We just got to read the sign to see if you can bring your gun in.
Basically, welcome to America.
Hey, guys, welcome back to the Girl Gun London Channel.
If you're new here. My name is Kaitlyn.
I'm an American who's lived in the UK
for almost ten years, and I'm tired of my intro.
So if you have a suggestion for a new intro, leave it below.
The basics are I'm an American, as evidenced by my accent.
I typically live in the UK.
I have for the past ten years,
but right now I'm in America, and actually I'm in one of my childhood bedrooms.
I have divorced parents, so I have multiple childhood bedrooms.
But this is one of them.
And I have to say the natural light
for filming in Florida is so much better than my room in England.
People get very offended when I make these
very factual statements, like, there's more space in America than England
or the natural light in Florida is better than the natural light in England.
And this is not meant to be offensive or
a jab at my home in the UK or at any many of you Britt out here.
It's just a fact. So I'm enjoying the natural light.
It is not entirely sunny.
There are a few clouds in the sky, so
we'll see if it feels like England anytime soon.
Probably not because we are in the depths
of a Florida summer, which is an entirely different beast than
anything you'll ever experienced in England.
And I don't necessarily mean that in a good way.
Anyway. So in this video, I thought that I would
talk about some of the culture shock I've experienced being back in the US
that I'm just not used to anymore, or that I've noticed about my surroundings
that I wouldn't have noticed when I was living here.
But now that I live in the UK and I'm
coming back to visit, I'm definitely noticing.
Okay, so the first weird thing about
America that I'm noticing, if the roads are so straight,
they just go on for miles and miles and miles without making a turn.
This is what makes an American road trip
so much fun because there's not as much stress involved in getting to your
destination, because basically you just get on the highway and you go like 700
miles and you don't make any turns and your car, it just goes straight.
We use cruise control here in the States a lot because you're just going straight.
But that is really weird to me.
Coming from the UK, where we've got this roundabouts,
you're making turns like every with the roads themselves.
Even if you are not turning off, the roads are turning.
So yeah, the street roads here are definitely weird.
However, it's not all straight roads if
you go to the Northeast, particularly somewhere like Boston.
I know Boston is definitely not straight
roads, and that's because it was set up by the Brits back in the day.
But places like Florida, that suburban Florida.
It's all straight roads.
So, yeah, that's gonna be number one. The straight roads.
You can see it. Even when you're landing on the plane,
you just look down and you just see roads going on forever straight as can be.
And that is my first culture shock.
Okay, so my second culture shock or
reverse culture shock, I should say, because this is my home culture.
Are there are flags everywhere, like American flags everywhere
on homes, everywhere at businesses, everywhere outside of businesses to have,
like, a school in the UK flying the Union Jack out front.
I've never seen it.
I don't know if it happens.
Let me know if it does.
But we love the flag in the US. It is.
Seriously, you drive down the road, you go flag, flag, flag, flag, flag everywhere.
So that's a kind of reverse culture shock
that I've been noticing is all of the flags everywhere.
And I've talked about this in another video.
But American homes, like we do sometimes have the American flag out front.
That is very popular.
People might also do the state flag.
I feel like it's getting more popular to do the Florida state flag.
But I'm like most people are in Florida are from somewhere else.
So it's a little bit weird,
but places like Texas that have a lot of state pride, you'll see the state flag,
and you'll also see just like, random flags that say things like
Happy Halloween or summers here or it's fall, which is totally an American phrase
that I have learned since being here falls.
Autumn in the US basically starts like
July because people are so pumped for Halloween.
But back to what I was saying about flags,
you could fly a flat, like a house flag that says one of these
phrases just everywhere, just any American Street.
Drive down it and you'll see all the flags.
Okay, the next reverse culture shock.
On a more serious note, that kind of freaks me out.
Are the signs about whether you can or
cannot bring your firearm into that particular location.
So I have seen signs on something like
the Walmart that says, Kindly do not bring your firearm in in this establishment.
Some things have no signs.
