I have been in the USA the past 10 days. I am painfully conscious of being a foreigner and not wanting to make contextual faux pas. I think my favourite line was when a waitress was chatting with us who said she initially just thought I had a speech imediment because of my accent.

One significant cultural learning point was figuring out that water sits a lot higher in American toilets. When I first used the toilet, I didn’t think much about it until I finished, at which point the water looked mighty high and like it would overflow if I pulled the flush! I suddenly panicked that if I pulled the flush (and this was day one in somebody’s house) that I was going to flood their bathroom with toilet water and effluent. Turns out water just sits higher in American toilets. A cultural difference worth knowing!

I have learnt to stop saying, ‘not bad’. Somebody showed me a fish they caught, to which I replied fairly upbeat, that it was ‘not bad’. They seemed deeply disappointed. I clocked on and mentioned ‘not bad’ in England effectively means ‘pretty good’ in America. We Brits tend to play down our feelings whilst Americans tend to play them up.

When Americans say ‘have a nice day’ they don’t really mean it. When you reply, they are surprised. The British equivalent would be ‘see you soon’, which does not mean they are going to or even want to see you anytime soon.

Putting ketchup on your cooked breakfast is apparently unacceptable. If you ask an American whether it is acceptable before you do it, they’ll tell you it’s fine even though they don’t think it is. They think this means they’re being polite. I didn’t find it polite,

Everyone drives a truck (at least where I am staying). Most of them are American-built. Quite a lot of people have boats. Even poorer people might have a boat (albeit not quite as fancy a one). Boating is very much a thing.

Everywhere is air conditioned. Americans don’t like being uncomfortable anywhere.

I suspect I may discover some more things yet. But these were some funny cultural differences I ran into.