Oh, what did you stand up and pledge
to every morning? And my British husband is like, "Nothing.
That sounds very strange."
She brought us a salad for the whole table and he was like, well, I want some salad,
but I didn't order it, so I can't have any.
And we were like, nobody here even wants the salad.
Like, we're all here for the breadsticks.
You have some salad.
Hey, guys, welcome back to the Girl Gone London channel. If you're new here,
my name is Kalyn.
I'm an American who's lived in the UK for almost 10 years.
And today we are talking about things
that Americans love. Similar to the British video, some of these
make sense. Some of these I'm poking fun at a bit.
It's very easy to poke fun
at myself as an American because there are a lot of weird things I do.
But I'll just go ahead and jump
into the first one, which is pretty obvious to a lot of
British people and Europeans and basically most places.
But America,
number one, we love the Pledge of Allegiance,
but it's kind of weird when you think about it and you don't realize
that until you move out of the US and you're like, oh, what did you stand up
and pledge to every morning in my British husband is like nothing.
That sounds very strange.
So Americans
just love this idea of patriotism and putting your hand over your heart
and saying the pledge, I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,
every single morning in school, literally from kindergarten until you are a senior.
We we have a whole section and a lot of schools where you stand up.
You say the pledge and there is a patriotic song that plays and you either
sing along or listen along and you do this every single morning.
And we just there's something about being American that makes us love this idea
of sort of saying the pledge in unison to the flag, which again,
doesn't feel creepy when you're actually in America growing up and doing it
for the most part, like I never, ever thought that.
But then when you move somewhere where they don't do that and they kind of give
you the side eye, then you're like, oh, maybe this is a little strange.
OK, the next thing but Americans love is Halloween.
And I'm not going to talk specifically
about Halloween, but a specific aspect of my experience of Halloween and what
Americans, particularly in religious areas, loved in the 90s and early 2000s,
because we can do a whole video on UK versus US Halloween.
Americans love Halloween basically more than anyone else,
but we also love or did love religious haunted houses.
So I grew up in Florida,
which is not really considered like the Bible Belt or anything like that.
But this was definitely late nineties early two thousands and local churches
would put on haunted houses, but it wasn't a real haunted house
in the sense that there were skeletons or ghosts.
The point was to scare you into not
wanting to go to hell because you started off in this haunted
house and there was like a whole series of live acting that you followed.
And it was some, like, tragic accident, like a car accident or like a terrorist
attack or someone's poisoned the water and you let go who is haunted house.
And you see how various people react to it.
And at the end there are two.
This is just sounding really strange.
The more I'm getting into this, there are two kids or teenagers and one
of them is a Christian and one of them isn't.
And then you keep going and then you
literally go into a room in a church that is decorated like hell.
And then you see that he's basically like
pretending to burn in the fiery pits of hell.
And then
you go to the other room where Jesus,
which is probably like the pastor dressed up with like a halo.
And I remember they're like white sheets everywhere and in that room.
Then you see the kid who was a Christian go to heaven.
I don't want
anyone else who is American remember these.
So my comment below,
because this is definitely and we just loved it, though,
it was like a huge thing, like, oh, we're not going to do trick or treating.
We're going to go. It was called judgment house.
It it's like we're going to go to judgment house.
And I just remember being so terrified as
a child going through and like seeing this kid burn in the fiery pits of power,
which makes sense as to why I would feel that way.
But we were all about it.
And so Americans do love Halloween and we
also love doing strange things around Halloween.
OK, the next thing Americans love is the concept of homecoming in high school.
Now, if you're not from the US, homecoming is basically the first football
game of the year where maybe this could be a whole nother thing.
Americans love high school football,
but it was the first home game of the year, like started off your season.
And the whole week it was called homecoming week.
And every single day was a different theme.
And there would be a parade like all of the students would make floats
in different clubs, would walk in the parade.
And people from the like the city that you
live in or the neighborhood that you live in would come out because it was like
on the schedule every year, this homecoming parade.
And it's such a big deal.
Most Americans who went to, I guess, anything but like a boarding
school would definitely know about homecoming week.
It's incredibly popular.
