

I'm writing a story which involves a character who comes to the states from Europe. It would be useful for a certain scene to have a couple examples of small, weird things about America that he noticed when he came over here.



Obviously there's lots of differences. But I want to avoid cliches, and it's hard for me to put myself in his shoes, being American.



I did stay in Ireland for a while though, and an example of the kind of things I'm talking about in reverse would be the popularity of panel shows on British TV and the existence of the Commonwealth Games*.



So yeah, that's the type of thing I'm looking for, not the huge things you know are different going in and aren't surprised by to find: American football, 4th of July fireworks. More like the little things that everybody here knows about but which you'd never heard of before you came.







*which part of me still can't get over: Britain started up an entire mini-Olympics just so their former colonies can kick their ass at pretty much every athletic endeavor known to man? Really?

Calling all non-USAans: Can you give me some examples of tiny, weird things you discovered about the United States only when you got here?