Some things are like no concealed firearms,
a very different world,
constant reminder that people here could possibly all around me, like, be armed.
And when you're in traffic, you're like,
do not hunk that person because they might have a gun totally different than
in the UK, where I can walk around freely without worrying
if someone is going to lose their temper in traffic and have a bad situation.
So that is definitely one of those things.
These are the one of the downsides about America that I feel I
definitely feel safer walking around in the UK, not needing to worry about
whether at the pub accepts my firearm or not, because guess what?
It doesn't because no one has one.
So that is a culture shock happens to me every time I come back here again.
Didn't even think about it for 1 second until I left the US,
but yeah, we just you got to read the sign to see if you can bring your gun in.
Basically, welcome to America. Okay.
So my next reverse culture shock is about everybody going out to eat.
And also, as I'm saying, is completely unrelated.
I feel like the actual Florida Sun is making me very washed out.
So maybe this lighting isn't even the best.
Maybe. I don't know, maybe the English lighting
is better, but I'm definitely feeling like it's hit me hard.
I'm looking a little bit like a ghost.
I actually have gotten at hand since being here, but you can't see it in this video.
So anyway, everyone goes out to eat
so much more popular in the US to go out to eat on a regular basis than in the UK.
And by regular basis, I'm talking about multiple times per week
going out for lunch for dinner for breakfast.
I feel like in the UK, people Cook a lot more people Cook here,
but not to the extent that they do in the UK.
I feel like the default is worth staying in.
Whereas in America I feel like the default is kind of like we're not entirely.
It's 50 50.
The default is not necessarily that we are staying in to eat and cooking here.
It's kind of a toss up, whereas in the UK you'd make specific plans in advance.
We're going out on Friday.
It's a special occasion.
Americans just we go out to eat all of the time.
I feel like we do have a lot more like restaurant options.
And I'll qualify this because I know
people in the UK are going to be like, what the heck like America just has olive
garden and Outback, which, by the way, I'm not knocking because I like those places.
But I feel like in the UK,
it's very like you go to the pub, or maybe you go to an Italian place or
maybe like a tie place the kind of catch all family restaurants.
I don't actually feel
a like the chains are that good in the UK or be that they're that popular,
especially around where we are about an hour outside of London.
I just feel like we don't have as many options here in Florida.
At least you have just got endless, endless, less endless restaurant options.
I'm not saying anything about the quality of the food versus the UK.
I'm just saying I feel like we have more options and that makes sense because I
feel like there is more of a market for people going out to eat here.
Okay.
The next reverse culture shock is the four way stop.
So we have intersections in the US a lot more commonly set a phrase a lot more.
They are a lot more common than like a roundabout I've talked before about.
There are roundabouts in some parts of the US, but not here where I am in Florida.
We don't understand roundabouts.
We have intersections.
So a you could all be stopped
at an intersection with the red lights not going anywhere.
So that definitely makes my husband annoyed when he's here because he's trying
to redesign the traffic to be more efficient based on the UK style.
But in general, even if you're not at a stop light,
you could be at a four way stop intersection with four stop signs.
And in that case, whoever gets to the stop
site, you go in order of who stopped first.
So you and another car are coming from opposite sides.
You've both got stop signs,
you both stop and whoever got there first is the one who is allowed to go first.
If you get there exactly the same time, you're going to have to look at them
and be like, you go, no, you go kind of situation.
We don't.
I have never seen this in the UK doesn't fit with the way the roads are there.
So the four way stop is a funny kind
of traffic reverse culture shock for me every time I come to America.
Okay, the next culture shock.
And for me, this is in a good way is the amount of space in the US.
The parking spots here, I swear it would fit like three British cars.
Everything, particularly in the suburbs, is just massive.
Ads are so wide again, plenty of parking, basically all free.
Thank God.
That is one thing about the UK that I cannot get on board with how we have
to pay for parking practically everywhere here, so much easier to.
I mean, I can't think of if you go to a city.
Yes, you'll have to pay for parking.
