Questions for American and other international/non uk mners

[Graphista]

I love learning about other cultures and lifestyles. Lived in Europe myself for a while but a long time ago now. Never been outside Europe though.

Pure curiosity prompted by watching tv shows and films made outside uk.

What's the difference between a condo and an apartment?

Do you have semi detached houses in America? Terraced? I ask because I think they must be called something else there.

What's the equivalent of our going to Spain & similar on package holidays where you are? What type of holidays do ordinary families have?

What about things considered traditionally British? Do other countries do Sunday dinner? On Sunday's or different days?

As someone who was a mature student twice I've also noticed that this isn't something that's portrayed on American tv, or even particularly on Australian or New Zealand output so is that because it's not a "thing" outside the uk or just a weird skewing due to scriptwriters?

What about gap years? Again American shows seem to have youngsters going straight to uni from high school if they're going to go.

Also there's a lot of talk of saving for kids to go to uni but I'm guessing there's support for students from poorer backgrounds? How does that work?

What are bank holidays like where you live? What do people do for them? Are they called public holidays or something else?

Drink driving seems to be very socially acceptable in the states, is that accurate?

Is "soccer mom" slang for sahm?

I got the impression going to summer camp was a thing a lot of American kids did, but then a friend said she'd been a camp counsellor years ago (not American) and that they're quite expensive so it's better off families that do this?

What's childcare like where you are? Again seems to be that in America and also Canada that pretty much anyone can set up a daycare business or be a Daytime "babysitter" (what we'd call a childminder)? Is it not well regulated?

Do American families really tend toward having cooked breakfasts of some description? There seems to be a lot of making pancakes, waffles, eggs & bacon in tv shows (makes me hungry!)

For other mners living in various countries what is the usual breakfast where you are?

When I lived in Europe when I was in hospital the meals were of course based on the norm for where I was living, but for me as a Brit it still felt odd having breads/crackers, cheeses, relishes and pastries for breakfast (I'm veggie, for non veggies there was also deli meats, sausage). I'm fascinated when I read articles on breakfasts around the world and see things like pickled fish, rice dishes even stews!

But then as a Scot I'm reminded of that "highlander" movie script section (a bizarrely cast film where a Frenchman is playing a Scot and a Scot an Egyptian with a Spanish name and a broad Edinburgh accent!) where Connor describes haggis to Juan and Juan is disgusted at the sound of it! So yea I appreciate a glasgow fry which can of course include fried slice of haggis, along with Lorne sausage, tattie scones, black pudding, white pudding, bacon, fried eggs, fried bread, mushrooms, tomatoes and baked beans.

Baked beans - that's another thing. It was one of the few things I bought at the naafi because British baked beans don't taste like baked beans from anywhere else. I Also bought marmite, white sliced (I liked European bread but sometimes our doughy white bread toasted and buttered was needed for the perfect beans on toast or fried egg sandwich)

So...tell me about real life in the rest of the world? I'm sure other mners will also have questions.

@IamWaggingBrenda I always thought Canadian Thanksgiving is on a Sunday?

I'm probably not adding much, but thought I'd throw some stuff in as a Brit in the Midwest US! I've left some of them out though as they've been well answered.

Do you have semi detached houses in America? Terraced?
We've got both. Townhouses generally seem to be the nicer of the two and are more common in the North East. A semi would be called a duplex though. People tend to buy them as rental investment properties and they are usually very cheap to rent. To rent a 3-bed 2 bath duplex here it would cost about $600 a month.

What's the equivalent of our going to Spain & similar on package holidays where you are?
In my area, normal families will go to the Lake of the Ozarks. Or they go on float trips... you basically float down a river in a canoe or inner tube and get really bad sunburn. Lots of people own condos there. Some might go to Florida or Mexico.

Do other countries do Sunday dinner? On Sunday's or different days?
Not really.... A lot of people go out to Brunch after Church here on a Sunday. It's also fairly common for families to cook up big breakfasts on a Sunday before Church. They probably wouldn't do both. Some people will put in a pot roast so that if they're at Church all day it's ready when they are home. There's a lot of Church...

