What
were your expectations about America
before you came and how they have changed?
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Stanislaw,
Bulgaria I was excited when I was coming after watching all those American movies and heard and read so many things about the Promised Land. It's a whole new environment, new people, and there was even a shock at the beginning. Soon, I realized that all the movies and other things that I'd been watching back in my country barely fall in a situation like this. It's a strong fiction and obviously Hollywood is good in that. And the excitement is just at the beginning. After that you just get into the routine and every day is the same, hard work, hard studying, eventually we'll hang in there. But I didn't realize that it's going to be that hard. |
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John,
Malaysia On a very simple level I thought of kind of the TV stereotypes and things like that. It's very hard to separate from what you see on TV. I was pretty excited but I didn't expect the degree of kind of atomization of people. Alienation. |
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Patrik,
Sweden Everything is much more diverse than I thought. What we know in Europe about America is that we have this idea of the '50s, like, hamburger places, big Cadillac cars, and Hollywood movies. But everything is so diverse. That's the big thing, the best thing here. Since I came here, my country Sweden looks so much smaller to me. Both geographically and economically. It's just so small country compared to United States. |
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Mia,
Finland When I first came, the first three months was horrible because of the culture shock and my family was really horrible. It was so different from my family, how I was raised, and how they were doing all these things. I was really homesick, and thought it was the worst mistake in my whole life. But at the same time I couldn't go home because you have to kind of give everything a chance. Then by finding a lot of friends, I became more used to things and this whole society. |
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Takeyuki,
Japan I was thinking that everybody is driving kind of Cadillac, and a big car, and most of the people are White American. And in fact, it wasn't. So much diversity of the people here, especially in California. Way more Japanese are living here already than I thought. |
What were your expectations?
Comments page 1 of 1
Maybe it is just me, but I have been quite surprise how individual people are here.
i was thinking it's going to be like in movies but i soon realized it's not like that at all, especially you don't see all the bad things going on in this county featured in hollywood movies. of course every country has its bad things but the life you see in hollywood movies or television shows is definitely not the way the things are here, i mean for the most part. for example, they rarely touch on issues and problems that minorities are facing here.
I first thought that only white and black people live in the United States. I didn't think that any asian or mexican people live here. I didn't even know those people are here. I don't know why I didn't know that... Maybe because of the movies or maybe because of my sister went to Kansas City and only people she could see there were either white or black but not asian.
what i had seen was from the movies, always a good life, partying and stuff like that, but once i came here, i realized it's not like fun and games all the time, you need to work hard too.
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