Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

doris u made me think about a phrase that i hear all the time. "Not Belonging". Is it not belonging or is it "its different than what were used to". and fear.

I am a forces brat, so we moved around all the time. I know though living in germany the past few years i was amazed at the "steadfastness" of the people. They were born in the town hospital, kids went to the same school mom did, they went to spain every year 2 weeks holiday and then got buried half a mile where they were born from. I just think that is soooo sad. There is a whole world out there!.

I dont hate i dislike a lot of things. But i can change them thank god. I dislike the building i live in. Its not a house - its standard reminds me of a shed in the bottom of the garden. Give me brick any day. The heating, i want a radiator to hang my pants on. I hear this damn blowing all times of day and night. I stand with my gob open at the local supermarket when someone walks past me in the aisle with her fluffy pink slippers on and jam jam bottoms. (where the hell am I?) But there is no keeping up with the jones's. no one gives a damn. I love that. I like the multi cultural. The poverty of some people breaks my heart. The alcohlism rate is a staggering reality here, as are drugs, and people that think its nothing to say they used it in the past. Maybe i was shielded. but that frightens me.

Fruit and veggies so damn expensive!! Love apple pies here though. Love the fact that i can go out to eat every night and can afford it.

i am grateful i have had this opportunity to do this - although i do get pissed off sometimes. I have learnt and done a lot of things tho since being here that i wouldnt have had the chance to do if i hadnt come over.

Europeans def have a different way of doing things, more regimented i think. The american way tho is a mixture of every country under one roof no wonder its a cluster f%$k sometimes. lol

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

I saw a woman at the grocery store with what I swear looked like 14 soup cans in her hair - I have never SEEN rollers that big in private, let alone in public!

And I, personally, do not go out in fluffy pink slippers (well maybe to the mailbox, but I'm kinda in the country).

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

OMG - where does one start! :D There have been so many threads on this, and the difference in mindset comes through loud and strong in ordinary day-to-day postings on BE. I'll leave others to comment... :)

There are also numerous books on this topic - Divided by a Common Language, Watching the English and Notes from a Small Island come to mind.

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Well you folks seem to have a better sense of humor, and take yourselves less seriously comes to my mind.

I wonder - when I visited Europe, I found that the differences in cultiure were fascinating. Some Americans were busy complaining that things weren't the same, and of course at home was better. Hmmm.

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

author bill bryson, this guy sort of puts it in a nutshell, especially if ur living it.

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Which book did he write? Divided by a Common Language I'm seeing by Christopher Davies

Brit-Think Ameri-Think is a fun book we thought, makes fun of US and UK. Not serious though really.

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

I'm a Stranger Here Myself
Biography & Autobiography | Broadway
Trade Paperback | June 2000
$ 14.95 | 978-0-7679-0382-0 (0-7679-0382-X)

Also available as an abridged audio cassette and an abridged audio CD.


About The Book

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

Praise

"Painfully funny and genuinely insightful...Bryson has never been wittier or more endearing."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Wonderfully droll...Bryson is unparalleled in his ability to cut a culture off at the knees in a way that is so humorous and so affectionate that those being ridiculed are laughing too hard to take offense."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Bill Bryson makes writing look too easy."
--USA Today

"A cross between de Tocqueville and Dave Barry, Bryson writes about today's America in a way that's both trenchantly observant and pound-on-the-floor, snort-root-beer-out-of-your-nose funny."
--San Francisco Examiner

"Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud."
--Chicago Sun-Times

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Do you the the age that a person comes over matters? I am hearing that the UK is getting more 'Americanized' these days (which I find sad actually). It it perhaps easier for a younger person who is immigrating do you think?

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

I remember reading somewhere that he moved back to England again, and this interview from last September seems to bear this out:

"I'm trying to spend more time at home and slow down a bit. I turned 55 this year, and I've done a huge number of things in almost all the places I've wanted to go. The one thing I haven't done in the past 20 years is spend a lot of time at home. We've got a big house [in England] with a garden and three acres of grounds around the house, and they really take a lot of looking after."

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/books/bryson_interview.html

Must be a Ping-Pong Yank... :lol:

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Notes from a Small Island
Travel - Essays & Travelogues | Random House Audio
Abridged Cassette | May 1998
$ 25.95 | 978-0-553-52507-6 (0-553-52507-7)

Also available as an abridged audio CD.


About The Book

"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain--which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad--old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologizing to me when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordinance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings--every bit of it."

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such bestsellers as The Mother Tongue and Made in America, decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland--and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him.

But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of modern-day Britain, and to analyze what he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, zebra crossings, and place names like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey, and Shellow Bowells.

With characteristic wit and irreverence, Bill Bryson presents the ludicrous and the endearing in equal measure. The result is a hilarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain.

Praise

“Bill Bryson is a funny writer…doubled over belly shakes and seltzer through the nose funny.”
–Globe and Mail

“The year’s best travel book…funny and witty and truthful.”
–Toronto Sun

“The funniest book I read this year – winded by its humor, tears on the cheeks.”
–Ottawa Citizen

“Bryson is first and foremost a storyteller – and a supremely comic and original one at that.”
–Winnipeg Free Press



Tracy this one might make u understand him a bit beter too. LOL

Age. I have been amazed at the amount of older people coming over. That in my eyes takes a lot more courage than i think i would ever have. You got to have a set of brass balls and guts to pack up so late in life and in my eyes they deserve a medal.

what is americanised? shops staying open 24/7 or the cardboard houses?

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Thats the impression I get from reading on here, being younger and still full of high hopes, they seem to settle better.

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Or not. Some of the ones going back or thinking about it came here when they were fairly young.

He went back after a few years here I believe. Adore his books - a truly gifted writer.

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Yes we have read that a few times on here as well :)

Re: Why did you decide to live in America?
 

Mindset...hm....

Europeans work to live.
Americans live to work.

Europeans value their vacation time as a time to de-stress. They work harder than most Americans IMO, but know when to stop.
Americans have been conditioned (to use a more polite term, I was going to use the b word :D) into thinking that if they are seen to be at work more that they're more productive than anyone else in the world. Wrong.

Europeans detest anything to do with guns and are unselfconscious about nakedness.
Americans are the complete opposite. Don't allow the kids to see a nipple on tv, but will play killing games and own a gun.

Just to name a few.