What about gap years?
Not really a thing around us, I reckon because college is 4 years and the first year is really easy. Some of the religious kids will go on a mission trip though.

Also there's a lot of talk of saving for kids to go to uni but I'm guessing there's support for students from poorer backgrounds?
There's Pell grants. But everybody we know from non-rich backgrounds just has scary amounts of student debt. Put it this way, in the past year we've paid off $40k of DH's student debt and we're not yet done.

What are bank holidays like where you live?
They call them holidays, but it's confusing because some holidays are holidays but you don't get it off work. There's no standardisation in the holidays workplaces honour.

Drink driving seems to be very socially acceptable in the states, is that accurate?
Yes and no... people do it everywhere, but also the penalties for doing it are pretty severe. In our state there's also the charge of boating while intoxicated.... generally something people get caught for while on vacation at Lake of the Ozarks!

Summer camps
Are very pricey and it's a rich kid thing. A lot of the high schools and Churches put on summer programs though. The summer vacations are very long, it's a nightmare to cover.

What's childcare like where you are?
You have to have a State Childcare Licence here to run a home daycare. There's a huge amount of variation in the quality of care.

Do American families really tend toward having cooked breakfasts of some description?
Nope! There's a lot of people who have doughnuts, sugary cereal or toaster pastries though, invariably eaten in their cars with a bucket of drip coffee. I still have European breakfast habits. American DH drinks a soylent in his car on the way to work.

i'm in canada
with regards to uni fees. canada is a big country and the uni's tend to be centrally located so it isn't always the tuition costs/books (which are not unreasonable) but it's living away from home residence which can be expensive especially if the young person wants to go to a major city. i don't know anyone who actually qualified and got any subsidy (government loan). mine were offered bank loans with dh/myself co-signing.
many of my friends/their children do a big family meal on sunday. not unusual here.
breakfast really depends on activities; hockey soccer skating gymnastics etc.
maybe work related but we referred to our bank holidays as stat holidays (statutory holidays).

American here! Mid-30s with two young children. I’m a lawyer and live in a mid-sized city. My husband and I own our house. It’s about 2300 square feet and detached - we have a separate two car garage and a big yard. It’s in a leafy urban neighborhood and I can walk to a Starbucks, the Apple Store, etc. I commute via car to my office. It’s about 20 minutes away and my employer pays for my parking lease.

Student loans and childcare are a mess here - I can speak to that! My parents are quite working class, so I had to finance my education with loans and some scholarships. I graduated from law school nearly 10 years ago with nearly $200,000 in debt. I was one of the extremely lucky people who had that gamble work out - my loans will be paid off in a year and a half because I was able to secure a high-paying job and my husband blessedly did not have loans. I am glad I did it because I am a high earner and never could make as much money as I do without my law degree. I graduated during the recession, and I know people who never managed to get a job as a lawyer at all after we graduated.

I am extremely lucky by American standards because my employer provided 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for each of my pregnancies. I did have to work a little bit during my leaves, and I was able to take an additional six weeks off each time (totally unpaid).

We have a full-time nanny and our older son is also in nursery school in the mornings. My childcare expenses are about $55,000 per year. The government gives me the opportunity to use $5,000 of my pre-tax earnings towards childcare, but the rest is POST-tax. So it’s a massive expense. We are very lucky to be able to afford it. Daycare centers can be really awful here, and the “good” ones often have extremely long waiting lists.

Work is everything here. American culture among highly educated people means constant availability. I haven’t taken a holiday where I was able to “check out” in years. I don’t think I’ll be able to do that until I retire.

On a random note, soft play centers aren’t really a thing here! I wish they were - it’s so tough to find something to do with the children in foul weather.

We have a full-time nanny and our older son is also in nursery school in the mornings. My childcare expenses are about $55,000 per year.

