Tell me about life outside of the US

i live in Canada, went to school on the Quebec side as well as the Ontario side. on the QC side we don't sing the national anthem, in ON you have to stand up and listen to it every morning before school starts. as far as flags are concerned people are more patrioric and have them more around in QC (the Quebec flag). in ON you see a canada flag here and there nothing crazy. never done a pledge in my life so no to that

I was born in Poland and lived there until I was 11. Very catholic country, very judgmental, but people are down to earth. Moved to England and lived there until I was almost 21. Party life, people down to earth. I still visited Poland every few months. Then I moved to America and lived here for almost 10 years. I miss Europe sometimes! It’s my home. People there definitely value life outside of working 24/7. Family and friends are everything. You have a lot of holidays where you take time off to be with family and rest.

Also strangers aren’t chatty at all in Europe, America is on some next level and not necessarily in a good way haha (at least the south in the USA, now I live in the east coast and love it so much cause it’s the closest to Europe as far as people)

Also, if you could imagine life where everything is pretty much absolutely different than in the USA, it’s Europe. I went through some crazy changes having to adjust; I was extremely depressed after moving to Texas as my first state… everything is SO different. Especially the freaking driving everywhere; in most European countries you just walk. Or catch public transportation.

@Adrianna I just had to laugh....Europe to Texas had to be such a rough transition! Oof 😅

@MK I almost went back hahaha!!! but thank goodness we moved 😂 if it wasn’t for loving my husband I would have left a long time ago. It’s a long story but I did have a mental breakdown😂

@Adrianna I'm glad you're happier now, the east coast is so beautiful!

@MK thank you!!! it isssss and so is Colorado! I lived in Utah for a little bit and I would always drive down to middle of nowhere Colorado (meeker) and stay in tiny homes for the weekend ☺️☺️ moral of the story, don’t move to Texas haha 🤣

In Australia we have flags mostly at political buildings or our indigenous flag at the relevant sites. We sing the national anthem at formal sports games and at most school assemblies. We don't have a pledge, but some religious schools have their own school prayer or promise they recite at assemblies

In the UK we dont really have our flag around very much at all and too many flags especially the English flag make me think nationalists (which here isn't a good thing as it's usually associated with anti immigration/ pro white). We don't sing anthems at school either or have being proud of our country drummed into us as children ... I think we choose whether or not to be proud depending on whether our country does good things or not rather than blind patriotism which I've seen in my US friends before they left the US and went... Oh.... (Nowhere is perfect!)

I was about to say the same thing as Georgie^^^^ If you see an England flag you really do normally think of the EDL! I think a lot of people now aren’t crazy proud of our country and the government just fucks everyone over, so it’s hard to be patriotic! My husband however is Irish, and proud of it. When you go over to Ireland they have their flag up everywhere, even in the north! My husband even has the Ireland flag tattooed on him. They still don’t do the whole national anthem everyday or do a pledge of allegiance or anything!

Australian. There's a few flags. Some schools have them, government buildings. We do sing the national anthem at major sporting events. We sing it at school assemblies too. There is no pledge.

Yes we did all that in NIgeria. The Uk do not sing anthems at school though. I would even dare say half the people here don’t even know it including myself.

Unfortunately Great Britain’s colonial past makes it difficult to have the whole national pride thing and those that do are branded racists.

@Linda The US’s colonial past (and present) past make difficult to have national pride too!

Algerian flags are everywhere, on cars, people hang them on or in their houses(ours is hung in our entrance way), all buildings that are government run(post offices, utility companies, city paper offices, hospitals, etc.)have them, banners of lots of small flags criss cross the roads or are hung around gas stations. In almost every city there are war monuments, martyrs monuments, and war/history museums that the schools go to for field trips. The anthem is sung daily and the kids get tested on if they know the anthem every couple months. National pride is a big thing, especially after the long history of occupation and colonization.

I used to live in Jamaica. I don’t recall seeing as many flags there as Ive seen in America. Not sure how school life is there now but back then we used to have something called devotion. We’d sing songs , pray etc. I loved it. In high school I went to a catholic school so we had mass every first Friday of the month whether you’re catholic or not lol. We also wear uniforms in Jamaica

I’m English and agree with all the posts about England above. I now live in the Middle East, specifically Qatar. There are flags everywhere and also paintings and pictures of the Emir & his father everywhere aswell as lots of patriotic statues of things to do with Qatar around. People are very devoted to the royal family here and the royal family are very devoted to their people. People take a lot of pride in being Qatari since it is such a small country with a population mainly made up of expats. They celebrate national day which is basically a day to celebrate Qatar and everything about it. It’s a national holiday with parades and the schools/shops/restaurants/public spaces go all out! I’m not sure about the national anthem but I’ve heard be sung at matches. My daughter goes to a British school here so whilst she learns a lot about the Qatari culture and history, it’s follows the British curriculum.

@Grayson Sorry but The British Empire was far more reaching and historical than the US.

@Linda oh I just meant that it’s a racist empire that has its tentacles throughout the whole world. Certainly it’s less historical as it’s a young country.