I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev'rything free in America
For a small fee in America!
- West Side Story
Thanks to all the awesome folks at Quora who shared their answers.
1/35. You have American flags everywhere. You are VERY patriotic.
2/35. I'm Australian and spent two weeks in the US last year on a long awaited holiday. One thing that really amazed me: advertising for prescription medicines. In a country with universal healthcare you'd never go to the doctor and ask for a certain brand of medicine, you just take whatever the doctor prescribes to the pharmacy and they'll give you whatever brand they have. The only countries where advertising prescription meds is even legal is New Zealand and the US!
3/35. How open Americans are about their shortcomings and always ready for self criticism.
4/35. Bike lanes and sidewalks: Despite the fact that I could be the only person walking or biking in a mile, there are plenty of bike lanes and sidewalks. I wish more people would use them though.
Shubhojit Chattopadhyay
5/35. People from different parts of the US have different accents of English and are culturally different. Before moving here, I thought US was a country that spoke English and it was the western culture. I now identify a Southern accent. I now know that people in the mid-west are different than people living in New York.
Abinaya Govindarajan
6/35. No jaywalking. At least not in Seattle, no matter how empty the street.
Riona MacNamara
7/35. I thought that the sound of crickets and frogs in the evening was a cinematic convention meant to convey that night had fallen. The first time I heard this sound (especially on the east coast) it blew my mind.
Riona MacNamara
8/35. Exorbitant serving sizes of meals: I was amazed by the serving sizes of meals in the US. Having a meal in US meant one of the two things for me:
i) I felt drowsy and did not feel like doing anything
ii) I would skip the next meal or deliberately choose to eat only a small portion of the normal meal serving
Tejas Singh
9/35. Many American don't have a passport, and therefore have never traveled out of the country.
Probably because Hong Kong is so small and there isn't really much to see, when it's vacation, the airports are packed with locals going to Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, etc for vacation. It's just a 3 to 5 hour flight. I later realized that America is so big and diverse that traveling within it is enough to bring you lots of different experience.
Bruce Li
10/35. Obesity. I heard a lot about obesity in the US but was still shocked when I came here.
Yucheng Tu
11/35. People asking me to 'say something in English'. I'm from the UK. I still struggle with that one.
Dan Thornton
12/35. Why individual houses are so large? We always get into discussion that house is not just a shelter, but also a manifestation of one's financial achievements.
Natalia Rekhter
More on the next page!
13/35. Obsession with Tanning - I am adding this one late, as I had forgotten previously. In India, we have an obsession with "fair skin". Skin lightening, skin whitening, anti-tan...so on. In US, it was the opposite. Every block has a tanning salon and drugstores have tanning creams and sprays instead of anti-tan ones available here. I thought it was fairly screwed up that in every part of the world, the cosmetics industry makes a way to make money off of people's insecurity.
14/35. Americans LOVE free T-shirts. This picture is of my collection after one year of living here.
Emily Oakley
15/35. I got a picture from the movies, but the reality was even more. Cookie-cutter homes everywhere, there is nothing like designing your own house.
Lukas Tencer
16/35. The most impressive thing I LOVE LOVE LOVE about the USA is that, despite what's being said in media by a few people, this is the country where you can practice your religion 100% FREELY without any opposition anywhere, as long as your practices do not violate the law or other people's freedoms. Some minor limited exceptions might apply here or there.
Aghyad Saleh
17/35. Soda being cheaper than bottled water. It makes no sense that carbonated and flavored water with HFCS are cheaper than regular water, but hey, that's just how it is.
18/35. Dessert. Not dessert as in sweet foods, but as in the specific course eaten after dinner. It doesn't exist. Guyanese people eat dinner and then that's it. I remember going to my American friend's house and being shocked that people in real life actually ate dessert.
Britt Smith
19/35. The fact that Americans don't stay with relatives when visiting them. Many Americans would rather stay in a hotel, or at least the Americans we know. Guyanese people (or at least my family) think it's strange that you would pay money when you have relatives to stay with, even if you can afford it. I remember when we had a family reunion, nobody paid for a hotel, so there were 3 people in my bed, 2 people on the floor in my room, 2 people in the master bedroom, 2 people in the guest room, 1 person on the couch, and 2 people on the floor in the living room. That was considered totally acceptable, whereas my American stepdad thought we were nuts.
Britt Smith
20/35. There are vast amount of areas in the US which do not have any human settlement for miles at a stretch!
Paritosh Ramanan
21/35. Cracking your spine. I had not seen this in my country, but in every class, seminar or other situation when people sit for a long time, they occasionally tend to straighten up and crack the spine by rotating their backs left and right.
Francisco Feij Delgado
22/35. I'm from Bangladesh and here are a few things that I find hard to explain to peeps back home.
- Fruits and vegetables are way more expensive than meat and poultry.
- By and large, people do not carry cash.
- Parents can get arrested for physically punishing their children.
- The importance of credit rating/ credit score.
Rakib Islam
23/35. A whole lot of people think Africa is a country, shame...
Tendekai Muchenje
24/35. Clean air. Although Southern California is notorious for its air quality (I live in LA county), it is still heaven compared to Hanoi.
Dang Dat
More on the next page!
25/35. Drive-thru ATM's and stores: it left me speechless. And then to think that most purchases in the U.S. are on credit ;). You can even do drive-thru shopping, drive-thru oil-change. Everything is drive-thru!
Duco van Breemen
26/35. Use of slang OMG!: So, apparently people really do say O.M.G. a lot (in California that is) and other slang you hear on T.V. I thought that was simply T.V. stuff.
Duco van Breemen
27/35. Most single-family homes have a subterranean basement that you can actually walk around in (not just a crawlspace for utilities)
Erin Chang
28/35. Early to bed culture- in suburban areas, especially during weekdays. 10 PM is the latest till when the malls or restaurants would be open.
Richa Bhargava
29/35. Lack of public squares. I couldn't imagine not meeting up with someone or having a chat with them anywhere else. The closest thing to a public square were grassy parks, then private businesses.
Benjamin Schmidt
30/35. Rich people are thin/ well maintained, poor people are fat. This stems from the fact that cheap food is fatty, rich people don't eat cheap food they tend to eat either home-cooked food which is expensive or eat at expensive / healthy places. Unfortunately, it is expensive to be healthy in America.
31/35. No kid ever goes out to play outside in the streets - ever . At least, I never found anyone out there to play with.
Anonymous
32/35. Depression - during my high school years I saw quite a bit of people with symptoms of depression.
Anonymous
33/35. Tipping, it's just exotic.
Anonymous
34/35. People set a time to socialize. I have no idea what that means but you can hear people say things like "Midterms are over, now I can socialize! "
Rahma Sofien
35/35. One thing that was pointed out to me in college by an international student:
Majority rule and voting are so deeply ingrained in our mindsets that we barely notice it. Whenever we're in a group, whatever activity we're trying to pick, whether it's what movie to see or what restaurant to go to, our first instinct for settling disputes and disagreements is to take a vote, and the losers accept the majority rule without question. Even students from countries with long democratic traditions found this a bit unnerving.
David Muccigrosso
Psst... don't forget to share!
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.