he was done.

I personally would rather watch rain fall than cars driving in circles.

Not much secret about it! A typical three-bedroom house around here costs around ￡300,000 (about $0.5 million) which is absolutely ridiculous for a house that'll probably measure under 1,000 sq ft and be on a plot of land that'll likely be (considerably) less than 50x100'. There are areas of the country that are a lot cheaper but that's because there're few jobs to be had to actually pay the mortgage. A lot of people aren't quite as bothered as me, but since I spend all my time at home, somewhere with more floor space and more land (and less insane prices...) would be nice.

I know there are areas in, say, the US where house prices are way more expensive again, but typically they're quite a bit more reasonable, from what I understand.

Well, I grew up in a pretty redneck backwoods town, so most people didn't do anything without drinking. NASCAR just seemed to have an extra amount of booze surrounding it.

Not in a stereotypical or derogative way at all, but is knowledge of other countries, continents and cultures really as bad as it seems with Americans?

Like, for example, this video. It makes me want to hunt her down and kill her with an atlas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANTDkfkoBaI

Is Welsh near London?

She is competing against another member of the U.S.A., who is very young, if that tells you anything. This person is just stupid. Of course it makes people feel nice to paint with broad brushes, so she will be used as an example of everybody in the country. There are intelligent Americans discussing this video in the comments, and on Youtube no less. Here in America, we have stupids and dumb-dumbs. We take them and put them on television for our own amusemant, that is why this video exists.

Even worse, she has a Southern accent, which just makes all of us Southerners look bad.

She didn't bother me that much. She's obviously challenged. What bothers me a lot is the way Hung-ga-ree is pronounced in that clip: "hungry".

I love my country, but basically if you want to make money, head over to Australia. A lot of kiwis make the jump because there are more jobs with higher wages in Australia, and a lot of kiwi laborers can find work in the mines. Those sorts of industries tend to pay higher wages than New Zealand and we don't have the mining. New Zealand is a wicked country, it's very relaxed and friendly, and if you're an average kiwi with an average education who is happy to be on a low wage, then it's a good place to be. But overseas is where to go if you want teh monies. Or become a dairy farmer. Lot of those guys make big bucks.

Personally I'm staying where I am. It's green, you're never more than 45 minutes away from a body of water to swim in, we have relatively mild weather and our government isn't completely screwed up. So it's all good

Do those "red cup" college parties actually exist? I've always wanted to know. Or are they just something from films? Are there girls kissing in the hot tub and getting loose?

It's also a cultural region, which is why I included Denmark. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have quite a bit in common, since quite a bit of their history is intertwined. For example, their langauges are (by and large) mutually intelligible. Finland, however, has a completely different language (belonging to the Finno-Ugric family, as does Hungarian) and peoples -- from what little reading I've done, it looks like they migrated from the east (thousands of years ago, though, so it's not relevant to much these days ).

It was part of the Russian Empire for a while, too, but that don't make 'em Russian. As I said above, Finland does have some stuff in common with the Scandinavian countries, but at the end of the day it's more different to any of those than they are to each other .

For Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeJNKTLoNHw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IotPyp2QNk0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X99oYW75jkM (BTW, the 'rising sun' is actually a bunch of swords ). We've also got a bunch of ads for the reserves, but I couldn't find a current one, only a couple from the eighties .

Were there moustaches? There were moustaches.

To non-Americans: who are your celebrities? Are they TV stars? Movie stars? Politicians? Reality stars? Writers? News anchors? Scientists? Entrepreneurs?

Oh don't get me started here!

I have a degree in Geography and Political Science (Foreign Affairs Focus), so the whole ignorant American thing annoys me.

But...oftentimes where there is smoke, there is fire and it is a fair assumption to a point.

There was a study a few years back that said 63% of American young advlts can't find Iraq on a map, even though their peers are fighting a war there.

Mind you, in my opinion, we *absolutely must* fix the lack of Geography in schools. I hardly had any geography education until I chose to study it. And what I had, was mundane states/countries and capitals, without any real depth to the topic. How can we teach kids quadratic equations, which they will never use, but not about other cultures with whom they will be interacting with daily for the rest of their lives? It's mind-boggling to me.

Anyway, there are ignorant and intelligent people everywhere, of course. And believe me, I know many well travelled and worldly Americans. It's just that nowhere along the line is geography or understanding an international perspective considered a priority, which is terrible.

Anyway, I strive to prove the stereotype wrong every single day. Hence the creation of this thread, for starters.

Yes.

Bastards.

You mean you don't have them?

I don't enjoy them at all myself, went to a toga party once and people were screwing on the dance floor. No class.

Nah, it's somewhere around Iowa.


"I'm listening to what you're saying but I'm only hearing what I want to" explains so very much about her, and cracked me right up. It's people like her that Australians have loads of fun with when in the USA*... no-one else believes us when we tell them the truth about life in Australia. What's so inconceivable about croc wrestling, kangaroo riding, and shark beating being part of everyday life?

*Probably other countries, too, but most of the stories I've heard have been set in the US. Sorry guys, but for whatever reason (selection bias?) you get to be egregious . And I know full well that they're not representative of your population as a whole, just the poorly education and stupid segments.

EDIT: The kid is obviously having a good laugh, too .

Usual weekend at my house. Speaking of which, I need to clear those triplets out of my shower - they're using all my lotion.

Double bastards.

I'm kidding (kinda) it's not really my style either. I don't go to university, but i hear there are some hard core nights out there. I've never been to a party where people are just nailing each other on the dance floor.

I've always got the impression that a lot of people here in the States go to college expressly for that reason. For a country that is often labelled as sixually conservative, we have some wide open college and high school students.

I set up a new topic as we are near the limit, if you guys want to mosey over there.

This isn't quite true. While the wage rates in Australia are a lot higher, the cost of living is too so you're not as better off as you think.

Also, it's extremely difficult to go over there if you're taking anything with you, i.e. a family. It would be simple for you to go over there by yourself at age 21(?) or I could go over there by myself at 22 but it's extremely difficult and expensive to take a family over there, hardly worth the benefits in the long term.

Lastly, jobs also aren't as bountiful as everyone in New Zealand thinks.