Worry about parking here in the suburbs. Absolutely not.
Parking is free everywhere you go, it's free, it's free.
It's amazing. But this wasn't about that.
This is about the space.
We have more land in the US.
Again, this is not a knock on England.
I prefer having more space, but England can't help the size.
So
please don't be offended British people by me saying I prefer the space in America.
I just grew up with this.
I feel like I've just got room to spread out to run around.
Not that I run around anywhere, but it doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic.
Sometimes it can in the UK, and this even relates down to the size of houses.
I showed you guys the size of Emily's apartment or at least the size of her
guest bathroom, which I feel like is basically half
the size of my two up, two down UK terrace house.
There's just a lot of space in America that I'm not used to having in the UK.
I do really like it, but that is another reverse culture shock
and the next reverse culture shock as these rays of sun.
I didn't actually set this up to, like,
make anyone jealous of this Florida Sun beaming into my room.
But somebody who does suffer from seasonal
depression and the UK winters, I'm soaking it up as long as I can.
So the next thing is the sheer amount of selection.
America just has a lot of options.
We like having our options.
You go to the grocery store and there are
like a hundred different types of cereal as opposed to maybe like ten in the UK.
And I do think this is like a cultural difference.
So I'm not saying that one is better than the other.
We like our options on the menu when you go somewhere.
We like having 50 options as opposed to five or ten of the best
meals. We want.
50 options.
It might not be like great options, but we prefer to have 50 of them as
opposed to five in America, bigger is better, more options.
So even when you make a decision here about what kind of bread to buy,
that's just it's just crazy how many options that there are.
Okay, so the second to last reverse
culture shock thing I've experienced, as always, is tipping in America.
So tipping in America is very, very common.
It's expected.
It's not necessarily you do it for good service, but you do it anyway.
So if you get good service, you might give an even greater tip.
If you have a waiter or waitress at all,
you tip, it relates to them not being paid enough.
They're not paid a living wage.
It's hugely problematic and a lot different than the UK where they are paid
a living wage, and then you might tip for really good service on top of that.
So I'm not arguing against or
or for tipping or anything, but tipping in the US is what you do,
and it can add quite a lot onto the end of your check or bill.
The amount that something costs just always costs
15% to 20% kind of 20% more because of that tip that you are expected to leave.
So that's something that I have stopped taking it into account in the UK when I'm
ordering or thinking about the final cost of going out to eat totally different
in the US, you need to out for that extra money for the tip.
Speaking of extra money that you need
in the US, the final reverse culture shock that I'm experiencing is because the price
of something on the shelf is not the final price.
Why? Because we have something that we call
sales tax, which is not baked into the price on the shelf.
I think the reason for this I'm almost 99%
sure is because sales tax varies by county, which are relatively small areas.
So the sales tax and n my county it could be 7%.
But the sales tax in the next county ten
minutes away could be 6% different States have different things.
And so when you go to a target or a Walmart in your shopping and you see
something costs 999, that is not the final price.
And I forget that living in the UK when
VAT and any kind of tax it's already baked in,
you should expect to go to the checkout or the till as they would say in the UK
and you're going to have to pay extra on top of what you thought it was going
to cost because you haven't accounted for that sales tax.
There are certain things that aren't taxed.
There are certain States that have different amount of taxes.
So again, it's just not like an all encompassing.
This is exactly how much to expect
everywhere you go, but definitely don't be surprised when you go to pay somewhere.
If you thought it was going to be $20 and it's like
$21 or whatever the increases,
it's because that sales tax is not included in the price on the shelf.
It's included when you check out.
Okay, so I hope you guys enjoyed this
video and really following me along on my journey.
I know a lot of you have been around since the early days of January 6 months ago.
Seems so long ago of this channel and meet raping through the fields near my house
in the UK all the way to applying for my visa, my indefinite leave and citizenship
and finally being able to come and visit the US.
Thank you guys so much for being here and for watching.
And I'll see you next time. Time I.