@applechime okay, if i think about it like that, capri suns do seem subjectively better than a regular juice box.
@Vierran it's been over a decade and my memory is terrible, but I'll try to dredge up some memories. I'm pretty sure I may have noticed more because I'm autistic, funny enough - since I keep a playbook of social conventions and suchlike running in my head whenever I interact with most people, everything suddenly being off just enough for my playbook not to work right anymore really stood out to me. I think one of the biggest things that stuck with me was how everyone seemed to be in an enormous hurry all of the time, especially in SF itself. Cars, walking, shopping, everywhere - I haven't gotten that feeling anywhere else I've been, even when I visited NYC a few years ago. Traffic was worrying in a way that it hadn't been to me even in Portland, and I have two relatives who live in the Portland area who got hit by cars! Other things... idk. Slang, the way people talked. I still have a lot of rural eastern Oregonian in the way I talk when I'm not paying attention, and I'm sure it was even moreso then. The ruralness didn't really stand out in Portland even though there was the traditional looking-down-noses-at-hicks-from-across-the-state some people had, but it was more obviously off compared to the way the people in the Bay Area spoke. To me they were slicker, sharper - not in a 'smarter' sense, but in a literal sharp-edged sense. Not that people were mean, typically! It was just all sharp. More precisely enunciated, maybe. The architecture was mostly all very different, too, but I'm sure you've noticed that.
are we still posting school anecdotes? - suburb of nyc for location reference - closed campus - once you're in school you're there til 2 pm. exceptions are made for some seniors who drive to school and have off the last period or two of the day, but you need to get a special pass from the office - we have security guards but they're really more to enforce the closed campus thing than anything else, and to prevent juniors from parking in the senior parking lot - class size of ~300-400 kids per grade, so rougly 1000 in the school, tho there's another high school not even a mile away that has similar numbers so. for the whole district ~2000 kids graduate each year - theres a lot of weird wealth disparities - a ton of kids who drive porsches and lamborghinis to school. also a ton of kids who are on the free lunch program and dont normally eat outside of school bc lack of money. so. - school alternates between 'super strict' and 'idgaf' about dress code, most of the time you wont get called out on dress code unless the teacher's an asshole - (my friend's social studies teacher in freshman year wouldnt let girls with shorts stay in his classroom. any kinds of shorts at all. girls would bring sweatpants to school during the late spring/early fall and put them on over their shorts in the hallways before his class.) - apparently we start a fair bit earlier than a lot of other districts? first period bell is at 7:19 and the day is over at 2pm, 9 periods of 40 minutes apiece with 5 minute break between classes
House Differences is one of my favorite cultural keynotes tbh. Let's see, based in the areas I've lived in I can say: Spoiler: long Georgia-- Greater Atlanta Area has a lot of gorgeous old houses, usually two stories, sometimes with basements. My grandmother's house was three stories, technically, and on the side of a hill so you came in on the second story. One of my aunt's house is the same way now-- the first story you go in is flat on the ground in the front, but by the time you get to the back porch, the hill is steep enough that the stairs continues down for about thirty feet before they hit the ground. Massive yards when you're out in the suburbs. Downtown Atlanta has old brick houses and gated mansions interspersed with falling down singles and massive condos. It's still pretty hilly, but gentler because of all of the urbanization. Weird feeling of walking between time periods sometimes. Lots of churches. Rural Georgia is basically all trailers, red dirt, and the occasional falling-down wooden house that is borderline uninhabitable. Las Vegas-- Lots of apartments. Can't remember ever going far out enough from the city to really see houses, but most of them were one story. Lots of white siding and stucco exteriors, and no dark roofing because of the heat. Ohio-- Basements! The first time I ever saw a basement was in Ohio. I had not been fully convinced of their existence until them, but my stepgrandparents had a pretty massive one, which was a bit intimidating. Also two storied house, but there were plenty of houses that were single story. Virginia-- Mostly cookie-cutter ranch houses, with a few neighborhoods of double-storied houses. Big houses, tiny yards. Variety of colors, and usually subdivision where I lived, but I know there were older non-HOA'd houses in other parts of the city. Mostly wood, some not. We had an old red wood house when I was around ~3 years old, and I remember loving how open and bright it was. Florida-- Double storied houses are pretty rare. Everything is made of concrete, and if it's not made of concrete, you're going to regret buying it. Lots of stucco exteriors ranging in color from pink to brown to white. Storm windows. No basements unless you're signing up for