We looked forward to it every year.
I wasn't like the biggest football and high school kind of person,
but homecoming week was always fun to see what people dressed up as and if you were
in a club to get to decorate the float and things like that.
So no, three Americans love the idea of a high school homecoming a week.
OK, something else Americans love is the ability to take P.E. online.
Now, I'm not going to tar all of us with the same brush here.
I'll take that back.
Floridians love this.
I loved this.
So in high school, I was doing some virtual classes in order
to, I think, get ahead or to not have to take PE during a high school day.
And I decided to do that.
I was going to take P.E. online.
My husband thinks this is the funniest thing ever.
And I remember there were like assignments and it was like I needed to run a mile.
And so I went out into my garage and I turned on the treadmill.
But I didn't even run because I was so lazy.
I think I just sat there and read a book
or something, and then my mom had to sign off that I had done my exercises.
And the whole concept of taking P.E.
online is definitely the most American thing I have ever heard.
And again, equal opportunity. This is weird.
It is weird. It is strange.
It is.
I cannot believe that I was allowed to take PE online, but I did.
And I'm going to say that I really enjoyed it.
OK, the next thing Americans love are those weird lawyer commercials.
And I'm not talking like a national lawyer.
There will always,
no matter where you are, there will be regional lawyers who have
like giant billboards and regional commercials.
And I can still remember the Orlando ones.
It was like bogon months and months for the people or
Morgan and Morgan for the people.
Everyone is for the people,
but probably not there, probably for the money in the end.
And we just if you turn on any
American TV, you will see these regional like law commercials.
But they're usually people who are trying
to help you get money from, like car accidents or other things.
I mean, they're obviously real lawyers.
But like now, knowing what I know now and actually
growing up, I'm not sure I would ever actually call one of these places because
the commercials are just so it's all so over the top and so cranky.
But to this day, I still remember the exact names.
It's never anything normal.
They always, like, have the same name or
it's like eighteen different last names and they're all for the people.
Another thing Americans love,
and this is another type of commercial, our local car commercials.
So I'm not talking about a car commercial where like a Mercedes is driving around
the coast of California with some like sleek music in the background.
That's like a real national commercial.
I am talking about a local car commercial
for a local car dealership, things that you have to have no one.
Usually there is someone's grandchild
who is like sitting on the car with grandpa talking about it like there's
always got to be a kid in these kinds of things.
Number two, there is always there always has to be some sort of tag line.
So for the ones I remember, it was Seyah in Akia.
And I just remember I've never bought a car, but I always when I think of car
commercials, I think of we'll see it in a and they're just they also you.
We have one of those like Flappy,
like blow up, like giant people who just like wave all over the place and then
you've got the kid and then you've got someone sitting on a car.
And it's so weird. But we love it.
We love a good regional car dealership commercial.
OK, something else Americans love are flying flags in our front yards.
But I'm not just talking about the American flag.
That, again, a whole nother video about patriotism.
I'm talking about.
And if you're not from the US, you will
have no concept of what I'm talking about because they would never do this
in the U.K. But you have a flag pole that is hanging off the side of your house
and people will change it depending on the season.
So my mom has a birthday flag. She has a St.
Patrick's Day flag. She has a Halloween flag.
She has a New Year's Eve flag.
She has a crisp multiple Christmas flags.
There are also ones like Four Seasons.
So if it's not an actual holiday, but you could do a springtime flag.
I think she has one with flowers.
That's just for all year round.
We love buying flags.
We don't need to hang in front of our houses to tell the rest of the world
who already knows what holiday it is, what holiday it is.
Again, one of those things you don't think
are strange growing up in America until you move somewhere.
And my husband's like,
I don't understand why your mom has a flag out front that says it's Halloween.
I'm like, never thought of it that way.
It's just part of the culture,
something that we like to do, a way to decorate your house.
You can go into stores and buy all kinds of different house flags.
It's not as if you have a full on like
flag pole from the ground in your front yard.
It's hanging off the side of your house.
And if you ever go to the states in any suburban neighborhood,
I guarantee you will definitely see at least a couple people with these kind
of festive flags no matter the time of year hanging out front.