Wow! I worked 45 hours a week and it cost me less than $15k a year to have 2 kids in full-time daycare and one in after-school care.

Yes, we are definitely doing childcare in the most expensive way possible! I admit that freely, haha. We had our son in full-time daycare to the tune of about $18,000 a year before our second came along. With two kids and our insane jobs, we bit the bullet and hired premium care - frankly, because we are lucky enough to afford it. It makes our lives so much easier and allows us enjoy family time since we are otherwise so time poor. We also are rather unusual in that we pay our nanny a living wage and do everything legally. She is paid $20/hr and we pay $30/hour overtime. We guarantee her 45 hours a week, 52 weeks a year whether we use all those hours or not (she gets paid vacation, holidays, sick days etc) and it’s all on the books with taxes paid. That was very important to me because I take the task of being the source of someone’s family income quite seriously! Many, many people in America pay their childcare ridiculously low wages and off the books.

I'm going to answer for Korea, although we're not there now.

What's the equivalent of our going to Spain & similar on package holidays where you are? What type of holidays do ordinary families have?

Holidays are really short here (most people get only 10 days a year and only 5 days in a row) so people take shorthaul trips mostly. These will usually be to the current "hot place" as it's known. These days, Danang in Vietnam seems to be the hot place. Lots of people also go to Cebu in the Philippines which is totally set up for Koreans. Many many Koreans won't eat any food except Korean food, they even bring instant noodles with them on holiday, and will often stay in Korean-only hostels or hotels.

People will also take vacations inside Korea, especially to Jeju which is an island off the south coast.

As people get more money and working patterns change, there are more people going to Europe.

What interests me is that so many people go on tours, even very young people. So you have my 20 year old student going to France and basically just doing a package tour that we would consider to be for pensioners. There is definitely a fear of the unknown for many people.

What about things considered traditionally British? Do other countries do Sunday dinner? On Sunday's or different days?

Nothing special on a Sunday. Maybe young, cool people go to Itaewon for brunch. Itaewon is the main 'foreigner' district, so it has lots of nice restaurants. There are also a lot of other local places that do 'brunch' but it's mostly horrible (spaghetti with an overly sweet sauce is not brunch...)

What about gap years? Again American shows seem to have youngsters going straight to uni from high school if they're going to go

Very few people do a gap year in order to travel or work. They usually go straight to university. Some study for an extra year if they didn't do well in their exams (it is extremely competitive to get into a good university.)

What are bank holidays like where you live? What do people do for them? Are they called public holidays or something else?

They're called 'red days' (or just public holidays). The main ones are Chuseok (thanksgiving) which is three days and Seollal (Lunar new year) which is also two-three days. We also get Christmas, Buddha's Birthday, Children's Day, Memorial Day and Hangeul Day, which is a day to celebrate the creation of the Korean alphabet.

On the big holidays (Chuseok and Seollal), people usually visit families in their home town so you get the huge traffic jams. Especially on Chuseok, people visit the ancestral grave and perform jesa, which is like rites for the dead. There is a certain order to place everything on the alter, according to colour and type of food etc. It is interesting and very solemn and serious. Seollal is a bit more light-hearted and people usually bow to their parents and other elders and then get money from them. There is a game people play called yut-nori, it's like Ludo kind of. Oh and they eat ddeok-guk, which is rice cake soup. And on that day, everyone turns one year older.

Other days are just like a normal weekend really. Christmas is a couples day and not religious at all, even for Christians.

Is "soccer mom" slang for sahm?

No soccer moms, but the tiger mum phenomenon is in full effect, especially in rich areas like Gangnam. I guess we'd just call them a 'Gangnam Mum'. The stuff they do to their kids is just so depressing, I'm talking 5 year olds being at school from 9-6 and then having tutoring at the weekends and evenings. Most kids go to the infamous hakwons or after schools and can be there until 10 or 11 at night, every night. Some of the mums are just insane, tbh. All they think about is their child's material success.