a huge headache, but pools are almost standard in most modern subdivisions. Lots of water access for boaters down where we live. Pretty open floor plans too, which is both a surprise and not. Screened in lanais are standard too, and that's usually where the pool is. Not sure about inland, but gulf-coast seemed to standardize this way. Small to medium sized yards, depending on lanai size. Hilton Head-- technically in South Carolina, but gets its own marker like Las Vegas because it's culturally distinct. Rich people island. Every house is massive, usually up about twenty feet on stilts, less than half a mile away from the beach, and has multiple wings. Most are made of wood and look like they came straight out of a Southern Gothic romance novel. Some have more stories than others. Pretty sure nothing goes for less than a half million. Plenty of water access, pools standard, beach access standard, storms and the occasional flooding all but guaranteed. There were so many golf courses. California-- Went to SanFran once, and all the tiny town houses clustered on hills scared and infuriated me. Up in NorCal, housing tend to range from massive mansion on farmland, small ranch houses on farmland, and subdivisions filled with single story houses. Double stories were kind of rare? But we got some really bad wind down in the valley too, so that doesn't surprise me. Stucco and siding seemed to be equally common. Small yards in subdivisions. Actually, thinking about that: does it every weird the hell out of other people when they go from one geographically distinct area to another? When we drove up to New York, s/o and I both got anxious and wigged out and couldn't figure out why until we'd finally rolled out of the hills at the base of the Appalachians and realized that we hadn't been able to see the horizon. Turns out all those gorgeous mountains we were driving through had been biting into the sky, and both of us were feeling claustrophobic. Friends from up north felt the opposite: there was too much sky make it stop.
I was on a car trip that went through a considerable portion of the Midwest once, and it was incredibly eerie for me. So empty without trees and mountains to border the sky and give a sense of where I was. It was like the nightmares I had as a teenager of an endless, empty nowhere, where I would walk and walk and walk and there was never anything more than the same endless green rolling plains. The Midwest felt like that - if you wandered out into one of those rolling plains and got too turned around, you'd get lost forever in all that nothing. Finland's still weird to me. Lots of trees to break things up, but no mountains to hold up the sky, so sometimes it feels too close.
I've always wanted to drive through the midwest. The only time we did was when we were moving from VA to NV, and I was... four? Maybe? I'd been planning to drive my car out to my mom's when I got out of highschool but given that the thing was a junker that couldn't go for more than an hour without smoking, that was pretty ill advised. Maybe someday. I think I'd like the nothingness.
I've lived on the prairies all my life. There is something so deeply melancholy about it that has lodged itself into my soul.
Storms in those areas are spectacular. Not that I recommend driving through them, but it looks amazing all the same. When we (me, Aud, and our friend Keffy) were coming back on the trip we were driving west through... I think we'd hit North Dakota by that point? It was dark and stormy, but the bulk of the storm was some distance north of us, and visible as a discrete cloud bank that stretched east and west as far as we could see. Us passengers got to watch quite the light show as lightning danced under those clouds. I'd experienced some pretty impressive storms when I'd lived in Eastern Oregon - when storms boiled over the Blue Mountains they tended to be BIG ones when they erupted into the valley - but it's a lot different than experiencing a storm that's filling that immense nothing and bearing down on you like the hammer of god.
Yeah, I'd really love to see a plains storm in person. Getting them across the water isn't quite the same, though there's nothing like standing out in a tropical storm and just feeling it. That sort of electric heaviness right before it hits almost wins out over the massive joint pain a front creates.
i moved from northern ontario (in the canadian shield) to southern ontario (in the lowlands) a few years ago, and the biggest differences are 1) there aren't any huge-ass pinetrees 2) there aren't any cliffs!! 3) there are no goddamn lakes 4) the squirrels are fucking huge it's like a different country. it's bizarre that i've lived here for almost 4 years and i'm still not sure if there is a beach within an hour's drive. in my hometown i can name 6 just off the top of my head. and it's so flat.
The flatness wigged me the hell out when I moved to Wisconsin from BC - I grew up with the Rockies right there, and here there's hills but so much sky. I am now in love with Midwestern thunderstorms, though.
That just reminded me of the one kind of wide-open space that doesn't give me the big empty feeling - the Oregon and Washington coasts. Maybe all the trees help, but something about the absolutely massive amount of green-grey water and its constant roar fills up all that sky. Feels like home. I miss it a lot.