Another thing Americans love and I put down Cheesecake Factory initially,
but I'm just going to expand that to a chain restaurants.
We love knowing that you can go to any
state and still get the same meal from Olive Garden.
We know it's not going to be like the best meal we've ever eaten in our lives.
In fact, we're pretty sure it's not going to be.
But the fact that you can get it wherever you go is very comforting.
And that is definitely not something that people in the UK can get on board with.
I do see a lot of people,
because I'm from Orlando, I do see a lot of British people who are
visiting Orlando comment on certain restaurants and chains they like to go
to there, but only because it's different from what is here.
There are some like chain pubs.
You know, there's like Wetherspoon and stuff here in the UK.
But in general, the culture here is much more on like individually owned places.
And they just do not have the same concept
of really as a culture embracing and loving chain restaurants.
I'm certainly not above this love.
I can list off a whole list of chain
restaurants, including the Cheesecake Factory,
which has about eighty six thousand options, which is what I go for.
I also miss Outback Steakhouse, which again themed Australian.
Is there anything Australian about it? I don't think so.
Besides, there's a boomerang that hangs up, but we're American, so we'll take it.
Other things I miss like a Wendy's,
even though Wendy's is coming to retting in the UK.
So we'll see how that goes.
And Olive Garden love their breadsticks.
I will not stand up for any of the food served at these chain restaurants.
I will not say that they are good.
I will just say that we love them and so that I'm not going to apologize for.
Also side note, my dad proposed to my mom and an Olive Garden and they are now
divorced, so maybe that wasn't the best choice.
Another funny story about Olive Garden is
that we took my husband one time to an Olive Garden.
He had never been or hadn't been in a really long time.
And the whole situation was so confounding to him of like the multiple refills.
And she brought us a salad for the whole table.
And he was like, well, I want some salad,
but I didn't order it, so I can't have any.
And we were like, nobody here even wants the salad.
Like we're all here for the breadsticks.
You have some salad.
And he was like, But I'm not allowed.
And it's Olive Garden.
You are allowed to do whatever you want. Yeah.
British people do not have the same love or appreciation for a chain restaurant.
But Americans, we definitely
we feel it in our hearts, those Olive Garden breadsticks.
OK, and the last thing on my list
of things that Americans love is eating dessert for breakfast.
So, again, I never really thought of it like this until I moved to the UK.
But common breakfast items in the US would include things like.
Donuts,
muffins, which my husband calls cupcakes, and I have to keep being like,
it's a muffin, not a cupcake, and he's like, well, what is the difference?
I'm like, a muffin is a breakfast item and a cupcake is a snack item.
And he's like, but they're basically the same thing.
Also, Pop Tarts, we love to eat a pop tart
for breakfast, and I don't particularly like the fruity ones.
I only like ones that do taste like dessert.
So Samar's brown sugar, cinnamon chocolate chip cookie dough,
we have whole entire aisles of the grocery store that just have sugary cereal.
And so, again, growing up in America, you're not like, oh, this is so fun.
I get to eat dessert for breakfast.
But when you move away and then you come back, you're like,
I don't necessarily think that that donut counts as a healthy breakfast,
but you're like, well, when in America, you know, do what we do.
But, yeah, we you know, I mean,
some people do eat like regular breakfast food, but it would be completely nothing.
No one's going to think twice about having a pop tart for breakfast and feeling like
you're eating a breakfast item when the rest of the world looks at you.
And it's like that is definitely like
eight thousand calories and not good for you.
So that would be like a once a month kind of tree.
And you eat that every single morning for breakfast.
OK, so that brings me to the end
of the video on things that Americans love, most of them pretty weird.
Again, this is an equal opportunity channel.
So if I poke fun at things that the Brits
do or enjoy, I definitely have to poke fun at the things that we in America enjoy.
If you are from somewhere other than America, comment below and let me know.
Like the weirdest thing that you think Americans enjoy.
And if you are from the states, let me know which of these you agreed with.
Again, I'm going to make an apologies.
I basically do love most of these things,
but I do understand from an international perspective it can be a little bit weird.
I hope you guys enjoy the video and I will see you next time.