There is a phrase 'umchinah' which is short for 'umma chingu adeul' or 'mum's friend's son' to describe the kind of perfect child who is going to be a doctor, is a 6ft tall, always gets perfect grades, is a class representative etc. Because mum's are always saying 'oh why can't you be more like my friend's son, he's so perfect'.

What's childcare like where you are?

It's not bad. There are a lot of kindergartens, ours was right on the estate we lived on, so only had to walk 2 minutes to drop off. You can also get a helper for free (or very little, I have actually forgotten what it was like) for the first three months of your baby's life. It's very common to have this kind of helper afterwards too. A lot of middle class women quit their jobs when they have kids, although this is changing a lot these days. The mums at my school were horrified when they saw me back teaching when my daughter was 6 months old, and assumed my husband was some kind of abuser to send me back to work ha ha.

Do Korean families tend toward having cooked breakfasts of some description?

Breakfast is the same as every other meal. Usually rice, some kind of soup, a few side dishes and a main dish. It's hard to buy take out coffee before around 10AM, even though there are millions of coffee shops).

Do you have semi detached houses in Korea? Terraced?

Ah, and this one. The vast vast vast majority of people live in either low-rise (6 floors) or high-rise (could be up to 40 floors) flats. High rise is considered to be better. There are also flats called officetels, which just means they have shops on the bottom floor, but for some reason, this is considered not as good.

Some very few people might live in a detached house, but in the city, that would be insanely expensive. In the countryside, you can still see high-rises, and of course, farmers live on a detached house, but they're really the only ones, and they're often little prefab things.

Some people will put in a pot roast
Is this a slow cooker? Or actually roasting?

In America we also don’t call it terrace houses. In NYC it’s brownstones or row houses. In other places it’s duplexes, rowhouses, or town houses.

I’ve been in the U.K. from America for nearly 20 years and I can tell you the thing I found hardest to cope with at first was how small living quarters are. In America I had a 4 bed house with 3 baths, walk in closets, central heating and air conditioning, a separate laundry room, a full height furnished basement with walkout doors to the back yard with a large in ground swimming pool and an integral 3 car garage on about 1/2 acre of land, the sq footage of my house was 5800 sq feet which did not include the basement with gym, cinema, small kitchen and games room as any basement space can not be included in the sq ft calculation. This house was in a middle class suburb of a major metropolitan city.

Here I am lucky enough to have a tiny 3 bed 2 bath mid terrace in central London zone 3 which is 1400 square feet and a tiny garden. This house in London costed 5x my house here

A pot roast is where you but the whole joint of meat in a pot with water... so I guess braising? It's really popular over here, my in laws often have it mid week too.

Oh I should add- sometimes it's in the slow cooker, sometimes in the oven.

I live in Germany, no idea what they eat for breakfast though, as I don't tend to spy on my neighbours having breakfast :o

When I was in hospital after having DS2 breakfast would invariably be two freshly baked bread rolls with a selection of sliced meat and cheeses and perhaps a pot of jam, nutella, or "brotaufstrich" which is essentially savoury spread. This could be something like cream cheese with herbs or might be made out of beetroot and horseradish or something like that, although I never got anything that strong tasting for breakfast. There would often be a little pot of yoghurt as well, or a small fruit salad or small bowl of museli with milk/yoghurt on the side.

The funny thing was it was the same offering for dinner except that instead of the fruit or cereal you would get a small salad. Lunch was a hot cooked meal like you'd expect for dinner in the UK, although sometimes the main course was sweet with a side of soup, and another bread roll, of course.

It's funny, a lot of expats complain about the hospital food but I really enjoyed it and felt very well fed. It was nice not to have to worry about it going cold/soggy with a newborn to look after too.

What bugs me is that you are expected to provide your child, from kindergarten up to leaving school (so every weekday for 15 years) a packed second breakfast to eat at around 11am. This consists of a small sandwich or filled roll, something fresh cut up and perhaps a snack. I am a complete Rabenmutter (neglectful mother) and just throw a pepperami and some crackers in a lunch box because DS1 never eats any of it anyway and if it comes home still edible I can direct him to it as an after school snack. Drives me nuts, we signed him up for school dinners for a reason.