Oh boy. Schools. I went to a bunch of schools in different places. Spoiler: Long list [*]School in Colombia: very closed, big area, private school with a British system. It was near the outskirts of the city itself, but not rural, an area that had lots of gated communities. Lots of guards walking around, they were armed, and you could only go in through two gates. I lived a literal two blocks from it and couldn't walk to it... but that's because back in 1998 the guerilla problem was huge, and I went to a school of fairly well-off to rich kids, so there was a big kidnapping risk. The guards were never to control the kids, and all about protecting us should shit go down. The uniforms were hell, if you didn't have your tie on right (the girls didn't have a tie, really, it was some sort of ribbon clasp thing) you'd get reprimanded. I remember the socks were very thick wool and green and itchy, which was horrible because Cali is a tropical city and hot and humid, and we weren't allowed to remove the socks or roll them down. I basically rolled them down during recess and rolled them back up for classes. I got bullied and made fun of for being different (I was the only foreigner, heck, the only person from a different city within three grades, and the other was my younger brother and his classmate), and the teachers were terrible at dealing with this. Instead of telling my bullies to cut it out, they held round sessions so we could talk about our feelings... and mine were clearly "I don't like it when you chant the word mockingly just because it is different from the one you use, or when you bother me about why my eyes are a certain color". I don't remember what the kids said, but it was shit because nothing changed. Huge personality change here >:/ Don't remember how good the education was, or quite how big it was, but I think it was smallish in the 100 per grade range?. [*]School in Cambridge MA: open campus, public experimental school in the city that was two blocks from some of Harvard's student housing where my parents were studying at the time. They were very strict on anything regarding medicine, since I remember I got my period for the first time there and it hurt, but they wouldn't give me any painkillers of any sort, so I remember nearly crying while lying down at the infirmary. I don't remember any real problems with drugs, to be honest, but looking back I feel like they were watching for it but no action was taken... but then I was in fifth to sixth grade and barely interacted with high schoolers. The homeroom teachers did have sessions for talking about stuff like sex and drugs, but I don't remember the drugs beyond some D.A.R.E. videos. I liked this school a lot, it was open minded and made a point of listening to kids and trying to instill a sense of fairness and the desire for equality. I mean, it was named for MLK. Smallish. It was the only school I went to that didn't have a uniform. [*]School in London: public school with a closed campus, it had big fields for physical education, and it was religious so on Easter we had mass. I remember how much of a hassle the dress code was, no make up was allowed, and no earrings bigger than studs. It was an all girls school to, so it was silly. I remember how some girls would roll up their skirts and roll them down for certain classes. It was pretty strict but I did well. Oh! The pulled some racist bs on me which was a weird experience because I'm white! I have always been a lot more used to being on the privilege receiving side of things, except in being a woman. The funny thing is that to be accepted into the school (or any good public school in England), we had to take tests to see what our level was in different subjects, and I passed easily and well. Somehow, despite having my actual results from the exam there, because obviously the poor little latin american girl who would happily read two to three books a day, wouldn't have an easy time with English... and they put me in the lowest level of English, the d class. I got really bored, it was so easy and dumb, so about a month in I asked to be moved up to something that fit my level better. Apparently, however, switching in the middle of the semester was Not Done, so I had to wait for the next semester... where they put me at level c. Which was still absolutely boring. At the end of the year, we took the same exams regardless of one's level, and the results are posted on sheets on a wall, so everyone could see how your classmates could fare. I got the best grade in English out of my entire YEAR (grade). TAKE THAT! I think we were... uh, 70 a grade? [*]School in Honduras: ok, so I went to what was sadly the best school in the country. It was the American school, private, where all the kids of the Honduran elite went, and it was ... mediocre at best. Although sometimes I look back and boggle because, why were we reading a translation of an English book in Spanish class for Spanish Literature? We didn't even have an International Literature section in Spanish Class the way English Class did! Bluh. It was an IB school, but in the sense that it just managed to fulfill IB requirements, and I actually took a few upper year classes since otherwise I would fall behind in my studies compared to where I'd been studying before. It was a closed campus, VERY CLOSED, and the guards were armed here too. The thing is that Honduras has a lot of violent crime, gun crime, a single adult can own and carry three firearms on them at a time, and it is full of gangs and arms trade. It's ridiculously violent, I saw shit there. So, when I mean it was closed, it was CLOSED and there were cameras and the guards learned to identify everyone by face, and some students were dropped off and picked up by bodyguards. No drugs that I know of, but then I wasn't really... friends with the majority of my grade. That said, teachers had very little control and authority over students, and some shit got pulled that was... it was bad. Another small school of around 100 per grade. The kids were spoiled little shits in the majority, and like, pretty much 80% of the student body was related to each other as cousins or second cousins or whatever. [*]School in Peru: small private school, very good education level and an actual IB school. 100 per grade with good facilities. It was also closed campus, and if you didn't take the buses home you had to get a school ID to show you had permission to leave through other means, especially if the older students wanted to walk out. There wasn't really a problem with drugs, though a classmate of mine did get suspended for smoking weed on campus and being caught by the camera (dumb dumb, he could have just waited to go out and smoke with his friends). If a parent or alumnus came over they had to show id at the gates and write down the time they arrived on the clipboard, often with the reason for visiting. There weren't a lot of guards that I remember, but they were fairly present and just not really a big deal. I remember being told that a lot of the system, including the shape of the gates (there was a waiting area for picking up kids that consisted of bars enclosing roughly four by four meters with two benches, and from there you finally entered campus), from back when Peru had problems with the terrorist group of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). It was fairly lax about uniform overall, and I remember having the option to choose from loose capri length shorts, a skirt, and short shorts during the summer weather. There was a limit to the colors of scarves we could wear in winter, but generally it wasn't a big deal.
Because the public schools in Britain were the first actual schools that weren't monasteries, from what I recall - so originally they were public schools, and obviously always for rich kids because those were the people who could afford not to be working. And then they just... stayed for rich kids.
We have bearclaws here (western WA), assuming you mean the jam stuffed pastry things? They're sold in donut shops. I would not find anything weird about eating deer or rabbit. Like, I don't, because I'm not from a hunting family, but if it was offered I wouldn't turn it down. But squirrel?! That definitely got a "what the fuck, those aren't for eating" reaction out of me the same way like... eating bugs does. Squirrels aren't food, they're furpests.
I'm catching up on this thread but this is me right now in Japan omg. The average height for a Japanese woman is 155cm. I am 165cm. I went to church the other week and I already felt awkward being the only non-Japanese person there, but then I was also taller than everyone else which made me feel like a giant. And I'm like, smack-bang on the average height for Australian women so it's like. What.
More Japan-related culture shock (tho it's not too shocking 'cause I've visited before and have studied Japanese for 8 years but uh yes) EVERYONE rides a bike. Even old people. Especially old people. You never see elderly people on bikes in Australia. Bikes are so cheap what the fuck. I got a really simple, single-speed bike with a basket and built-in lock for AUD$185, brand new. You'd be lucky to manage the same in Australian for under AUD$500. FOOD IS SO CHEAP??? Why is everything so expensive in Australia. Except western-style food. You can't even buy butter, it's all "butter flavoured spread" and actual butter is a tiny-ass block that costs like 483yen or something, which is nearly AUD$6 and I'm like. BRUH. Peanut butter is not peanut butter, it's peanut cream and it's very tasty but not peanut butter. No one has an oven, or a toaster. You have a toaster oven and you make both toast and cakes in it and you like it. Wholemeal/wholegrain bread doesn't exist. Bread is white. Bread is soft. That is bread. Clothes driers are not a thing. Laundry detergent that makes your clothes smell like flowers and other nice things is very, very popular. Mine makes my clothes kinda smell like sweetheart lollies, which I quite like. Convenient store bentous are SO CHEAP AND GOOD???? Step up, Australia, all you have is disgusting sandwiches. Cars don't want to run over pedestrians and cyclists. When you live in a tiny-ass (for Japan) town, you get stared at by kids and old people a lot if you're not Japanese-looking. Some restaurants don't let you wear shoes inside. Clubs at Japanese universities are hard core, go hard or go home motherfucker. No one consistently speaks polite Japanese or casual Japanese, we all constantly flip between the two and hope we're not offending anyone. I am going to a martial arts club now so uh I say more things later probably because wow other countries.
The jam-stuffed ones are lies (and called "lionclaws" over here, though that might just be because Penn State's mascot is a mountain lion), actual bearclaws are giant flat-ish cinnamon rolls.
Yeah I forgot to mention that difference in terms. My brother went to a us public school in Lomdon, but there just weren't any slots in my age group in the good, uh, "government" schools damn I don't remember what they called. Rather than have me go into a bad school my parents decided to dip into their savings. In retrospect, I think the only actually public school I went to, ever, was in Boston. Huh. Btw I had classmates here in Peru whose families own a private jet. It's sometimes mind boggling, like when the family of a classmate hosts prom on one small part of their large family estate. Or like when I learned that my friend was driving a fucking nice Audi, wth.