Uk born and breed but have lived in Western Australia for many years.
Like others have said Bali is like going to Spain . Cheaper and quicker than going to east coast Australia. But I hated it there.
Christmas in July is quite popular
If temp is around 30 on Christmas Day we will have a full roast. Cold meets , salads, bbq style stuff if temp over 35*.
Love having Australia Day off and Anzac Day being a day to remember.
We live in a house ( bungalow!) two story houses aren’t very common in my part of WA
Lots of child care centres around, run by qualified child care type people. They are fab
Lots of mums and toddler groups, groups for those that have disabilities, in our area a dads group meet up once a month. In fact loads of free stuff on for kids
In school holidays lots of free or cheap child activities ( even stuff for older kids, skate/ scooter clinics / teen beach parties, photographers/ teen girls, free or cheap).
Spiders and snakes , yes they are around but I don’t go sticking my hands in places they shouldn’t so don’t get bitten 😂 only seen 5 wild snakes in 5 years! Kangaroos are literally everywhere. Regularly see dolphins and they still amaze me.
What it didn’t expect was how bloody cold it gets here. I hate winter. I hate being cold!!!!!!!

On a slightly different note, could someone explain what is meant by Junior High in America, and is there a senior high? In the UK we have primary school followed by secondary school or high school. I don’t really see why it’s called junior high unless there’s also a senior high.

Junior high is like middle school in some areas of the UK. They have elementary school, grades K-4/age 5-10, then middle school or Jr. High from grades 5-8 or age 10-14, then high school is only the last four years of secondary, from 14-18. They don't use grades there, the years are called Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior. Then the same for the four years of university/college. (I think that's right)

Thanks Bertie. That makes sense.

Deedee High school is grades 9-12 which are equivalent to year 10, 11 and sixth form in the UK. An elementary school starts at kindergarten age and is sort of comparable to a primary school. Whether you have junior high, middle school or neither depends on where you live and the schools themselves.
For example, if your elementary school finishes at grade 5 (year 6 in the UK), then you would have middle school for grades 6-8 and high school for grades 9-12. Or your elementary school might go to 6th grade and then you would have either junior high for grades 7-8 followed by senior high for grades 9+ or a combined junior and senior high school for grades 7-12. Or as is the case in our district, the elementary school goes from kindergarten right through to 8th grade so there isn’t a middle school or junior high; children go straight from elementary school to high school.
Sorry that’s a complicated answer to a simple question but I hope it makes sense!

But as Bertie says you’d typically say Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior years of high school rather referring to them by their grade! Just like with a 4 year college.

Thank you @expressed all those Judy Blume books make sense now! Also is there much less choice in the US regarding school choice? Everyone just goes to their local catchment school?

Do Americans really ridicule Canadians for being very polite a la Due South? (A fave programme of my younger years!) 😆

"I live in Germany, no idea what they eat for breakfast though, as I don't tend to spy on my neighbours having breakfast grin

When I was in hospital after having DS2 breakfast would invariably be two freshly baked bread rolls with a selection of sliced meat and cheeses and perhaps a pot of jam, nutella, or "brotaufstrich" which is essentially savoury spread."

I'm half German and your hospital breakfast is exactly what German people eat for breakfast.

I love it.

Do Americans really ridicule Canadians for being very polite a la Due South?

I wouldn't use the work 'ridicule'. I'd use the words 'poke fun'. But it's really because we're jealous of our Northern Cousins! Since 2016 we'd all love to be Canadians!!!

Everyone just goes to their local catchment school?

There are exceptions, but yes, for the most part, children go to their catchment school. This fact has a big effect on property values where I live. Houses in the better school districts will often fetch a premium.

The exceptions where I live are magnet schools, such as schools for the academically gifted or performing arts, which have entrance requirements, and charter schools that are similar to publicly funded, but privately administered academies in England.